Arguably the biggest mysteries in the show are Jon's parentage and the reason for the screwed-up seasons, both of which GRRM has said have definitive answers that will be given before the end of the books.

I don't think even LOST could get on network now. The amount of money that was spent on it was insane (the guy who commissioned it was fired and ABC was unapologetic even after the show became a huge hit). It was a leap of faith I don't think any network would be prepared to make now.

Unsurprising, as they essentially used to be the same company, namely the RPG development division of Interplay. After completing FALLOUT in 1997 the division was renamed to 'Black Isle' and started work on FALLOUT 2, but a bunch of people quit after a disagreement and formed Troika, whilst Black Isle co-developed…

+500 for R. Scott Bakker reference.

I'm wondering if this was the WHEEL OF TIME game. It's the only other title they have announced apart from the SOUTH PARK game and they wouldn't have started work on it until finishing up on DUNGEON SIEGE III (WoT reportedly uses the DS3 engine), so the timeline tracks. The only problem is that an X-Box 720 launch…

Not enough info on distances and the lay of the land inbetween. Daenerys physically travels overland all the way from from Pentos to Qarth, so we get details which allow us to make informed guesses on the lay of the land. There's insufficient info to do the same for Asshai other than just a blind guess.

I'm pretty sure that any Elder Scrolls MMO will be handled by a different studio to the core Bethesda one, which is now doing Skyrim expansion/DLC stuff. After they finish that, it's almost certain their next project will be Fallout 4 (unless they move straight to Elder Scrolls VI and give FO4 to another company,…

Melisandre isn't from Asshai, though. She was merely raised there. ADWD drops a hint that she might have originally been from Westeros.

Books 4 and 5 happen at the same time, both after Book 3. Book 3 is also not really 'mostly character development', some pretty big stuff happens during it. However since they are splitting Book 3 into two seasons (it's half again the length of the first two), there's definitely going to be some slowing of the pace in…

Yi Ti and Asshair are located further east, on the eastern edge of the Jade Sea.

Yup, Valyria was once a solid peninsular, shattered by the volcanic eruptions of the Doom.

Yup. Some of the stuff they've done for the Blackwater is impressive. They've built a massive ship to serve as Stannis's flagship, along with 20 smaller skiffs. They've also built siege engines for the walls of King's Landing. Most interesting is a sort-of submersible battering ram mounted on a boat that can be picked…

You can probably skip Rothfuss. He's doing some interesting things with subverting the epic fantasy template but ultimately he's way too long-winded. Solid 300-page books bloated out to 900 pages for no real reason. I'd recommend Erikson now he's finished, though his first book can be a hard slog. His second and third…

In addition, they had a massive number of new characters to introduce for Season 2. For Season 3 they have far fewer, so by delaying Book 2 characters until S3 they can save some money. At the moment it looks like the only major new ASoS characters in S3 will be Oberyn Martell, Mance Rayder (and some of the other…

This is something of a misquote. GRRM is vehemently against book series being finished by other writers with no idea of what the original writer was planning. For example, he is not happy about the new AMBER books published after his good friend Roger Zelazny's death and is not impressed by the new DUNE books by Kevin…

He gave Weiss and Benioff a general outline of how the rest of the story unfolds a couple of years ago. Prior to that he didn't have an outline of the rest of the series, but HBO requested one (it may even have been necessary to get the TV series made, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to proceed) and they got…

"despite fans going on about there being no "good and bad guys" they were pretty much colour-coded"

Not entirely correct. Or rather it was correct for the first few chapters of the book, but not later on. A GAME OF THRONES, A CLASH OF KINGS and A STORM OF SWORDS were supposed to be one novel (ha!), and in fact GRRM was halfway through what became ACoK before realising this wasn't going to fly and cut off the AGoT…

Osha taking over their role is a logical change, although it does introduce problems.

Yup. I suspect Season 3 will be 2/3s or so of ASoS and Season 4 will round off ASoS and bring in some events from the start of AFFC and ADWD. And as much as Book 3 is a nightmare, that's nothing compared to how they handle the narrative arcs of Books 4-5. They're already thinking about it - apparently they're looking…