"A Song of Ice and Fire" readers are still waiting for "The Winds of Winter" to come out, but it is not going to be released anytime soon. Well, fans of George R.R. Martin's books are used to waiting anyway. Reports say "TWoW" may come out in spring 2017 before the seventh season of "Game of Thrones" airs. This hasn't been verified yet, so readers are advised to take this with a grain of salt.
Meanwhile, the rumor mill keeps churning so it is time to see what it has to offer this time around.
Several reports are saying Martin may kill off all the characters by the end of the series because of what he said back in 1999. Before people start believing the first thing they read or worse, misunderstand what they are reading, what Martin actually said was, "No one will be alive by the last book. In fact, they all die in the fifth. The sixth book will just be a 1,000 page description of snow blowing across the graves."
That was obviously a joke. Anyone can see that he was joking when he made that statement. At the time, he still believed he could finish the series by book six, but a lot has changed since then.
Now, on to the next rumor. This one says that Rickon is still alive in the books. Of course, he is still alive. That's not a spoiler or a rumor. It's a fact. The storyline in "Game of Thrones" is already way ahead of "TWoW." And for goodness sake, the guy only died once in the show. He's not Beric Dondarrion.
There are even rumors saying that the book is going to talk about how the Doom of Valyria was caused by a union between the Starks and Targaryens. Okay, whoever came up with that theory got the timeline all wrong.
Right now, fans of the series will have to sit back and wait. The book "will be done when it's done."
