George R.R. Martin has put up a sample chapter from his long-awaited book A Feast for Crows on his website. I got all excited thinking that this would mean that the book would be out soon. I call up my brother to inform him of the news and alas, the sample chapter is one of many such chapters he has posted over the last year or so.
A little bit of background is in order. Martin is the author of a popular fantasy series called A Song of Fire and Ice. It’s a massive war epic told for several different perspectives in the major houses that all wish to be kings. It’s grand, exciting and filled with unpredictable twist after twist. It’s a great read, and the fourth book is over five years in the making. He hopes the have the book on shelves by the end of 2005, more then six years after he started writing them.
The third book of the series was published in 2000, more then five years ago. Fans are getting a wee bit impatient. Last year my brother sent a fan letter kindly stating that when he started reading these books he was in college and had since graduated, gotten an advanced degree and was now married with children.
Martin sent back a rather terse reply.
The books are long, over 800 pages a book and incredibly complex. I get that it takes a long time to write a book. I’ve been working on mine for more then three years and I don’t have anything publishable. But I think Martin’s work should be put into perspective with his peers in the fantasy world.
Since 2000 J.K. Rowling has published three Harry Potter books. Neil Gaiman wrote six novels and several comic book projects Robert Jordan wrote three Wheel of Time Books and two novellas. Dungeons and Dragons master R.A. Salvatore really put Martin to shame by writing nine books.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Aaman
Robert Jordan is a jerk - he has given no indications as to when or how long he will take to finish his (so far) 10-volume series.
Stephen King took a while, too, but kept up his literary output
2 - johnboy
I think martin knows the facts of his business at least as well as you do.
to compare him to hacks like salvatore (and Jordan of late) is stupid.
better to get it right rather than rush it and stuff it up.
3 - Dave Nalle
Exactly. Unlike Jordan, Salvatore and King - Martin can actually write well and has intelligent and compelling stories to tell.
I do wonder if he has health issues, though. He's getting older and he's always been quite heavy. I worry that this may be part of the reason his productivity has declined in recent years.
Anyway, if you like Martin's work, look for The Briar King and The Charnel Prince by Greg Keyes. They're of the same level of sophistication as Martin's work, but even better written and more original.
Dave
4 - boingboing
When a series goes untenanted for so long, and the author launches and completes other projects -- it means the author has lost interest and inspiration.
Martin has, for YEARS now, been saying, "It's getting there." If he had been working on Crows every day, at full amplitude, the book would have been published by now.
Granted these books are tremendously complex and wonderful. But it's within Martin's ability to produce them at the pace he produced books 1..3. Martin began by saying it would be a 4-book series, then he said it would probably have to be an 8-book series. If he's going to take 5 years per book, we're looking at 20 years until the series concludes.
Did Martin write himself into a corner? Did he lose interest? Did it get too complicated? Did a ghostwriter die? Who knows. The publication date will slip again, I'm betting. This series will be a heartbreaker for the Fantasy genre. I've been waiting for someone to point this out.
5 - Christopher Brandon
Your argument turns back on itself and is thus rubbish! Your main thrust is because the 4th book is a long time coming Mr. Martin "is in danger of losing his audience." Yet if you look at what you wrote, yourself and your own brother are still interested and eagerly awaiting the 4th book inspite of the delay.So you negate your own reasoning.
Secondly you do not allow for persons like myself who have recently come to the novels after constant proding from my girlfriend. So new fans are coming to the novels even if a few bitter goats are abandoning them.
Even those who fall away, will mostlikely come back and at least purchase the fourth book once it releases so I think the "danger" which you illustrate as work, family, hobbies, etc. does not hold up if reading is one of your hobbies.
All of your statements are an embittered smoke screen of longing for this book.
You want to know about waiting? 5 or 6 years? Big deal...try being a 3rd generation Red Sox fan-86 YEARS and 3 genenrations waited for the Sox to finally win it, and it was well worth the wait! All good things are, and I am sure A Feast of Crows will be as well.
6 - Andrew
Ha, you think Martin is bad? I've been
waiting for "A Method for Madness", the next book in David Gerrald's "War against the Chtorr" cycle, since 1992.
Luckily, Terry Pratchett, has been writting excellent and compelling fantasy novels at the rate of one or two a year.
7 - Matt Schafer
Actually I'm not so sure I'm going to buy this fourth book if and when it comes out. I'm probably just going to wait another year or so until it comes out in paper back rather than spend $30 knowing the next book is years and years away. It's been so long since the last book came out I'll probably have to re-read Storm of Swords and Clash of Kings to to make sure that I remember everything. If I can find time to do that, then I'll buy the next book.
And I'm certain there are new fans coming to this series but as an author, someone who makes their livelyhood on an audience's entertainment time and money I would think you would want to reward and stay faithful to the people who supported you and made the series into a success in the first place.
Yeah I'd like the book to come out, but if its not going to come out until 2006 or later I'm not going to be in a hurry to buy it.
8 - Victor Plenty
One George R.R. Martin novel is worth his weight in paperback editions of the stuff Jordan, Salvatore, and even Rowling have been putting out.
Don't get me wrong here. I love the Harry Potter books and plan to re-read the whole set when they're all done. I liked the Wheel of Time books before they turned into a perpetual motion machine with no real purpose except making more money for Jordan. I can even enjoy some of Salvatore's work if I remember to think of them as comic books in prose form.
My point is, Martin stands head and shoulders above all of these. The only current fantasy author I can think of right now remotely comparable to him is Guy Gavriel Kay. (I'll refrain from comments on Gaiman, positive or negative, because I haven't gotten around to reading anything of his yet.)
If five or six or ten years is what it takes to maintain the quality level Martin has established in this series, I am more than willing to be patient.
9 - Dave Nalle
I'll say it again, Victor, if you want a writer comparable to Martin or possibly even better, check out Greg Keyes.
Dave
10 - Victor Plenty
Okay, Dave, but you like Heinlein, so I ain't holding my breath over here.
(ducking)
11 - Dave Nalle
Most of Keyes novels are in paperback, so how much of a risk can it be?
Plus Heinlein is likeable for different reasons - Keyes and Martin can be compared, but Heinlein falls so far in a different category that comparisons are meaningless.
Dave
12 - Victor Plenty
Just kidding with the crack about Heinlein. I like (some of) his work too.
I'll look for books from Keyes. Trouble is, I'm not just "wait for paperback" broke, I'm "check the public library" broke right now.
Maybe that's why I'm starting to develop a weakness for country music, after a lifetime of being nearly immune to it. But that is even more off topic here than Heinlein.
13 - Mike
I just finished the seventh Dark Tower book after reading the series for nearly twenty years. I don't think its about age groups or brackets. I don't think Martin cares what his core audience is.
I just finished Game of Thrones last weekend and I loved it. Martin is an excellent writer and I was happy to read through a few pages a night.
I just ordered the two other books currently in print, but now I think I might set them aside for a while and let the fourth come out. I've got far more books than I have time to read them.
14 - Bjorn
Martin is with out a doubt aware of the business part of publishing. In time for the fourth installment ha published the comic (or graphic novell if u will) "The Hedge Knight" to keep the readers interested and to try to get younger readers into the series. If it worked they will have just enough time to read the first the books in time to catch the fourth one when it hits the best-seller lists.
15 - althea
"The average fantasy reader is a white man between 12 and 32."
Maybe in 1968.... where did you get this factoid? I seriously think a LOT more women read fantasy than men. And most new fantasy is geared toward adults, not teens....
16 - Temple Stark
Victor - do not not go to the dark side. Resist and your resistence will be rewarded with honor and integrity - your own.
No country.
17 - Victor Plenty
Country music is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural...?
Quicker, easier, more seductive it is?
Ah, Temple, if you only knew the POWER of country music!
Blog more on this later, I must.
18 - Eric Olsen
country music is a gateway drug
19 - Teri Pettit
Matt, could you answer Althea's question about where you got your "12 to 32 year old males" statistic from? It may apply to graphic novels or science fiction, but it seems off base for fantasy novels to me. I have no statistics to go by, but my impression is that Althea is right, that the majority of fantasy readers are female, even of fantasy with a martial setting.
(I'm a 50 year old woman, and while my reading rate did drop off after high school, it went from 15 to 20 books/week to 5 or 6 books per week, and hasn't changed much since then, except for the year my daughter was born, when I could only manage one or two books per week. It is about 45% mysteries, 45% fantasy and science fiction, and 10% non-fiction. The genre ratio hasn't changed much over my entire life.)
Also, while reading rates typically do drop somewhat after one leaves school, so what? If anything, it argues for a slower writing pace rather than otherwise. If an author were coming out with five books a year, they would risk losing the infrequent readers, but if they're releasing two or three books per decade, even an infrequent reader can keep up with that. To catch the readers who limit the number of books they read, what you need to do is guarantee that your book is one of the very BEST of its year, not that you pop them out like clockwork. And GRRM has not shown any drop in quality at all, the way Jordan did.
So I don't see any significant risk of GRRM losing his reader base. He may, however, risk not having time to finish writing the series, if the pace doesn't pick up.
To switch topics, I concur with Dave Nalle's recommendation of Greg Keyes. Another author likely to appeal to GRRM readers is Llyn Flewelling, especially her Tamir trilogy. (GRRM has stated that if he dies, nobody else will finish his series. But those are the two authors I'd trust most to do it justice if he felt otherwise. Guy Gavriel Kay is an excellent writer, but his mood doesn't match.)
20 - Eric Salyer
The idea that the majority of fantasy readers are female is ludicrous. Players of RPGs (D&D etc), fantasy computer games, and fantasy card games like Magic the Gathering are overwhelmingly male. I'd say 80-90%. And those groups make up a good chunk of fantasy readers. Just doesn't jive with your ideas, Althea and Teri.
21 - K. Stewart
I have to agree with the long wait. After five years, you forget the whole point of the story, the characters (albeit they all died off in the last bookd), the reason you got into it in the first place. There is no way that i'm going to even think about this series again after reading the latest book! Why can't the authors of today finish a story in THREE books? This makes me appreciate LOTR a lot more now a days.
22 - YourBlogSucks
What a load of crap. You know that you'll all be waiting in line to buy A Feast for Crows the day it comes out.
While it may be possible that your interest in waning in the time between book publications, it will come right back when the story is out.
23 - SFC SKI
Fortunately, I just started reading Book 1, so I am not in a hurry. I haven't read fantasy for about 15 years, so much of it is derivative; but this book has gotten under my skin like nothing I have read in quite some time,
If Martin can keep up the quality, he can take the time he needs.
24 - Brys
I see where you're coming from, but the books Martin writes are good enough for him to be forgiven for taking this long. Still, Steven Erikson, an even better author (slightly) manages to write almost one book a year which are longer and more complex. I just hope that he can finish these soon, but the series is so enthralling that I doubt he will lose any fans from the long wait. And while Jordan doesn't take nearly as long, it'd be better if he did and actually write some good books. If Jordan took 5 years for each book, but wrote them as well as ASoIaF, it would be better than publishing the poor novels such as Crossroads of Twilight that he does every year or two.
25 - lou
"The average fantasy reader is a white man between 12 and 32."
I think this a pretty questionable statistic as well -- being a 45-year-old woman and reader of scifi and fantasy. Remember, the audience for the Lord of the Rings movies was actually more than half female. the Tolkien gathering in Toronto was 60 percent female. at the latest National Book Festival, the scifi/fantasy tent audience was predominantly female. And studies do show women read more than men, so your citation of games and role-playing stats is questionable, Eric. reading and role-playing are two different activities.
At any rate, Tolkien took, what? 20-25 years? between the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Simarillion came out 20 years after LOTR. Output and quality do not equal each other.