A Song of Ice and Fire fans rejoice George RR Martin finally has an update on the long-long awaited Winds of Winter book. The renowned author recently appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to promote his new book The Rise of the Dragon: An Illustrated History of the Targaryen Dynasty, Volume One where he shared the progress on the upcoming book among other things.
During their conversation, Colbert joked that he’s “legally required” to ask Martin about the status of Winds of Winter to which Martin revealed that the book isn’t finished yet as the book is even longer than a Storm of Swords and A Dance with Dragons. On further probing by the host he revealed, “I think it’s going to be a very big book [more than 1500 pages] and I think I’m about three-quarters of the way done.” Further adding, “The characters all interweave and I’m actually finished with a couple of the characters, but not others. I have to finish all that weaving.”
Upon getting the response Colbert quickly did the math asking, “So [it’s taken] 10 years to go 75 percent of the way through … which means about … three more years?” To which Martin jokingly replied, “That’s depressing,” though he further jabbed saying that once Winds of Winter is published, he’ll get the first tweet the next day asking, “where’s A Dream of Spring?” Fans have been long waiting for Winds of Winter as Martin’s last book A Dance with Dragons came out in 2011, the year Game of Thrones original series launched. The HBO series finished in almost a span of a decade, in 2019, moving past the original material.
HBO recently concluded Season 1 of the prequel series House of the Dragon which is based on Fire and Blood and leads up to the Targaryen Civil War dubbed, Dance of the Dragons. The author briefly discussed various dragons that are involved in the series revealing “some will die, and new ones are born,” along with his vision for the fearsome creatures in the series. His new book The Rise of the Dragon takes the core story from Fire & Blood and adds illustrations. Martin explained, “Fire & Blood is about 300,000 words of Targaryen history. This one is about a quarter of that length in terms of words, but we added 150 original illustrations by some of the finest fantasy artists in the world.”
You can check out Martin’s comments below: