George R.R. Martin, author of the A Song of Ice and Fire series upon which Game of Thrones is based, thinks he’ll have the newest entry, The Winds of Winter, completed in 2017. “I think it will be out this year.” GRRM wrote on his LiveJournal, before admitting the fallibility of his predictions. “But hey, I thought the same thing last year.”
But whether or not The Winds of Winter release date makes its 2017 target, it looks like we’ll be getting a new story set in Westeros. Vulture spotted an Amazon listing for an upcoming fantasy collection: Book of Swords , edited by renowned anthologist Gardner Dozois. Here’s the official description:
“ Fifteen original tales celebrating fantasy’s golden age of sword and sorcery, including a new story from George R. R. Martin set in the world of A Game of Thrones!”
Mindset, author of the tumblr Nobody ever suspects the butterfly, seems to have put more thought into this than anyone (he or she mods two other ASOIAF fan sites) and has some ideas on what the story might be. “First off, we can rule out any new Dunk and Egg story,” Mindset writes. Tales of Dunk and Egg are novella series set in Westeros approximately 90 years before the events of Game of Thrones. They follow future Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Ser Duncan “Dunk” the Tall and his squire, Egg, who turns out to be Aegon V Targaryen, Daenerys Targaryen’s grandfather.
Instead Mindset believes that the collected story will likely be an excerpt from the histories written by Archmaester Gyldayn, a fictional historian who serves as a prominent source for the history of Westeros book, The World of Ice and Fire. GRRM has long planned to follow up his A Song of Ice and Fire series with a book called Fire and Blood, which offers a thorough history of the Targaryens, much of which has already been written. The prevailing theory is that Book of Swords will contain a story from that embryonic work.
It may not be The Winds of Winter or the final A Song of Ice and Fire novel, A Dream of Spring , but at least we’ll get a little non-TV Westeros this year.
