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Winds of Winter: Read the next Game of Thrones book now

Here's where you can find every sample chapter GRRM has released for the next installment of his Song of Ice & Fire books (yes, the ones Game of Thrones is based on).

Caitlin Petrakovitz Director of audience
Caitlin Petrakovitz studies the Marvel Cinematic Universe like it's a course in school, with an emphasis on the Infinity Saga years. As an audience expert, she rarely writes but when she does it's most certainly about Star Trek, Marvel, DC, Westworld, San Diego Comic-Con and great streaming properties. Or soccer, that's a thing she loves, too.
Caitlin Petrakovitz
3 min read
Robert Hall/HBO/IMAX

Whatever jokes you have about the speed with which George R.R. Martin writes (or lack thereof), maybe don't.

The series that HBO's Game of Thrones is based on has been notoriously slow to publish. The first book is called A Game of Thrones and was published in August 1996. Martin originally intended the series to be a trilogy but then decided seven books would be more fitting. Currently only five have appeared. 

This week a fan asked for more sample chapters from his next book in the Song of Ice & Fire series. Martin responded, but not quite in the way we all hoped, saying a large portion of The Winds of Winter is probably already in our brains so why should he share any more.

"I think I have probably released too many sample chapters already. Put them all together, and what, there are probably more than a hundred pages." So we dug out this old post for you to see if he's right. While it's hard to count pages in an app or preview chapters already in print, I think GRRM is pretty close to correct.   

It seems the days of Martin sharing snippets of the book with us are over, so here's how to read all those pages as we wait for new books. (Jury's still out on whether that means he'll be announcing a publish date for the book in the near future. 🙏)

Where noted, certain chapters are available to read in the World of Ice & Fire app for free and are available on Android or iOS -- there are in-app purchases, but you don't need to buy anything to read the excerpts. Below are also links to the chapters that're available to read, watch or listen to online.

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Enlarge Image
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The official "for now" cover of the long-awaited novel.

Bantam Spectra

Theon Greyjoy

Released in December 2011, Theon Greyjoy's chapter takes place during the timeline of A Dance With Dragons. (In the UK it's also available in Book 2: After the Feast.) It's also been archived online and is available in the app.

Arianne Martell

GRRM has released two Arianne Martell of Dorne chapters. The first chapter appeared in January 2012 and was supposedly destined for the previous book before being cut. It's been archived online and is available in the app.

Her second chapter was released almost two years ago and can still be read on Martin's site. (It had been read at convention previously, so you may've seen it in the past.)

Victarion Greyjoy

This Greyjoy's chapter isn't available in the app, but a portion of it was read by GRRM at a convention in March 2012. Here's where you can listen to it. Also, a very nice Redditor once transcribed the excerpt.

Barristan Selmy 

First read at a convention in October 2013, one chapter is available as a preview chapter in A Dance With Dragons and in the app.

Tyrion Lannister

First read at Worldcon in August 2013, now available in the app.

Mercy (a persona of Arya)

This Arya chapter was originally intended to be a part of A Feast for Crows and was shuffled between books before being slotted for TWOW. It's been archived online and is also available in the app.

Alayne (undercover Sansa)

Sansa's chapter was posted in 2015  and is now available archived online and in the app.

Aeron 'The Damphair' Greyjoy

No known writing exists, but courtesy of some Redditors you can find this chapter broken down here in a Google Doc.


There may very well be more rumored chapters floating around in the Interwebs (maybe a second Barristan chapter?!), but these are the released and confirmed chapters we know about right now.

And if you're interested in even more reading material, here're the rest of the Song of Ice & Fire books and writings.

This article was originally published May 11, 2016, which should give you a tiny glimpse at how long this has taken GRRM to complete.

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