I'm so glad I never watched the last season. "Oh, but what about..." Don't care. I'll read the book eventually. When they ran out of material from the books it became cartoonish.
My conspiracy theory is the show ended more or less how George R. R. Martin has been planning it, but because it was received so poorly he had to scrap it all and start the last two books over
Honestly, the plot points themselves were fine it's the execution that made it terrible. The pacing was off, character interactions and motivations made no sense, yes. But the broad-brush strokes of the plot could have been done well.
from what I gathered from interviews etc, the ending itself (e.g. where each character went or did) is basically set by george. Just the way show got there was written by the show writers
So yes, the ending is by George, the execution by the show runners
Two books left, so far. Previous was released over a decade ago. I think a next book is possible, but two?
I bought the last one on release date, and I have no clue where each character is right now. I'm not reading the books again, and I don't think a summary will make me care again.
Yeah I've given up any interest. If another book comes out, there's absolutely no reason for me to read it. Like you said, the last book is over 10 years old. So you'd have to re-read the entire series to catch up. Then you'd read the new book, only to be confronted with the same problem for the final book. I ain't doing this whole thing again in another decade!
At this point, he'd have to release both books at once for me to have any interest in reading them again. And we all know that ain't happening.
Yeah those books are never coming out. The absolute best time for them to come out was when the show was still in its prime. But universally people hated how the show ended, it's dropped out of pop culture completely, season 8 has become a verb much like jumping the shark, and given how long between the books interest says waned. There are other books, there are other authors, and there's just generally other things to do.
Yeah I saw how bad the penultimate season was and could tell I'd regret it. So I just came up with my own headcanon for how things end and don't worry about it.