With just days to go before HBO launches the fifth season of the television series Game of Thrones, George RR Martin has released another excerpt from The Winds of Winter, the forthcoming volume of his enormously popular Song of Ice and Fire novel sequence.
“For all of you who have been howling for another taste of THE WINDS OF WINTER ... My faithful minions have just translated the first Alayne chapter from WordStar and uploaded it to my website,” the author blogged on Thursday.
The 6,700-word excerpt focuses on Sansa Stark, disguised as Alayne Stone, as Lord Robert Arryn pursues her hand in marriage. The extract begins:
“She was reading her little lord a tale of the Winged Knight when Mya Stone came knocking on the door of his bedchamber, clad in boots and riding leathers and smelling strongly of the stable.
“Mya had straw in her hair and a scowl on her face. That scowl comes of having Mychel Redfort near, Alayne knew.”
With 25m copies of the novelist’s Song of Ice and Fire series sold around the world, many dedicated fans have been impatient to read the next instalment of Martin’s epic ever since the publication of the fifth volume, A Dance with Dragons, in 2011. Their eagerness has not always gone down well with the author, who responded angrily to concerns that he would not live to complete the story.
The latest taster comes after hints from the author that he may be close to finishing a novel he has described as “Son of Kong” to emphasise the scale of the monkey he feels he is carrying on his back.
The fifth season of Game of Thrones begins on HBO on April 12.
