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27th Mar 2014

Spoilers are here! Game of Thrones author posts excerpt from new book online

Caution: Don't read if you've never seen Game of Thrones and want to start fresh.

Tony Cuddihy

George R R Martin has posted a passage from his Game of Thrones novel online.

**Caution: Stop reading if you’ve never seen Game of Thrones and want to start fresh.**

The author revealed an excerpt from ‘The Winds of Winter’ on his blog, which you can read here if you dare to find out what happens before the fourth series of the show starts on Monday April 7th.

Explaining how he broke the internet when he posted the new work online, Martin wrote:

“Sorry about that.

“The upload of the new sample chapter from THE WINDS OF WINTER created so much traffic to my website and blog that the servers crashed.  This is the first time I’ve been able to get up myself all day.

“Anyway, it seems to be easing off some.  And we are looking at ways to increase capacity.

“The “reviews” of the chapter have been amazingly enthusiastic as well.  Thanks.   I am pleased that so many of you — thousands and maybe tens of thousands, it would seem — enjoyed “Mercy” so much.

“I mentioned that this chapter had quite a history.  It’s true.  The first draft was written more than a decade ago.  Originally, it was intended to be the opening Arya chapter after the infamous “five year gap,” her first appearance in A DANCE WITH DRAGONS as initially conceived.   Then it was supposed to be a part of A FEAST FOR CROWS, after I abandoned the five year gap and split the books.  Then it was going to be the concluding Arya chapter in A DANCE WITH DRAGONS.  But it seemed more like an opening chapter than a closing one, so shortly before ADWD was published my editor and I agreed to remove it from DANCE and shift it over into WINDS.  Of course, it has been revised, tightened, polished, and tweaked at every step of the way, so the version on my website has some significant differences from the “five year gap” version.”

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