Game of Thrones Just Set a New Record (and Fans Aren’t Happy)

The extended wait for The Winds of Winter has been memetic for a long time now, but it recently passed a discouraging new milestone: the longest wait we’ve ever had between books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series. Author George R.R. Martin’s writing pace has slowed steadily since he published the first book in 1996, culminating in a wait of nearly six years between the fourth book, A Feast for Crows and the fifth book, A Dance with Dragons, which was published in 2011 — the same year that HBO’s Game of Thrones began airing. Since then, Martin has published two companion books for the series, but even accounting for those, the wait time has now hit a new record of six years, four months.

A Song of Ice and Fire began with a relatively tight trilogy — A Game of Thrones in August 1996, A Clash of Kings in February of 1999, and A Storm of Swords in November of 2000. From there, Martin completely overhauled his plans for the story going forward, resulting in a five year wait for book four, A Feast for Crows, published in November of 2005. After that came the longest wait yet, with book five, A Dance with Dragons, published in July of 2011. Looking back at old comments on fan forums, fans found this five-year, eight-month wait excruciating, and they shuddered to imagine the next book taking any longer.

Fans have been anticipating The Winds of Winter for nearly 14 years now, but they have gotten some consolation prizes since then. In October of 2014, we got the encyclopedia-style companion book The World of Ice and Fire, and in November of 2018, we got the fictional history book Fire & Blood. Even if we count this ancillary volumes, this is now the longest wait we’ve had for a new book since ASoIaF began. At the time of this writing, it’s been six years, four months since Fire & Blood hit shelves. As YouTuber Quinn the GM recently pointed out, this officially became our longest wait ever starting in June of 2024.

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It’s an interesting stat to marvel at as we await the next chapter in Martin’s saga, though many fans likely wouldn’t count Fire & Blood in the first place. The book contained plenty of new lore and formed the basis for House of the Dragon, but it’s still no substitute for Martin’s finished story. The author has said that his ending will be different from the end of Game of Thrones, and fans are hoping that means more satisfying and coherent.

Then again, other fans might technically count The Rise of the Dragon as a new publication. Released in 2022, this book only contains material from Fire & Blood, but presented in a different style with more illustrations. There’s nothing new to see here, so the wait continues.

Latest on The Winds of Winter

The latest update on The Winds of Winter is not particularly encouraging, either. Martin mentioned it in a blog post on April 7th, writing, “I am so tired of having to issue denials every time some offhand comment of mine, most having nothing to do with WINDS, somehow convinces half the internet that the book is imminent. It’s not. No. (Maybe I need to stop making offhand comments.)”

“Not imminent” is definitely not the status update fans were hoping for from Martin, but in other posts the author assures readers that the book is still a high priority for him. He reported great progress on it in 2020 and 2021, but has not gotten very specific since then. There’s no telling if this new milestone of the longest delay in series history will spur the author to finish, but in the meantime, Martin’s previous books are available in print, digital, and audiobook formats. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms premieres sometime this year on HBO, and House of the Dragon Season 3 is expected in 2026. Previous seasons are streaming now on Max, along with Game of Thrones.