Winds of Winter, Dreams of Spring, Years of Sadness

We'll likely never get a proper conclusion to George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. Should it come as much of a surprise?

Jon Snow (Kit Harrington) awaits the winter that may never come. Game of Thrones (HBO)

I recently discussed the second season of The Last of Us and the frustrating fact that it will take two or three years to get a proper conclusion to Ellie and Abby's story. Which kinda sucks. But in a world where we're accustomed to this sort of drawn-out storytelling, it's easy to forget how much worse it could truly be. It could be fourteen years... and counting.

That's the pressure George R. R. Martin, acclaimed author of the epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire (adapted into Game of Thrones), has been stewing in as fans continue to await the sixth and not even final book in the series, The Winds of Winter. Looking back, the prolonged delay seems both implausible and inevitable, as if Martin has constructed a prison of his own design, one where the walls slowly close in, and thrown away the key.

The first three installments of Ice and Fire, which constitute the first four seasons of the television show, were published on a consistent bi-yearly basis between 1996 and 2000. In many ways, this trilogy of novels told the complete "first act" of the series, and readers weren't overly concerned at the five-year gap between 2000's A Storm of Swords and 2005's A Feast for Crows. Then again, nobody could have predicted what was (or rather, wasn't) in store.

2005 is when the warning signs began to flash. Martin famously classifies his writing style as "gardening" – planting a narrative seed and letting it grow organically – as opposed to the more rigidly structured "architect." And while that loose style has enabled the creation of one of the most fascinating fictional universes we've ever seen and some of the greatest characters ever put to page, it also runs some pretty big risks, especially with someone who can be as self-indulgent as Martin.

Instead of dialing in on the tight ensemble he had established in the first three books, A Feast for Crows serves as the beginning of a "great expansion" for the series, ballooning itself in scope and introducing a wide new range of characters and plot threads. (Game of Thrones would go on to ignore much of this new content, resulting in a lack of harmony with the source material that, in my eyes, is responsible for sending it off the rails.)

It's hard for me to blame Martin for all of this. Although the much-expanded scope has arguably killed the prospect of the book series ever getting a complete and satisfying conclusion, you can see why he caved: Meereenese poisonings; Young Griff's invasion of Westeros; intrigue in the North; Greyjoy blood magic – it all fucking rocks.

Praise for Feast was tamer than the earlier books, in large part due to the increasingly unwieldy nature of the story that forced Martin to split it and the fifth book (2011's A Dance with Dragons – the most recent main entry) up by geography, as there were too many moving parts to focus on in one single book. It's a strange structural choice that echoes what The Last of Us is going through right now. By the end of Dance, Martin manages to wrangle all of his storylines to a compelling and cohesive place, but is it possible the damage was already done? As we've seen, writing a 1500 page epic with twenty point of view characters and incredibly delicate plotting isn't the easiest thing in the world. Not to mention Winds is supposed to be followed by the equally large A Dream of Spring, which feels like a long-forgotten myth at this point.

It's only gotten harder for Martin in recent years. While the on-page hurdles are clear (the logistics of this many characters is insane), much of the public frustration stems from what's happening off-page. Since 2011, Martin has seemingly done everything except work on the books. He's been involved in a plethora of GoT spinoffs since the flagship show ended (of which he was also involved), is an active producer for Dark Winds on AMC+, and contributed to the 2022 video game Elden Ring. He even wrote hundreds and hundreds of pages of Targaryen history and turned it into Fire & Blood, which has already gotten through two seasons of a TV adaptation in its own right (HBO's House of the Dragon).

But no Winds. Not even a faint breeze.

I don't think the delay has too much to do with any one specific factor. I think, sadly, George R. R. Martin has fallen victim to a calibrated shitstorm of the worst possible circumstances at the worst possible time. He's at the point in his career where he shouldn't have to worry about finishing his masterpiece, he should be basking in the glory of it. But he made his beloved story too sprawling for its own good, and I suspect that with every passing year, his motivation to bring the series to a satisfying conclusion falls a bit further out of reach. The longer you put something off, the harder it becomes to actually do it.

This behind-the-scenes saga is almost as fascinating as the book series itself, and has to go down as one of the most bonkers situations in literary history. The only real comparison I can think of is the long, long awaited finale to Patrick Rothfuss' The Kingkiller Chronicle trilogy, which is an even more mind-boggling state of affairs. With Winds, at least we have some sample chapters. We know that chunks of the novel exist, even if it's incomplete. But it seems like Rothfuss hasn't written a single page since The Wise Man's Fear was published back in 2011 (what a year for incomplete fantasy epics). Maybe I'll circle back to the Kingkiller conversation in the future, but I hesitate to read it if it will lead to more unfulfilled anticipation.

Call me a sucker, but I still think we're getting The Winds of Winter at some point. Likely not a full conclusion to the saga, but I'm confident we'll at least get something, even if it's not a surprise double release of Winds and Spring as the most optimistic fans like to theorize. George R. R. Martin has long been adept at writing tragic characters who feel both immensely grounded and almost operatic in scale. But it's 2025, and as the legacy of A Song of Ice and Fire has all but cemented itself, not even Martin could have imagined where the real tragedy would lie, and that a A Dream of Spring would remain just that: a dream.