While it is easy to be bitter and tut at Martin like a teacher owed some very late homework, we should hold fire. King is an entirely different kind of novelist – and you can’t rush greatness. What Martin has created is a complex, sprawling world, a realm caught somewhere between history and fantasy, teaming with different cultures, religions, languages, families and geography.

There is a reason people become so completely and utterly absorbed in this world: it is innovative enough to draw you in but familiar enough to keep you engaged. To rush its construction would mean perhaps missing a detail and breaking the spell.