Westeros book coming
George RR Martin has given away a morsel of news about the next Game of Thrones book – or is that books?
The author of the A Song of Ice and Fire series of books that turned into the TV hit Game of Thrones has given an update on his long awaited next book – The Winds of Winter.
On hisblog Martin blasted ‘‘truly weird’’ reports that the next book is finished and he is choosing not to release it, as well as reports claiming he has written nothing.
‘‘I am still working on it, I am still months away (how many? good question). Whether Winds or the first volume of Fire and Blood will be the first to hit the bookstores is hard to say at this juncture, but I do think you will have a Westeros book from me in 2018 .. .and, who knows, maybe two. A boy can dream.’’
The author let that tidbit slip in a response to a fan on an unrelated reply on his blog during the weekend.
‘‘No publication date has been set yet, but it’s likely that we will get the first volume of Fire and Blood out in late 2018, or early 2019.
‘‘The second volume, which will carry the history from Aegon III up to Robert’s Rebellion, is largely unwritten, so that one will be a few more years in coming,’’ Martin wrote.
Martin’s last update on Winds was in January, when he admitted he had ‘‘made progress, but not as much as I hoped a year ago when I thought to be done by now’’.
At the time, he thought the book would be released in 2017, conceding he thought ‘‘the same thing last year’’.
This was terribly hard television to watch. Anyone with even a loose knowledge of the story of Chris Crean would have sat through Resolve, as I did, with a painful sense of dread deep in their guts at what was inevitably to come.
It was also brilliant, wellexecuted television.
It was a story that had split the Crean family about whether it should have been told (his brother and mother were against, his widow in favour).
It’s not for me to tell them how to feel but, from an outsider’s perspective, this was a testament to a modern New Zealand hero of the first order.
It was also a reminder of the stain on New Zealand that is the prevalence of the gang culture demonstrated here.
Resolve told the story of how 27-year-old father Crean, in refusing to bow to pressure and bravely preparing to testify against three Black Power members who had attacked rival Mongrel Mob members outside his house, was then executed by those gang members.
Pana Hema-Taylor, as Crean, delivered a performance that convinced, that explained Crean’s remarkable strength and courage.
As Don Allan, the policeman leading Taranaki’s war against the gangs, Stephen Lovatt maintained his consistent excellence in whatever role is cast in.
Ella Becroft, as Crean’s widow Tania, had a slighter part to play, but still shone.
The early parts weren’t promising - there was some steady background on who Crean was, some expository dialogue inside a police incident room that recalled the hackneyed cop dialogue that dogged Screentime’s Rainbow Warrior documentary Bombshell last year.
But suddenly came the vicious, graphic street attack that sparked everything that followed, and the pace quickened and stayed that way. Resolve was excellent at building a sense of what was happening from both police and Black Power perspectives, and the looming inevitability of Crean’s fate.
Even knowing what was to happen, the murder scene was horrific.
Perhaps even worse was the moment that preceded it, where the gunman baulked at shooting Crean while he held his baby, only to be told by fellow gang member Brownie Marsh Mane that he didn’t care if both died.
Smart editing kept the remaining part of the film mercifully brief - how some gang members gave evidence for the Crown, how the four men who plotted and committed his killing Brownie Marsh Mane, Robert Shane Maru, Symon George Manihera and Dennis Richard Luke (who had already been convicted of one murder) were all convicted of Crean’s murder, of how the case caused evidence rules to be changed to allow witnesses to testify by video link.
Having cut away from last week’s Sunday Theatre on the Exponents as the credits began to roll, TVNZ had the sense to let this week’s play out, and allow the audience to soak up what they had just witnessed, and, 21 years on since Crean was murdered, to remember such a remarkable man.