I'm holding out hope that he's writing book 7 and book 6 together to make sure they will completely tie together. These books have to be massive undertakings at this point, and trying to write 6 and then hope 7 works out would be hard. I think you have to pretty much write it through the ending now to be sure you don't screw something up in book 6.

It's going to be GRRM's ultimate final troll job. Make everyone wait and suffer, then drop both books within 6 months of each other.

Most likely this is just wishful thnking on my part.

I read all 5 books before the show first aired. At this point, due to both time and my enjoyment of the show, I have no desire to read any more of his books. I wish him well, but he just took too long.

I have no faith that we'll ever see another book in the series from GRRM. None.

That fat **** will drop book 6, die and then we'll be stuck with a guest writer for 7 and it will suck donkey balls

I dont know about that. Assuming he has written down how he wants the story to travel to his desired end. His writing style is well established. Any good writer should be able to emulate his style.

Or it will be much better. Maybe we'd get a streamlined narrative instead of ten page exposes about characters we never hear from again.

As I've said many times, if I had it to do over again I would have never read the books in the first place. All they did was spoil the best moments in the show that everybody else got to enjoy.

Which moments in particular?

I read the first two books AFTER the first season, then worked through the rest up until Dance, so the death of 'my n***a Ned' was the only full surprise, but I've enjoyed the visual realization anyway.

Trip down memory lane ROFL

I can't agree with this. Book 3 was one of my all time favorite books and the surprising moments while reading it were epic and awesome.

To me it's always better to read first, then watch the movie or TV show. It sucks to do it in reverse because the reading can get tedious if you already know what happens, but the visual representation of a book I've already read is always interesting to me (assuming I liked the book).

I'm glad I read them and have enjoyed them immensely. I just wish he'd stop doing shitty side projects and focus on the task at hand. The very notion that he's spending time working on these other side projects around the ASOIF universe while the main story remains unfinished just pisses me off. I can guaranty you that I will not be purchasing these damn Fire and Blood books as I don't want to give him another dollar until he finishes the main story.

Honestly, I can't remember specifics. Hell, it's been seven or eight years since I've read the first four, and not much less time since I've read the fifth. And while I agree with Hawk that the third book was the best (followed by the first and the second), the fourth book was fairly lame and the fifth book was a only a bit better. So much superfluous crap. Much like Steven King, Martin takes a great 250 page story and makes it 500 pages long.

I do love that video, though. I watched it again just now and probably laughed as hard as the first time I saw it. Again, I wished I hadn't known it was going to happen, although that surprise I saw coming, since Ned was essentially a carbon copy of Duke Leto from Dune.

Just picked up the complete 7th season on blu-ray, gonna do some hardcore binging later... cant wait!

This is close to what happened to me. I decided to stop watching the show until the books were finished and now I really have no interest in doing either.

If it gets finished relatively soon I might go back and read the whole series again but I've moved on to other things at this point.

Just finished the first 3 episodes of season 7 and HOT DAMN do I love this show!

It might be my favorite season ever so far

Clegane is back

Melisandre is still hot as ****

Arya got AWESOME REVENGE in the opener

Snow and Stormborn are working it out

Sir Jorah is healed

Cersei is still a very formidable c**t

Humble Samwell Tarley is becoming a powerful force

Lady Tyrells reveal about Joffreys death to Jamie Lannister was COLD AS ICE

It may not happen this season, but something tells me Jamie will turn against Cersei at some point... there is still something good in him

Its probably even better than the Sopranos or Deadwood overall... the acting, production values and script are all off the charts crazy good... RR Martin may be a genuine asshole, but the world he has created is straight up genius

So glad I gave season one a chance, thanks in no small part to people here like NewChief who helped me make sense of it all early on... such a great show, might have to do another episode or two later tonight

I don't do spoilers, but there are EVEN BETTER moments in Season 7 than the one's you've mentioned. Please update after you've finished :)

Just wait until next episode...

You guys have me ready to go ahead and pop in disc two, this show is so damn addictive

But I dont wanna rush through it, each episode must be savored like a great meal... so torn right now :hmmm: