‘The Winds Of Winter’ Release Date: ‘Game Of Thrones’ Season 5 To Spoil George R.R. Martin’s Delayed Forthcoming Book

Now that the “Game of Thrones” Season 4 finale has officially come and gone, RIP Tywin Lannister, it’s time to talk about the forthcoming Season 5, which for you die hard “Game of Thrones” fans is already filming! Considering the rate of filming, HBO signing on for two more seasons, and George R.R. Martin’s notably slow release of “A Song of Ice and Fire,” it’s safe to assume that the TV series will ultimately lap the book release. Most importantly the long delayed and highly anticipated release of “The Winds of Winter” which has been in production since 2010.

The concerns around the newly popularized HBO series overtaking the release of Martin’s “The Winds Of Winter” have been aired by readers before, however they have never seemed as prudent as they do now, especially following last night’s Season 4 finale episode “The Children,” that’s right we are looking at you Jojen Reed. Martin released the first installment of his epic “A Song of Ice and Fire” series in 1996, and the first book was aptly entitled “A Game of Thrones,” however now after 18 years of growing an international fan base made up of readers, it seems as though George R.R. Martin has resigned himself to allow HBO show runners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss tell the rest of his story. While you may think that readers are now the pot calling the kettle black by crying over spoilers, it’s a little difficult to spoil a story that has been told over 18 years ago. I understand that TV viewers don’t want to story spoiled, due to that understanding and repsct for viewers who love "Game of Thrones," I have learned to habitually and endlessly include warnings in my “Game of Thrones” TV spoiler pieces, and I think it’s time HBO starts doing the same for readers. Martin recently took to his blog to sort of discuss fans concerns, by writing:

How do you define “spoiler?”

If something happens on the show before it happens in the book, I suppose one could call that a spoiler.

If something happens on the show, but happens very differently in the books, is that still a spoiler?

If something happens on the show, but never happens in books, what precisely was spoiled?

And how many children did Scarlett O’Hara have, anyway?

The last line of the post is a reference to one of the major differences between the book and the film for “Gone with the Wind,” Scarlett O’Hara had three children in the book, and only one in the movie. Maybe I’m a little jaded, and maybe I’m just a little bit to dedicated to the world of Westeros, but did George R.R. Martin just say the details didn’t matter? The same man, who spent nearly 100 pages painstakingly describing the food served at Joffrey and Magaraey’s wedding feast, the same author who actually makes readers believe in dragons, and direwolves, and wargs, and giants and man eating wildlings from the land of blue eyed ice zombies, just claimed that the details of a story have no bearing on the outcome? Would it matter if Daenerys Tagaryen had one dragon in the HBO series, instead of three, if it doesn’t Weiss and Benioff should have only given her one egg and saved millions in CGI? Simply put, of course it matters. Of course, the details matter, unlike Scarlett O'Hara, Danerys has her sights set on the Iron Throne and her children unlike O'Hara's are not "Gone with the Wind," instead they fly with the wind and oh yeah, breathe fire.

This is not to say I don’t understand some plot and character eliminations along the way, some chnages are necessary for the story to be able to develop in spite of the time retsrictions of TV. Not every single scene, dialogue, monologue, and character exchange included in one of Martin’s 1,500 page novels could make it into a 10 hour long episodes in a season. The elimination of connections and characters, is the price we pay for seeing the world of Westeros come to life on our TV screens, as opposed to in our heads. However are book readers paying a higher price than everyone else, for the commercialization of a story that has been a worldwide phenomenon for nearly two decades, long before HBO even knew about the sex appeal of Daenerys Tagaryen in a bathtub? I think yes. So what’s next for the series, and what’s next for “The Winds of Winter?” Well, based on recent comments from not only George R.R. Martin but his long time editor, Anne Groell, “The Winds of Winter” will not be released any time in the near future, so it’s is inevitable that Season 5 of “Game of Thrones” will premiere before readers get their hands on the holy grail of Westeros history.

Now that you have digested that horrible news, let me hit with more, Season 5 of “Game of Thrones” will be the most spoiler filled season for readers of “A Song of Ice and Fire” yet. Here’s why, Bran Stark, Sansa Stark, and Theon Greyjoy are now nearly finished with not only their “A Feast for Crows” story arcs, but also “A Dance of Dragons,” which means the story that will be told for these 3 principal characters will be spoiling the still un-released “Winds of Winter.” HBO show runners, Weiss and Benioff proved with the Theon storyline in Season 3 that they were not going to eliminate point of view characters from the season just because they didn’t appear or have much unfolding action in the corresponding book. So that unfortunately only means more bad news for readers, mainly concerning Daenerys Targaryen’s storyline in Season 5. Spoil Theon, spoil Bran even, but don’t take away the surprise of the Daenerys storyline, I feel as if I’m pleading with GRRM, “take my eyes, but not my dragons!”

All of horrible news is only made worse by GRRM’s nonchalant attitude to the concerns of his readers, who have waited nearly a lifetime to discover the conclusion to this epic story. After some back and forth discussion, Martin decidedly closed the comments thread on a blog post regarding Sibel Kekilli meeting Woody Allen writing:

Okay, guys. Enough. I have let through a lot of comments about spoilers and the show here. and even answered some, but now I am closing comments.

All this stuff is off topic.

This post was about Sibel, Woody Allen, and pastrami and corned beef, not about the TV series.

Off topic? Hate to be the bearer of bad news George, but literally no one cares that Sibel met Woody Allen, your fans want to know what is going to happen to Sibel’s on screen character Shea. And they want to know when your next book is going to come out, and they want to know why you told Weiss and Benioff about Jojen’s death before us. (Obviously I’m a little bitter about Jojen’s death, but that’s mainly because I thought he was going to be revealed as Howland Reed, GUESS NOT.) My final thought of this long rant is a simple statement for GRRM, release the book, and don’t let HBO tell the end of your story. Despite the changes for TV and the details of the path being altered, the end result for the characters of Westeros will still occur and unless the ending of the HBO series is set to be different than that in “A Dream of Spring” I want to read them before I watch them.