Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin

Year before last, a friend gave me these movies, but by season four, too many episodes were missing, so we bought the disks from Amazon - seven seasons. Last winter, we tried watching the last season on Netflix (I think) but many scenes were hard to see. I liked the taste I got though, and I look forward to getting the disks one of these days. I'm not sure if that season was the last of the story though so I decided I'd read the books. A friend game me these books last year and this fall I started reading them. I thought this was all of them. I mean, the movies have been out for a while now and the last book (so far) was published way back in 2011.

Here is a chronicle of George Martin's books. He has sixteen pages of books published. Now a healthy chunk of them are in different languages - kudos to him for being able to do that - but there are also at least a couple other series and maybe some stand-alones. I was just looking for books in this series so I wasn't paying attention to what else there was.

Book one - A Game of Thrones - published on January 1 of 2003
Book two - A Clash of Kings - published on January 1 of 2003
Book three - A Storm of Swords - published on March 4 of 2003
then came four other books
Book four - A Feast for Crows - published on November 8 of 2005
Then came eleven other books
Then came six books in German
Then came four more books
Book five - A Dance with Dragons - published on July 12 of 2011
Then came two more books
Then came two books in German
Then came the game of thrones graphic novel first volume
Then came two more books in German
Then came four books in French (I think)
The box set of the first five books became available on September 10 of 2012
Then came four more book
Then came the game of thrones graphic novel second volume
Then came four more books
Then came a book about Tyrion Lannister. hmmmm
Then came a book called The Hedge Knight set in the same world.
Then comes five other books
Then comes a book called The Sworn Sword set in the same world, but before the series. 
Then came two books in Chinese
Then came the third volume of the graphic novel.
Then came twenty books in various languages
Then came The World of Ice & Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones - published on October 28 of 2014
Then came twenty-three books in various languages
Then came the fourth graphic novel
Then came five other books in various languages
Then came A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
Then came seventeen books in various languages
Then came an illustrated edition of book one. 
Then came twenty five books in various languages
Then came the graphic novel called The Mysterious Knight
Then came the comic books #3, #4, #5, #6, and #8
Then came three other books
Then came the fifth graphic novel
Then came sixteen more books in various languages
Then came the sixth graphic novel
Then came a book in German
Then came the illustrated edition of book two
Then came a book in French published only this last November

That brings us up to date. There are still two books planned for this series. 

Now, I can understand the distraction of getting all those books translated into however many different languages, but my OCDness would bug the shit out of me if I let a series hang for over eight years. He published the first three almost all at the same time, meaning they had already been written, he just needed to decide how to divide them and maybe what to name them. It also meant he was totally immersed in the story and it was pounding at him to get out.

The next two books, in my opinion, he messed up. He was thinking too much. He decided that one book would take place in Westeros and the other would take place across the sea.  I had no problem hopping back and forth between countries and people as time marched on. I could accept that what happened in one country in chapter 10 happened at the same time as whatever happened in another country in chapter 9. The way it is, when you get to book five, you have to travel back in time in book four and figure out how things fit together. I always felt adrift in time because of that.

I hope he doesn't do that in the next two books. That was so annoying.

Book Six - Winds of Winter is, I hear, mostly finished short of some polishing I'm sure, but the last book - A Dream of Spring - hasn't even been started. The man is seventy-one years old. I would hate to have another author die before finishing his greatest series. There's also some scratch about the last two books not being published until all the movies are out.

Lets move on to publishing. Every author should realize that their greatest sales numbers will be from eBooks and they should give them just as much attention as the paperbacks and the hard covers. I honestly have no idea of the ratio in actual profits, all I know is I sell tons more eBooks than paperbacks. Maybe if my paperbacks were in bookstores the ratio would be closer, but I honestly can't see it being that much closer. Not really. Of course, an author who can afford the translation, can also afford the mega advertising so that would increase the sales of any kind of edition.

But I digress

My point is, as I was reading through these books on my kindle, I was disappointed to find hard copy formatting in the form of line breaks mid-word. These came in form of hyphens in the middle of the word or just spaces; a lot of times they weren't even in the right place. These typos, while the eye can digest them when it's a line break (it's something I never do), happening in the middle of a word in the middle of a line, makes the word nearly illegible, especially when the word is one of the specially made up words like names of people and places, not to mention common everyday words. There were also some other typos, but I can live with those - no one is perfect, not even a professional editor. The line breaks mid-word though, that's just a sign of laziness. Slap the manuscript into eBook form and forget about it. Sigh - people will buy it anyway, but still - have a little pride in your work. 

Rant over

Book five ended somewhere between season six and season seven of the DVDs. Tyrion and Ser Jorah are still with the slavers outside of Mireen and Ser Barriston is hand to the queen having deposed Hizdahr zo Loraq, the local she'd married in the hope of establishing peace within the city. Dynaries has already flown off on her dragon, but mostly to get him out of the arena and stop him from killing everything that was moving. John has just been killed, though not like in the movie. Littlefinger is still pulling strings with Sansa's life; she's playing the part of his bastard daughter, and he is arranging her marriage with a little-known heir of the Vail. Cersei has only just completed her walk of shame, and under the watchful eye of septans, she spends a third of her day with her son, a third of it praying, and a third of it trying to scrub the shame off her skin (like that'll ever happen). While she has been returned to the palace, she is not allowed any say in government affairs nor any of her son's schooling. King Stanis has yet to clash with the bastard of Bolton who has yet to kill his father. Ayia is still in Bravose though she is no longer blind. She is still learning to be No One. As you might have noticed, Bolton Snow did not marry Sansa. He did, however, marry a fake Arya sent by the Lannisters in order to seal their loyalty. The girl was Sansa's best friend, and went to the big city with her. She is of a similar coloring to Arya and it was figured that no one would know the difference. Only Theon noticed the difference; he grew up with them after all. Him getting her away from Bastard Bolton was nothing like in the movies, but he did it, and there that rests. Bastard Bolton sent a raven to John about it, thinking he must have had something to do with it (he did, sorta, but not first hand). Melisandre arranged it all and had Mance Rayder (Yeah, he's not dead, but everyone thought he was until now) go after her. He took six speerwives to help him. Boy, did they create some havoc at Winterfel. Mance and the speerwives were caught but Theon and the fake Arya escaped into the snow.

So two more books and two more seasons on DVD, and the series will be finished. I can't wait. I hate waiting on the next book. Have you seen or read any of it? I think you should.

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