Alright, Game of Thrones people—let’s get real. A Feast for Crows and A Dance With Dragons weren’t actually all that good. Well, maybe that’s not fair, but they weren’t that good compared to the first three A Song of Ice and Fire books. That’s for a variety of reasons. The question is, though, were they a fluke? Or is that the new normal? Will Winds of Winter actually be better than Dance and Feast, or will it suck too?

Will Winds Of Winter Stink?

Feast and Dance sucked for several reasons. The first three books told a defined and definitive story: The buildup to and (largely) the resolution of The War of the Five Kings. By the end of Storm, most vestiges of the old order are gone, and the war is essentially over. The Lannisters still hold the throne, but at great cost.

Feast and Dance cover the intervening years between the War of the Five Kings and the next great conflict, which will be covered in the last two books: the presumptive second Targaryen invasion of Westeros, and the attack of the Others and the return of the Long Night. The final war between good and evil, if you will. That’s what Winds and Dream are supposed to be about. And that should be pretty cool. Sure, Game of Thrones will veer more heavily into epic fantasy territory and away from the political, and probably feel less unique for it.

The trouble with Feast and Dance is that they weren’t really supposed to exist. Originally, George R. R. Martin intended for Dance to follow Storm, and start up five years after. We don’t know quite what would have happened in that time, but the Stark kids would have gotten older, and Daenerys would have learned to rule Meereen, while the Lannisters presumably continued to rule in Westeros. But the excess of flashbacks and exposition killed the idea, resulting in Feast, which told the story of those years (no longer five, just one or two). Then the “Meereenese knot,” the complicated gadgetry of getting everyone who needed to be in Meereen to the city, took George years to sort out. And Dance ended up covering a lot of what was supposed to be in Feast before the book got too long.

Those problems should all be in the past for Winds of Winter. The story has moved past those lumps and hiccoughs back into the track George R. R. Martin established back in the early ’90s. Hasn’t it? That’s the idea, and yet the Winds of Winter release date remains elusive… even though it may finally not be all that far off, since people involved with the show are finally getting to see the manuscript.

Trouble is, Winds of Winter has some structural issues that make it less compelling than the first three books. A lot of our favorite characters are long dead. The storylines that drove the first few books have been resolved. Other characters, like Tyrion, have irrevocably changed (You have to admit, he wasn’t all that fun in Dance). It’s a whole different world than a few short years ago, and that’s part of the point. The courtly Westeros of the Targaryens and the post-Robert’s Rebellion era is gone, possibly forever. But we still love these characters, and storylines that have been hinted about since the beginning—Jon Snow’s parentage, Daenerys’s return, the Others—will finally be paid off. I have fears and doubts for Winds, but I also have hope.