The Shelf Life column on Entertainment Weekly’s website just posted a quick interview with George R. R. Martin that features lots of hints about the events of The Winds of Winter, the ever-forthcoming book in A Song of Ice and Fire.
Most of them devoted readers will already know, or be able to infer, but some add some specificity to previous hints, and may confirm other speculation. SPOILERS AHEAD.
These could be considered big revelations, so we’ll be leaving some spoiler space first. Scroll down if you want to know!
Lately we’ve been thinking about taking up jogging.
But where would we even find the time?
HERE WE GO.
- The book opens with two big battles, long speculated to be the one in Meereen and the Bolton/Baratheon one in Winterfell on account of you can already read the chapters in which those battles start and are mentioned.
- The Dothraki are back “in a big way,” which the author has noted before. This time he adds that “Dany has embraced her heritage as a Targaryen and embraced the Targaryen words. [“Fire and Blood”] So [she is] coming home.” Hooray, Daenerys chapters! And westward she shall go? Will Drogon follow? Will she stop at Meereen to pick the rest of her dragons up?
- Tyrion is also pining for the homelands and will be heading back to Westeros. Martin teased that his path “will intersect, in a way” with Daenerys’ but that “for much of the book they’re still apart.”
- The Wall is a major location in the book and a lot of story will be playing out there.
- There are more betrayals to come.
- There are more character deaths to come.
- There are more weddings to come.
- Hodor?