The wait for George R.R. Martin's long-awaited novel The Winds of Winter has now exceeded the entire period it took the author to publish the first five books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series.
According to a comparison highlighted by Culture Crave, the gap between the release of A Dance With Dragons and the still-unreleased The Winds of Winter reached 5,458 days on June 21, 2026. By comparison, the first five novels in the fantasy saga—from A Game of Thrones in 1996 to A Dance With Dragons in 2011—were published over a span of 5,457 days.
While Martin has addressed the delay on several occasions over the years, he has yet to provide a publication deadline for the sixth book.
One theory about the prolonged delay was recently shared by X user Aakash Gupta, who argued that the growing number of viewpoint characters in the series may be a major factor behind the book's development challenges.
"George R.R. Martin tracked eight viewpoint characters in the first book. By the fifth he was tracking 31. The reason book six never ships is hiding in that jump," Gupta wrote.
