A Feast for Crows is finished. In a way.

[gyrehead]

News from Conquests is that the book is done. Parris, herself has confirmed it.

Reports from Conquest

[Worm of Despite]

Excellent news! Still no official confirmation from Martin on his website, though.

[Lord Mhoram]

And he said that he'd post it on his website "as soon as he knew" that the book was finished. Strange.

[I'm Murrin]

So if he really is splitting it into two books, I wonder what they'll be called? Unless he intends to turn the Dany/North part into half of A Dance With Dragons?

[danlo]

Cool! Strange, but cool!

[Ainulindale]

Barring a preposterous hoax that that is not really Paris who posted, this is a done deal. It's in essence the same as if Martin stated it himself.

[FizbansTalking_Hat]

Some people you just can't satisfy. We've been complaining for the longest time how long he is taking and now that he's done we find something new to complain about.

I don't see what the big deal is with him cutting out some parts, I mean he's already over halfway done with book five so it's not like there will be that long of a wait to read about those he cut out of book four. - Sir William

I have no issues with this at all. Sure I admit maybe he is under some pressure with the publisher's to get something out soon as it's been quite a long time. But here is how I see it. The FORMAT has been changed not the CONTENT. Sure he's split up the story but it's always been split up. I'm upset that we'll be missing out on some of my favorite character sequences, but its not liek they've dissapeared, if anything it'll just allow him to concentrate that much more on their story when teh second part of this book is released.

I think that it's still gonig to be a great work and the story is still there, plotting, backstabbing, deal making, killing, incest making battle sequences etc. It's all there, just set up a bit differently.

I eagerly await this story, cheers.

[duchess of malfi]

From martin's website:

No, I haven't finished writing everything I wanted to include in A FEAST FOR CROWS. I have wrapped up a whole bunch of characters and storylines since the last update in January, but "a whole bunch" does not equate to "all."

And I was facing another problem as well: the sheer size of the book.

All of the books in this series have been big, mind you. A GAME OF THRONES weighed in at 1088 pages in manuscript, not counting the appendices. A CLASH OF KINGS was even longer at 1184 pages, not counting the appendices. And A STORM OF SWORDS measured a gargantuan 1521 pages in manuscript, not counting the (etc).

Any publisher will tell you that a book as big as A STORM OF SWORDS is a production nightmare, and STORM did indeed cause problems for many of my publishers around the world. In some languages it was divided into two, three, or even four volumes. Bantam published STORM in a single volume in the United States, but not without difficulty. Pretty much everyone agreed that it would be a really good thing if the fourth volume in the series came in somewhat shorter than STORM, so I set out with the idea of delivering a FEAST closer in length to A CLASH OF KINGS.

Alas for good intentions. In hindsight, I should have known better. The story makes its own demands, as Tolkien once said, and my story kept demanding to get bigger and more complicated.

I passed A CLASH OF KINGS last year, and still had plenty more to write. By January, I had more than 1300 pages, and still had storylines unfinished. About three weeks ago I hit 1527 pages of final draft, surpassing A STORM OF SWORDS... but I also had another hundred or so pages of roughs and incomplete chapters, as well as other chapters sketched out but entirely unwritten. That was when I realized that the light I'd seen at the end of the tunnel was actually the headlight of an onrushing locomotive.

And that's why my publishers and I, after much discussion and weighing of alternatives, have decided to split the narrative into two books (printing in microtype on onion skin paper and giving each reader a magnifying glass was not considered feasible, and I was reluctant to make the sort of deep cuts that would have been necessary to get the book down to a more publishable length, which I felt would have compromised the story).

The first plan was simply to lop the text in half. In that scenario, I would finish the last few chapters in as short a length (and time) as possible. That would have produced a story of maybe 1650 to 1700 pages in manuscript, which we would simply have broken into two chunks of roughly equal length and published as A FEAST FOR CROWS, Part One and A FEAST FOR CROWS, Part Two.

We decided not to do that. It was my feeling -- and I pushed hard for this, so if you don't like the solution, blame me, not my publishers -- that we were better off telling all the story for half the characters, rather than half the story for all the characters. Cutting the novel in half would have produced two half-novels; our approach will produce two novels taking place simultaneously, but set hundreds or even thousands of miles apart, and involving different casts of characters (with some overlap).

The division has been done, and it think it works quite well. The upshot is, A FEAST FOR CROWS is now moving into production. It is still a long book, but not too long; about the same size as A GAME OF THRONES. The focus in FEAST will be on Westeros, King's Landing, the riverlands, Dorne, and the Iron Islands. More than that I won't say.

Meanwhile, all the characters and stories removed from FEAST are moving right into A DANCE WITH DRAGONS, which will focus on events in the east and north. All the chapters I have not yet finished and/or begun are moving into DANCE. I think this is very good, if truth be told, since it will give me the room to complete those arcs as I had originally intended, rather than trying to tie them up quickly in a chapter or two so I could deliver the massively late Big FEAST.

So there it is. I know some of you may be disappointed, especially when you buy A FEAST FOR CROWS and discover that your favorite character does not appear, but given the realities I think this was the best solution... and the more I look at it, the more convinced I am that these two parallel novels, when taken together, will actually tell the story better than one big book.

And if there are those who don't agree, and still want their Big FEAST with all the trimmings set out on one huge table... well, there's an easy fix. Get both books, razor the pages out with an Exacto knife, interleave the chapters as you think best, and bring the towering stack of text that results to your favorite bookbinder... and presto, chango the Big FEAST will live again.

As for me, I am getting back to work. There's good news on that front too -- A DANCE WITH DRAGONS is half-done!!!

(And before anyone asks, yes indeed, this development means that Parris was right all along. It will now probably require seven books to complete the story).


—George R.R. Martin, May 29, 2005

www.georgerrmartin.com

[Gart]

I'm a bit disappointed. After a five year wait I was hoping for a bit more from GRRM than him splitting the book in two and giving me half - espcially as I won't be seeing the bulk of my favorite characters for another few years.

I have a lot more faith in Martin than I would have in Jordan , but I still started having "Crossroads of Twilight" flashbacks when I read this announcement...

[variol son]

But Daenerys is my favourite character. Now I'm gonna be almost 30 before I find out what happens to her. ARGH!

Sum sui generis
Vs

[duchess of malfi]

Dudes -- according to Martin's lady, Parris, A Dance with Dragons will probably be finished in about the summer of 2006. So it'll probably be out a year after AFFC.

AFFC gave Martin fits and he had to scrap huge parts of it and start over a couple of times, if I remember correctly.

That is why there was such a huge gap in between ASOS and AFFC.

It sounds like he is now back on track.

Parris usually seems to know, or at least estimate, her mate's speed, etc. better than he can (it's been a running contest for years between them whether the series will be six or seven books -- and Martin has finally conceded to her).

[variol son]

Ooer, only a year.

[OsRavan]

yeah like malf said parris and many of us fans have recognized for a while the book would probably be 7 in length anyway (it fits in nicely with the seven kingdoms too). This has its upshots too. namely a dance with dragons coming out fast on the heals of feast.

and yes george did have to trash what he was originaly writing. or to be more percise originaly feast was going to be a 5 year gap.. there owuld be no feast.. and he started working on dance with dragons. but then found all he was writing was flashbacks and so deicded to write feast first instead and trashed what he had written for dance.

also i will add ive seen alot of revision going on in his chapters. Ive been lucky enough to have read about 20 of his spoiler chapters. many of them more then once. and the content of them is ever changing. for instance danys first chapter that i read 2 years ago has changed signifigantly from danys first chapter i read a couple of months ago.

[Dragonlily]

bump