Anticipation for A Dance with Dragons is reaching a fevered pitch. An accidental, early release from Amazon.de has caused a flurry of activity, including on our forum (we broke our concurrency record because of it). But before you go seeking out spoilers, heed these words from U.K. publisher HarperCollins Voyager…
And let us add our own thoughts on this. Yes, Linda and I have had the privilege of reading the book awhile ago. Yes, we knew some of what the contents were, from early chapters George had read or which we had early access to. But a great bulk of it was entirely new to us… and the pleasure in the reading was greatly heightened for us by not knowing what was coming. There are some amazing, jaw-dropping moments in this book. If you can at all help it, don’t ruin the shocks and surprises, so you can get the maximum effect out of them. GRRM’s labored six years on this book, trying to get it “just so”; what’s holding out two more weeks, to make sure you can read and judge his efforts with fresh eyes and an open mind? And don’t worry, we’ve put extreme spoiler protections up on the forum, so it should remain a relatively safe place on the relatively-lawless internet (and we’ll note, word is there’s a number of major forums where spoilers—fake and real alike—are flying like mad, so keep your head down!)
Now, that Amazon.de error is fixed, and any new orders placed via Amazon.de will provide the appropriate shipping date. There are rumors of stores in Australia, Sweden, and elsewhere claiming early release dates, but Bantam/Random House is on the case, double-checking all the international distributors and major chains to make sure that the global July 12th embargo is respected.
So, if you haven’t pre-ordered the book yet, what are you waiting for? It’s now two weeks to go! Here’s a handy list of links: