'Game of Thrones' author releases chapter from 'Winds of Winter'
Published: 1/12/2013 9:36 AM
Last Modified: 1/11/2013 7:45 PM
If you're caught up with HBO's "Game of Thrones" series and have devoured all five "Songs of Ice and Fire" books, the Internet has one more nugget you can enjoy while you await the sixth book in George R.R. Martin's uber-popular series.
Martin has released a chapter from the new book on his official website.

It seems "Winds of Winter" will include the Dornish princess Arianne Martell as a POV character, one of the many whom readers get to know from first-person-perspective chapters devoted to keeping us aware of what's going on in all the corners of Westeros. Readers got to know Arianne fairly well in (No. 4) "A Feast for Crows" and (No. 5) "A Dance With Dragons." But in case it's been awhile, she's the spirited, beautiful heiress and cousin to the infamous Sand Snakes whose well-meaning schemes got her locked in a tower by her own father.
In publishing the Arianne chapter online, Martin proves he is in fact actually writing the new book - a fact that cannot be a foregone conclusion for fans who have grown accustomed to waiting years for the next book in the "Ice and Fire" series from the notoriously slow-moving author. (He began the first book in 1991 and published it in 1996. The fourth and fifth books also took about five years.)
There's a chance HBO's acclaimed "Game of Thrones," now in its second season, will catch up to Martin. We got "A Dance With Dragons" in 2011, so "Winds of Winter" could come as early as 2014, but I wouldn't be surprised if it still hasn't arrived by the time hover cars are invented.

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