No, they are definitely not a breeze. He does have a tendency to overtalk about certain topics. My biggest issue was the descriptions of food and clothing. He'd spend pages upon pages in Catelyn and Sansa chapters just describing stupid shit about the food being served and the color of banners and armor.

But that sort of thing is useful in worldbuilding. His writing is extremely layered. Feast and Dance seemed incoherent and meandering at times, but on re-reads those two have sooooo much shit that you just don't catch on the first read.
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Yup.

I wouldn't try to convince anyone to get into the series at this point. He's not going to finish and HBO pretty much nose-dived into the runway on the landing.

Why bother? As you noted, the first lap through can be a little tedious because of the amount of unnecessary detail and then you'll find yourself late in the series feeling like you missed stuff. So you go back through and re-read them for detail (I'll once again recommend the 'ball of beasts' re-packaging for books 4 and 5, if anyone chooses to beat themselves over the head despite our warnings).

And here's the real concern - by all accounts this book will be LONG and dark as hell. And lets say it comes out in the next 2 years - he'll be 75 by then. He's not living to 85 so there's no way he'll get through the final book anyway. If anyone read the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy they'll tell you that 'Mostly Harmless' was fucking depressing. A few years later Douglas Adams did an interview where he acknowledged that he screwed the series up and he needed to write another book to put it back on the rails because he was just in a bad space when he wrote it.

Then he died. And he'd botched the whole thing so badly that the replacement author just didn't have the chops to salvage it so "And Another Thing" was equally pointless.

It all just left such a bad taste in my mouth. But the distinction is that you can read through "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish" and really come to a good conclusion to the series. You can't do that with ASOIF so on the off chance he ends up getting Winds of Winter out there, it's just going to be a ponderous and miserable slog. Then he's going to die and that's where you'll be left.

So as you noted - what's the point?
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Which is why I say he's stuck.

If he were complacent and happy cashing checks, he wouldn't be churning out all this tangential crap.

He's written himself into a corner, IMO. As previously stated, that story just keeps getting bigger and bigger and he's lost control of his instrument at this point.
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A good editor could fix it for him, but then he'd have to relinquish control. Which he clearly refuses to do.

At this point about the best we can hope for is for another author to take it up after GRRM's passing and fix it.

Much like Sanderson did for Jordon on WOT.
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Sorry yall didn't feel that way. I crushed the first 3 books very quickly. Now, books 4 and 5 are a different story. I clifnoted 4 quite a bit, and gave up on 5.
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I’m sure he loved all the surprises and twists he gave people for his main characters with none of them being safe and providing very little in the way of a true hero, but now that everyone knows the ending I’m guessing he lost a lot of motivation to show just how unexpected he can be.
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That's not really true, outside of the first book. With the exception of Ned, none of the POV characters die (or at least in the case of Catelyn and Jon, stay dead). Hell, even Ned's death wasn't all that surprising, since I realized about a third of the way through the first book that he was basically GOT's version of Dune's doomed Duke Leto. The two characters are virtually interchangeable - good and noble men who are completely unequipped to navigate a dangerous political landscape, whose deaths spur their children on to greater things.
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Yep, one place I thought the show improved on the source material was giving Robb a POV. Didn’t care for how they gave him a love interest but it made his death so much more heartbreaking after seeing his triumphs throughout Season 2 through his POV.

D&D were as skilled as you could hope for when they’re job was strictly adapting the source material. Some changes didn’t land, sure, but the momentum of the story from Seasons 1-4 was so strong it made the weak points easy to ignore. Had Seasons 7-8 been at Season 6 quality, I’d have forgiven the dip from Season 5 onward as well. People don’t realize how difficult adaptations are to do and are somehow bewildered when things like the Wheel of Time fall vastly short of their literary counterpart.
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I believe he can't finish the story the way he wants/wanted to, yes. I actually love the lore in the series and I even I didn't like the World of Ice and Fire or Fire and Blood. The one was like an encyclopedia. I got like 2 pages in and I'm like "Wtf is this shit?". Fire and Blood was pretty similar. It was more of a history of the Targaryen house. There were some cool nuggets, but.. give me the end of the main storyline already. I don't want anything else from this universe until we wrap this one up.

Oh, and I know the ending of the show soured everyone and no one gives a shit anymore, but in case others do like the lore as much as I do and have never come across it, they've got some videos on Youtube. They're actually voiced by the actors from the show. I enjoyed listening to them all as the show was airing.


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Part of me wonders if the old bastard is completely fucking with us: the SERIES is actually finished and the final books will be released upon his death.

Doubtful but, I can’t quite put the idea out of my head.
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I doubt it. I think he never intended to finish the series and with the TV show ending according to how he said it would end gives him an out to avoid finishing the books.
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I think he loves being a celebrity too much and is content with living off of that the rest of his life.
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All good points, but the question is, knowing it's pointless and probably a slog through the mud, will you read the next one if he ever releases it?
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Yes. Buy it first day and probably binge read the damn thing.

I am in to far now to stop. Plus anything to get the nasty taste of the final season of game of thrones out of my mouth.
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I'm torn on that. His publisher has stated (multiple times) since the release of Dance that it'd make more sense for GRRM to publish eight books in the series.

They may be wanting more money. But God, Dream was the time to start narrowing the universe, not expanding it. He's going to need another Storm in him and I'm starting to be doubtful he's got the juice to do it.
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