I was listening to the Critical Drinker's after hours stream and they were talking about Winds of Winter due to the fact that GRRM recently released something Westeros related that wasn't WOW along with his many projects with HBO. They all pretty much agreed that it is highly doubtful it will ever be released, at least while he is alive.
Someone in the comments put out the whole "he owes you nothing" argument and that fans are entitled, but he did say GRRM made a mistake in constantly promising that he would end the series.
What do y'all think? I understand that he owes me nothing and I read the books between season 5 and 6 so I haven't been waiting since the 90s, but I would respect him more if he just said that he didn't want to finish and hire someone to finish. I will say now that whenever someone recommends a book series to me the first thing I ask is if the series is completed or not. I also remember someone saying that now people will be less willing to give a new author a chance if he has a multi book series.
I personally believe that once he dies (assuming he never releases the books) that his publisher will take what he had written and publish that or find someone to make it a coherent story. GOT could've been an epic show from start to finish had he finished the source material and even if he does release the last two the interest will be far less than what it could've been.
His readers made him wealthy and have read at least 4000 pages each, so I think his readers are owed at least a good faith effort to finish the books. Failing that an admission of failure, an apology and handing over the reigns to another author would do.
I don't think GOT would have ended well either way though. The scale of the story was already too big to actually complete as a television series.
Good point. I love books for the depth and certain one are nearly impossible to adapt. I will say the first season was a very good adaptation of book 1.
What’s a fantasy or sci-fi or I guess any book series you felt stayed steadily good throughout?
LotR is an obvious choice, but it's really a single book so I'm not sure if that counts. The Expanse. The first Expanse book came out a month before DwD and the ninth and final book just came out last November. Dust (or Wool or Silo or whatever it's called) series.
The irony being that the two guys writing The Expanse were GRRM's proteges, meant to be backup writers.
Thanks. I’ve been meaning to check out the Expanse books. I’ve heard good things about the show although I heard later seasons got a bit woke.
I finally read LOTR trilogy. Really enjoyed it. I had read the hobbit years ago. Did you like Wheel of Time?
What do you want to know about the WoT books?
The show has a drop off in quality in the latest couple seasons. And they fired an actor for doing a misconduct and killed his character off and that's going to fuck shit up when trying to adapt the books. The books have a certain amount of woke to them but it's a consistent amount; there is an oppressed minority but they aren't portrayed as consistently good. I have not read Wheel of Time.
Thanks!
I don't know if I'd consider their entire series great but the first couple entries of Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson and the Gentleman Bastard series by Scott Lynch are ones I can reread over and over.