Thank You, Mr. Martin!

If you thought I was slacking off on my reading around here lately, think again.  Last week I read A Dance with Dragons.  (The week before that I read A Feast for Crows for the second time to refresh my memory.) If you aren't an epic fantasy reader, just skip this post.  I'll understand.

Along with millions of other George R. R. Martin fans, I have been waiting forever for this book.  And I do mean "FOREVER!"  At least since finishing the last sentence of A Feast for Crows in October of 2005.  But I forgive Mr. Martin for all the delays.  One of the main reasons I am so quick to forgive him, is that I'm now sitting here waiting for the next installment.  No matter how long it takes, I will still be waiting to find out what is happening to all my favorite characters.  I especially want to know what the villains are plotting next.

A Song of Ice and Fire is a very complex series of books.  A Dance with Dragons weighs in at over 1,000 pages if you include the appendices.  I know many people are only recently discovering the series because of the HBO series A Game of Thrones which premiered in April.  I envy them the long days and nights of reading these books back to back.

Mr. Martin, along with many other writers of series, get a lot of flack for the time it takes to produce the next book.  For my part I can only be grateful that authors keep at it.  In the midst of Life and all of its demands they manage to maintain the relationship with their characters that is so vital to a properly told story.  It is no mean feat to keep the balance.