A Dance With Dragons
In the aftermath of a colossal battle, the future of the Seven Kingdoms hangs in the balance once again–beset by newly emerging threats from every direction. In the east, Daenerys Targaryen, the last scion of House Targaryen, rules with her three dragons as queen of a city built on dust and death. But Daenerys has three times three thousand enemies, and many have set out to find her. Yet, as they gather, one young man embarks upon his own quest for the queen, with an entirely different goal in mind. Fleeing from Westeros with a price on his head, Tyrion Lannister, too, is making his way to Daenerys. But his newest allies in this quest are not the rag-tag band they seem, and at their heart lies one who could undo Daenerys’s claim to Westeros forever. To the north lies the mammoth Wall of ice and stone–a structure only as strong as those guarding it. There, Jon Snow, 998th Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, will face his greatest challenge yet. For he has powerful foes not only within the Watch but also beyond, in the land of the creatures of ice. And from all corners, bitter conflicts soon reignite, intimate betrayals are perpetrated, and a grand cast of outlaws and priests, soldiers and skinchangers, nobles and slaves, will face seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Some will fail, others will grow in the strength of darkness. But in a time of rising restlessness, the tides of destiny and politics will lead inevitably to the greatest dance of all....
Stats for nerds
2recommend
21mentions
21people
2011–2026years
10% recommend81% neutral10% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand a revelation, much like encountering Tolstoy for the first time via Anna Karenina.
A Dance with Dragons, George R. R. Martin, is the Tolkien of our times, but with a dark and raunchy twist ;-) Almost finished; book 6 is a year or more away if previous publishing trend continues -- we needs it ;-(
- For work : Rework, from 37signals. Fresh, opinionated and funny.
For leisure : A Dance with Dragons, from Georges R.R. Martin "Game of Thrones" series (the HBO version is superb, but do not miss the books either).
- First of all, your timeline is off: A Game of Thrones was published in 1996, and the Game of Thrones series premiered in 2011.
Second of all, even if you were correct, that would only apply to the first book, not the subsequent ones, which were spread out across 1999-2011 (indeed, A Dance with Dragons came out the same year as the TV series premiered).
So perhaps you'd like to pick a different copyright maximalist strawman?
- Maybe, but the good books in ASOIAF all came out in the 20th century. Did you really like A Dance with Dragons that much?
- If we want to compare this to libraries, it’s necessary to redefine the role of libraries.
For the analogy to work, libraries now provide the service of generating new books/stories based on works under the library’s care. As a library patron, you’ll give the librarian a prompt, and they’ll generate a book for you.
This book will be intrinsically dependent on the authors of all of the books in the library, but those authors will not be credited or paid for the new work.
“Librarian, please generate a fantasy novel in the style of George R. R. Martin that continues where A Dance with Dragons left off”.
If this is what libraries did, authors would not want their books there.
This is not what libraries do, and the analogy does not hold up.
- He wrote quite a lot about the difficulty of solving a series of events in Meereen in the lead up to A Dance With Dragons, which he referred to as "The Meereenese Knot".
Looking at this analysis on Reddit, GRRM mentioned this particular piece of trouble multiple times over a 5-6 year period ( https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/2pp2m8/spoilers_all... ).
The crazy thing is that, based on what we saw in the series, much of the Meereen plot _doesn't even figure into the endgame_. I'm sure George has bigger plans, but Daenerys in Meereen seems to be at best the run-up to where her plot ultimately leads in the books, and yet George is spending years and years adding dozens of characters and solving a knot of plotting that seems like a sideshow! How he'll ever get to the point in his remaining lifespan is beyond me. The man is 74. Even giving him an extremely generous 20 more years of life, he's just not on pace to finish the series unless something changes very, very soon.
Meanwhile he's writing back story for Elden Ring, working on a series of TV shows, writing lore books and prequels to ASOIAF. Sadly the dude just seems to have lost the steam required to take it to the finish line.
It's extremely sad as ASOIAF is legitimately great.
