To say that Game of Thrones' final season was divisive would be an understatement. Many long-time fans downright hated it, hence why there are still campaigns for those last batch of episodes to be remade. That won't happen, but salvation could be found in the form of George R.R. Martin's next novel in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter.
The book has been hit by countless delays at this stage, and while the author has said before that the ending of his saga will differ from the HBO Max series, it sounds like those differences will be significant across the board.
In a new entry on Not A Blog (via SFFGazette.com), Martin says: "What I have noticed more and more of late, however, is my [writing] is taking me further and further away from the television series. Yes, some of the things you saw on HBO in Game of Thrones you will also see in The Winds of Winter (though maybe not in quite the same ways)...but much of the rest will be quite different."
Explaining that these changes are inevitable, the writer would go on to reveal that the biggest reason for this is that the books are so much more in-depth and complicated. Remember, there are a lot of characters in A Song of Ice and Fire who never made it into the TV show, not to mention others who did that are basically unrecognisable when compared on the screen and page.
"One thing I can say, in general enough terms that I will not be spoiling anything," Martin would add, "[is that] not all of the characters who survived until the end of Game of Thrones will survive until the end of A Song of Ice and Fire, and not all of the characters who died on Game of Thrones will die in A Song of Ice and Fire."
The last book in this series was released way back in 2011, so this next instalment has been a long time coming. There was a huge amount of backlash to Bran Stark ending up on the Iron Throne ruling over Westeros, not to mention Jon Snow's decision to kill Daenerys Targaryen. If Martin has taken note, there's every chance he'll have changed his books to avoid a similar level of disappointment (if indeed that was ever how he intended to end this story on the page).
There's still no release date for The Winds of Winter, but with the author hard at work on this novel, you'll want to stay tuned to SFFGazette.com for the latest updates.