I've made peace with the fact that we're never getting another book. (spoilers published)

It's all in the title, really. Ever since I finished the series years ago I've been keeping up with George's updates and anxiously awaiting Winds. This series got me invested to a level that's incredibly rare, and like many others I was so attached to the characters and engrossed in the story that I couldn't wait to see how it all ends.

Now that it's been several years since I finished Dance, I've been able to cool off a bit and have finally accepted the fact that we're not getting another book... and I'm okay with that.

One of the things that made this series so special was its refusal to play into genre conventions and it's emphasis on lethality and lack of plot armor. In viewing Dance as the final book in the series, this kind of works. Jon is dead. Stannis' army is crushed. Kevan is dead as well. Daenerys seems to have no intention of crossing the Narrow Sea anytime soon. In some ways, it's a perfect ending. An utterly desolate anticlimax. Character arcs aren't neatly wrapped up; the heroes don't win; the audience is denied traditional dramatic catharsis. But isn't that, in a way, the perfect ending for this series that's all about subverting expectations? Thus I find that this ending has a catharsis of its own.

If Dance is indeed the last book, ASOIAF will be far from the first work of literature to have an unintentional ending like this. There are plenty of works that went unfinished due to the author's death. It's a fascinating phenomenon, and a perfect example of when a work of art refuses to conform to its creator's intentions. It's almost like the story has a life of its own; it revolts against the storyteller and boldly announces its own completeness. Sometimes this kind of unintentional ending actually works great; the play Woyzeck comes to mind, but there are many such examples.

I believe, if Dance really is the last book, that future readers will look at it in this way. An ending as unconventional and it is unintentional, but rendered strangely perfect for that very reason.

I know this probably comes across as the biggest cope of all time. But it can never hurt to look on the bright side. Sometimes it's impossible to do so; but here I actually found it fairly easy.