George R.R. Martin ?
Bantam
$35, 1,016 pages ?
George R.R. Martin is getting what J.K. Rowling, Stephenie Meyer and Suzanne Collins got -- a midnight release party for his new novel.
He deserves it. Martin is the hottest author in the country right now, with a hit HBO series and a book coming out at the stroke of midnight Tuesday that his readers have been waiting five years to read. That the release party is being held at Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, not the downtown store, and that it's more of a chance to get the book right away than an actual party (costumes are optional) doesn't diminish the enthusiasm for "A Dance With Dragons," the fifth in Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series.
The audience for the "A Song of Ice and Fire" books has been growing steadily since the first one, "A Game of Thrones," was published in 1996. It exploded this year with the debut of the HBO series "Game of Thrones," a critical and commercial hit that has attracted new fans while pleasing the old ones. Martin is about to go on a 10-city tour (sorry, Portland) for "A Dance With Dragons" and just announced he will be unable to write a personal inscription in the books he signs because it takes too long and the crowds are too large. It's a long way from his tour for "A Game of Thrones," when four people attended his reading in St. Louis and left when he got up to speak, or when a dozen showed up in Dallas while Clifford the Big Red Dog drew hundreds.
"Where's that dog now, I want a rematch!" Martin asked on his website.
As that comment demonstrates, Martin is known as an affable man who loves to kid around and is a regular presence at science fiction conventions. His success hasn't spoiled him, but it has led to increased demands on his time and has contributed to a longer gap between books in the series. The first three books -- "A Game of Thrones," "A Clash of Kings" and "A Storm of Swords" -- came out two years apart. The fourth, "A Feast for Crows," was published five years later and "A Dance With Dragons" will be out six years after that.
You'd think all the fans of the author called "the American Tolkien" by Time magazine would be forgiving of how long it takes him to write complicated books that can be more than 1,000 pages long and have hundreds of significant characters and multiple story lines. If you thought that, you would be wrong. An article in the April 11 issue of The New Yorker called "Just Write It!" explored how some readers' impatience turned into hostility, with a crucial assist from the Internet. There's a group of readers, sometimes known as GRRuMblers in a play on Martin's initials, that has formed websites and attempted to chart, based on his blog postings, how much time he actually spent writing "A Dance With Dragons." A few took great offense to a post he wrote two years ago that noted, among other things, "Some of you are angry that I watch football during the fall."
It all seems weird and silly now that "A Dance With Dragons" is here. There is some concern that Martin, now 62, will "pull a Robert Jordan" and die before his series is finished, the way the author of "The Wheel of Time" series did. But why worry? Let the man live his life and write at his own pace. "A Dance With Dragons" is here, and it's full of blood and intrigue and italics. Enjoy it.
-- Jeff Baker
Event: Copies of "A Dance With Dragons" will go on sale at midnight Tuesday at Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 S.W. Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton.
Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/books/index.ssf/2011/07/a_dance_with_dragons_review_st.html
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