A decade has passed since the last Game of Thrones book came out, leading fans to increasingly wonder if George R.R. Martin will ever get the sixth book, titled The Winds of Winter, finished and out on the market.
We all know how Martin has been struggling with the penultimate Song of Ice and Fire book since the early 2010s, and it wasn’t long before the live-action HBO adaption led by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss overtook the novels in 2015, coming all the way up to the final chapters of A Dance with Dragons, which depicted a certain Lord Commander’s apparent demise.
People then started to question if Martin was going to release the next book before season 6, not only to catch up with HBO but also to make sure that some plot points weren’t going to be spoiled by the TV show. What was initially bandied around as a joke soon became a grim reality; Martin wasn’t going to be able to release The Winds of Winter before season 6. In fact, Martin gave up on the thought of ever matching stride with HBO’s Game of Thrones, and so the task of finishing the story fell to David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. They made an absolute mess of it, of course, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Now, many years later, fans are patiently waiting for The Winds of Winter and its follow-up, the final book in the saga, A Dream of Spring, because they think that Martin will be able to redeem the story and give them the satisfying conclusion they wished for in 2019. But will The Winds of Winter ever see the light of day?
Is there a Winds of Winter release date?
After years of dealing with writer’s block or whatever it is that’s coming in the way of The Winds of Winter getting finished, Martin has been making progress over the last couple of years. During an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in 2022, the novelist claimed that three-quarters of the sixth book has been written. He later said that while he’s long since passed the 1000-page mark, there were still hundreds of pages to be written.
Our latest update is from November 2023, when Martin explained that he hasn’t made any progress on those few hundred pages left. “I wish I could write as fast as [The Last Kingdom author Bernard Cornwell] but I’m 12 years late on this damn novel and I’m struggling with it,” he said.
That means — as much as we regret to say it — there is still no release date for The Winds of Winter in sight. But hey, half a loaf of bread is better than none, and three-quarters of a book certainly beats the heck out of years of radio silence.