Martin Finishes Crows. Sort Of.
SF author George R.R. Martin said on his Web site that he has completed A Feast for Crows, the fourth installment of his A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series, but added that it didn't turn out quite as he originally intended. A Feast for Crows is due to be released July 26, according to Amazon.com.
The first three books in the series, A Game of Thrones (1996), A Clash of Kings (1999) and A Storm of Swords (2000) are between 700 and 992 pages. A Feast for Crows ran 1,521 pages in manuscript form, Martin said, and several publishers as a result released these novels in as many as three volumes. The U.S. publisher, Bantam, published each as one novel, but Martin said there was difficulty. "And that's why my publishers and I, after much discussion and weighing of alternatives, have decided to split the narrative into two books," Martin said. He added he did not want to make significant edits for fear of compromising the story.
Rather, Martin decided—and he stressed on his site that this was his idea—to turn A Feast for Crows into two separate novels. The first one will retain the title and focus on Westeros, King's Landing, the Riverlands, Dorne and the Iron Islands. The second half will be calledA Dance With Dragons and will focus on events in the east and north. Martin reports that book is half-complete.
At first, A Feast for Crows was to be two books—parts one and two—with the first part ending halfway through the original manuscript. Martin shot that down. "We were better off telling all the story for half the characters, rather than half the story for all the characters," he said. "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]."
A Song of Ice and Fire imagines a feudal kingdom where dragons once lived, but where magic is now dwindling. The seasons can be long or short, bringing glorious summers or terrible winters that last years at a time. Seven kingdoms are ruled by the one who sits in a massive iron throne, and real and false knights vie for what they want. The series is full of graphic sex, language and violence. Martin won the Ignotius Award (Best Foreign Novel) for A Game of Thrones in 2002. A Clash of Kings was nominated for a Nebula in 1999, and A Storm of Swords won the SF Site's Reader's Choice as the best book of 2000.
