Apologies for the slightly off-topic post…
It’s not looking good, folks…
George R R Martin confirms he hasn’t written anything for the 2 remaining A Song Of Ice And Fire books since 2022.
He wishes that they were finished.
The last published book in the series, A Dance With Dragons, was published in July 2011, now 13 years ago.
Obligatory song that’s now 12 years old… https://youtu.be/j7lp3RhzfgI
While you have a point, I don’t think the ending was necessarily bad because of that.
To me the resolutions they did use were just badly executed. I’d have been fine with the battle of the bastards resolving the Bolton plot, if the battle as shown didn’t make me scream at my screen every 2 minutes from all the logic holes. Same with the fall of Highgarden, Daenerys going insane, Bran becoming King etc. They could have reached mostly the same outcomes and it could have been fine. But the build up and the attention to detail just weren’t there at all. And it wasn’t even that they ran out of time, they deliberately shortened the last 2 seasons because they wanted it to be over.
I agree the execution of the end of GoT was bad (i.e. the problems weren’t just the issue of everything needing to come to a head). There were a lot of different complaints about how GoT ended, but I definitely saw a lot about how it was all just battles in the last season and no nuance. I think that was always going to be hard to avoid given how GRRM had set up the main plot. And I think he will find it hard to avoid when writing the last 2 books, which could be part of the reason he doesn’t want to do it.