We’re in for a long wait to see what happens next in Game of Thrones, but get ready for some disappointment. George R.R. Martin confirmed that The Winds of Winter won’t be a happy book. Bad things will happen in winter to some of our favorite characters. Well, to be fair, it’s not like Martin is known to spare lives in the universe he’s created.
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“There are a lot of dark chapters right now in the book that I’m writing,” Martin told the audience at Guadalajara International Book Fair. “You know, it is called The Winds of Winter, and I’ve been telling you for 20 years that winter was coming. And winter’s the time when things die, and you know… cold, and ice and darkness fills the world.”
“So this is not going to be the happy, feel-good book that people may be hoping for,” he continued. “Winter’s the time when things die.”
Again, to be fair, things die in any season in Game of Thrones.
As Mashable reports, Martin said that some of the characters in his upcoming book are in a dark place.
“In any story, the classic structure is things get worse before they get better,” the author said. “So things are getting worse for a lot of people.”
Things might get better at some point in the future. Unless they don’t.
“I’m not going to tell you how I’m going to end my book,” he said. “But I suspect the overall flavor is going to be as much bittersweet as it is happy.”
As for tying up all the loose ends? Martin hopes he can do it, but some things might be left ambiguous purposely.
“That’s not to say that everything is going to be tied up completely neatly in a bow,” Martin said. “I think there’s a difference between a loose end and something that’s deliberately left by the author ambiguous, or something for the readers to think about and worry about and debate about.”
That said, it remains to be seen how much of Martin’s darkness will make it in HBO’s upcoming seasons considering that the TV show is now ahead of the books.
A clip showing Martin’s Q&A session from the book fair follows below.
