Huge Game of Thrones character George RR Martin to kill in next book | TV & Radio | Showbiz & TV

The adored American author George R. R. Martin has been in the spotlight recently following the launch of his book’s TV adaptation, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

But all fans really want to know is what’s happening with the next book in the Game of Thrones series.

Despite the HBO series Game of Thrones long being wrapped, the original book series, A Song of Ice and Fire novels, which served as the basis for the show, is not yet complete with another two books left to go. In fact, fans have been waiting for over 10 years for the next book, The Winds of Winter, to be released and finish the never-ending story.

Martin has managed to avoid giving many answers to questions surrounding the novel, spoon-feeding information to readers, until now. While he’s given the same update for years, that he continues to write the book and it continues to get “longer and longer”, he’s now given further insight into what events could actually take place.

It seems the author has avoided ending the series after the ending to the Game of Thrones show was resisted by fans and criticised by many. He told The Hollywood Reporter that the book’s ending will be “significantly different”.

He continued to explain that some characters who are alive in his book will be dead in the show, and the same thing applies the other way around.  Although the details of his own ending remain uncertain, he admits that he was “going to kill more people” in the book. 

Martin further shared the characters he had in mind to kill were not the ones they killed in the show. According to him, they made it “more of a happy ending” than he would have liked, especially for that of leading character Tyrion, in which he admittedly doesn’t see a “happy ending” for.

To further his point, he said Tyrion’s entire arc had been “tragic from the first” and so it made sense to him to continue with that tragedy. Although his mind changed along the way when he wanted to initially let Sansa die, except after seeing how “compelling” the character played out in the show, he’s considering letting her live. 

After waiting for so long to see these characters live on and take on new challenges in the final additions to the series, some fans have even suggested letting another author write the ending for him. Clearly, after 14 years they don’t want to wait much longer.

With other writing projects and producing a number of shoes, it’s taken up huge chunks of his time, time that could have been dedicated to finishing The Winds of Winter. Hope seems to be on the horizon, as the writer said, once he manages to get some of his other work “off his back”, he could in fact finish the highly anticipated book.

He told The Hollywood Reporter: “I could finish The Winds of Winter pretty soon. It’s been made clear to me that Winds is the priority, but … I don’t know. Sometimes I’m not in the mood for that.”

The author confessed that he is “so far behind” on his work, but the idea of handing over his life’s work to someone else to finish is not even an option. When asked about the idea of passing the torch and essentially giving up on the idea of his 14-year-long project, he was quick to fire back with a hard no.

Martin said: “I would hate that. It would feel like a total failure to me. I want to finish.”