He looks much more agile than Hound or the Mountain while being almost as large as them.
Dunno if Jon is nr. 1 Obviously Ramseys thing where he said "that the rumours go that he is finest swordsman in the 7 kingdoms". Obviously in the show Jon is the warrior hero, I just wonder how many elite enemies he killed. There was that traitor something i fought in a hut in the north.
In the show, he kills the first WW in the fifth season, and then effortlessly kills another one in the seventh season. He is an one man army in the Battle of Bastards, effortlessly defeats Ramsey. In the last episode he was killing Lannisters soldiers without even trying. He also defeated one of the strongest (possibly second only to Torrmund) wildling.
Most of them have armour and long swords though. He might be agile, but he's a huge target that's not wearing armour. Trying to get through someone like Jaime's armour with a Dothraki sword while you yourself have no armour is likely to get you sliced to pieces in my eyes.
Got to side with shamana. Not only were every Dothraki soldier trained rigorously from small children, like the Nomad hordes of reality they could ride before they could walk. Also, with a Viking like mentality ingrained, a laissez-faire attitude to death, even embracing it as glory, they are far superior fighters to 99% of the Westerosi.
Very unlikely to finish them.
Aegon had like 2000 soldiers when he invaded Westeros, and easily defeated the other kings. So yeah, Dragons are close to invincible.
Not likely to finish. And to be brutally honest, the last couple were mediocre at best anyway. So I have no faith in him knowing how to end them or even fully wants to try.
I don't think it's likely. It took him roughly 6 years to write A Dance With Dragons, which he initially said would take a year. He's currently 8-9 years into the writing of Winds of Winter. I think Winds of Winter will come out, but I doubt Dream of Spring will ever be finished - another 8-9 years would take him into his late 70s or early 80s.
Only compared with the first three. They (especially 'A Dance') are still better than almost any fantasy book right there.
How does the storytelling and writing in the mediocre books compare to that of the show? Superior still? Or poor by all accounts?
Dorne killed that dragon by hitting it straight through the eye with a scorpion. I believe canonically that's the only way a big one has ever died violently which didn't involve another dragon.
Yeah, I don't remember any other Dragon being killed purely by humans. Saying that, Dany's dragons would be considered small dragons if they were 200 years before. She has to flee with Drogon in Meeren for the fear of him getting killed.
Yeah, I can imagine that. I just tend to think he's a great world and character builder, but story wise it seems to have gotten away from him. And now rather than get help and work on the world, he's gone all Nemo seagull...mine mine mine.
Miles better still. D&D aren't story writers, their strength was always in the adaptation and that is what they they are genuinely good at. However, they could never compare or even attempt to try to match the depth of the books.
11 chapters of Winds have been made public.Wow, just read the publication history. It reminds me of the type of procrastination I would do when writing a uni paper, except this is taken to the extreme:
Publication history
Martin believes the last two volumes of the series will be massive works of 1,500+ manuscript pages each.[1] He does not intend to separate characters by geography again, as he was forced to do because of the unpublishable length of A Feast for Crows'original manuscript. But, as Martin stated in a 2011 interview, "Three years from now when I'm sitting on 1,800 pages of manuscript with no end in sight, who the hell knows".[39] In 2018, he revealed that some of his publishers had suggested splitting The Winds of Winterinto two books but that he was against it.[40]
In April 2011, shortly before the publication of A Dance with Dragons which took him six years to write, Martin hoped that "the last two books will go a little quicker than this one has" and estimated that it would take "three years to finish the next one at a good pace".[41][42] By October 2012, 400 pages of the sixth novel had been written, although Martin considered only the first 200 as "really finished", the rest still needing revisions.[43] In April 2013, Martin estimated that he had a quarter of the book.[44] In the past, Martin has angered some of his fan base for repeatedly estimating his publication dates too optimistically; therefore, he has refrained from making hard estimates for The Winds of Winter's final release date.[3]
In 2014, Martin's UK publisher, Jane Johnson, stated that the book would not be published before, or in, 2015.[45][46] In April 2015, Martin commented along the same lines[47] but he also said he would like to have it published before the sixth season of the HBO series Game of Thrones (which would cover material from the book) aired in 2016.[48][49] In Autumn 2015, statements made by the Spanish editor and the Polish translator of the novel indicated that it was expected to be published in 2016.[50][51][52][53]
In early January 2016, Martin confirmed that he had not met an end-of-year deadline that he had established with his publisher for release of the book before the sixth season of the HBO show. He added that there was "a lot still left to write" and that completion of the book was "months away still... if the writing goes well". Martin also revealed there had been a previous deadline of October 2015 that he had considered achievable in May 2015, and that in September 2015 he had still considered the end-of-year deadline achievable. He further confirmed that some of the plot of the book might be revealed in the upcoming season of Game of Thrones[54] but one of the showrunners, David Benioff, claimed that while certain key elements would be the same, the show would diverge from the book in many respects.[55] In February 2016, Martin stated that he had dropped all his editing projects except for Wild Cards, and that he would not be writing any teleplays, screenplays, short stories, introductions or forewords before delivering The Winds of Winter.[56]
In 2017, Martin believed that The Winds of Winter would be released that same year. However, he also noted that he had believed the same thing would occur the previous year,[57][58][37] and later that year he confirmed he was "still months away" from finishing the book, indicating it may not be published until 2018 or later, with Fire & Blood, the book on the history of House Targaryen, possibly preceding it.[59] In April 2018, Martin confirmed on his blog that Fire & Blood would be published November 20, 2018, and The Winds of Winter would not be published in 2018.[60] Later, Martin indicated that Fire & Blood was the book his publisher wanted next.[61] Since then, he has confirmed at least four times that he is continuing work on The Winds of Winter.[62][63][64][65] In April 2019, Martin commented in an interview that the writing "has been going very well lately".[66]
[/SPOILER]
On a positive, as of last month Martin said that the writing "has been going very well lately"...
The last two books have some of my favorite writing in the entire series. But they don’t lend themselves so easily to TV adaption. There are less WTF moments, a lot of new characters and plots introduced, and a lot more contemplative passages digging deep into the history of that world and the aftershocks of the War of the Five Kings. I enjoy them more with each read - some of the character development is outstanding - but can totally see why some don’t like them that much.
That's a good summary you've given on the last 2 books. I think people's ultimate view on them will depend on how they fit into the series as a whole. I think they set things up nicely for what is to come. I'm not saying they are all set up though. Like you, I think they get better with re-reading, especially AFFC.
I wouldn't count the show's ending as any sort of ending to the books. Even if they won't be finished they are still well worth reading, most of the big twists have been spoiled by the show but there's still so much it's left out and characters are so different that it's still worth it. They are great books.
I think the storytelling is good throughout, the depth and scale is incredible, the POV characters are clearly motivated and generally quite reliable, in the sense that no-one does anything hugely out-of-character for plot purposes, which means it all flows very logically and the twists feel like they've been earnt. This is one of the reasons most book-readers reckon the next two books will likely bear little resemblance to the last two seasons of the show.
The man is truly infuriating. The book really seems to be at the bottom of his priority list.
Oh how naive
How can he sit there with a straight face and tell his he is working hard on the books and not to worry whilst having just explained how he is producing 8 television programs at the minute, along with short films and assisting on a computer game.
Can't do anything but laugh now.Will be amazed if we ever see more books from him. Incredibly annoying, half wish I had never started them.
Knowing that this is the ending for all the major characters has sapped a lot of my enthusiasm for the final two books if they ever happen. People say the journey matters more than the destination but it just isn't the same knowing where all the major chess pieces will fall.
He is the biggest troll out there
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