The Winds of Winter Will Not Come Out Until 2019 at the Earliest, and We Want to Die

Trigger warning: This post will contain news about George R. R. Martin’s The Winds of Winter, and news about George R.R. Martin’s The Winds of Winter is never good and always depressing.

Now then, let’s forget ahead into darkness. After countless delays and half-apologies and long periods of stubborn silence, George R.R. Martin took his blog to tell us…there will be more delays.

A book called Fire & Blood is coming out instead, and though it’s going to be a rad 1,000-page “imaginary history” that covers Westerosi history, it’s not The Winds of Winter, and therefore this news sucks. Here’s Martin, trying to downplay the latest heartbreaking twist:

No, winter is not coming… not in 2018, at least. You’re going to have to keep waiting for THE WINDS OF WINTER…

Archmaester Gyldayn is hanging up his quill for a while. As for me, I’m returning once again to THE WINDS OF WINTER.

Archmaester Gyldayn is Martin’s nom de plume when he’s writing histories, I guess, and the main thing to take from that last sentence is that he’s 100% been writing this thing instead of Winds, and good God, just kill us now.

Back in 2016, I wrote that our expectations of for Winds should be very low due to Martin’s obvious crisis of faith. I’m not necessarily a “Martin-has-no-pages” truther, but I’m not that far off either. Almost a year later, I wrote that while it’s true what Neil Gaiman wrote in his infamous blog post (“George R.R. Martin is not your bitch”), it’s also true that the dude could throw us a bone.

Well, a bone has been thrown, and it’s a terrible, rotting, maggot-infested bone that nobody would ever want. It’s better than not knowing, I guess, but just barely.

And may I just point out the SHEER INSANITY of the fact that in May of THE YEAR 2015, he thought it would be “doable” to have the manuscript sent in by THAT VERY SAME HALLOWEEN?!? SORRY FOR ALL THESE CAPS, BUT THAT WAS THREE F*%&$*ING YEARS AGO, SO WHY ISN’T THIS BOOK DONE YET?

I’m calming down. I swear.

If you want some online therapy for this news, go to the Reddit thread and commiserate. I’m not a fan of relentless negativity, but I think it’s probably time to accept that we’re never going to see the end of the Ice and Fire series—at least not from Martin’s hands. And that’s depressing as hell. It’s a good thing Paste headquarters is located in a one-story building, because we’re all going to go jump out the window now.