ASOIF Fire & Blood History Book Inbound, Winds Of Winter Delayed Again

George RR Martin, the author behind A Song of Ice and Fire — the book series that inspired the TV show A Game of Thrones — has announced that the next book in the series won't hit shelves this year. It's an update series fans have come to expect; in fact, anything other than a delay announcement would be surprising at this point. However, Martin did reveal something fans can look forward to.

The next book in the series, which is called The Winds of Winter, won't be arriving this year. The book has been repeatedly delayed and fans have increasingly lost hope of ever getting it. The wildly popular HBO TV show based on the book series has since outpaced the novels.

However. Martin says that a book on the history of fictional world Westeros called Fire & Blood will be available to purchase this year. The book will be available in hardcover from HarperCollins Voyager and Bantam Spectra on November 20.

Foreign publishers will be releasing the book on the same day as its US/UK publishers. Martin says it's a massive work spanning nearly 1,000 manuscript pages, which puts it somewhere between 600 and 700 printed pages. Within it fans will find information on all of the Targaryen kings starting with Aegon I...and this is just the first volume of the history books.

It would be exciting news if not for the one big sticking point: the book series isn't finished and fans have been waiting many long years for "The Winds of Winter." It's a bizarre set of priorities we see here in which a history tome has been completed while a vital installment in the actual fiction series remains unfinished.

SOURCE: George RR Martin