One thing that has some fans worried is the possibility that the actual book may not live up to all this hype in the end. Fans expect Martin to do something quite spectacular right now, and while it’s obvious that the author has been putting a lot of hard work in the next book, he might eventually fall victim to his own popularity.
It’s a situation that some have been comparing to Valve’s “Half-Life 3” in the gaming world, and there are indeed some parallels between the two stories.
The important thing is that fans remain calm and avoid setting their expectations too high, as that will definitely contribute to getting a bad impression from “Winds of Winter”, no matter how good the final product actually is.
This is probably why Martin has been so quiet about his progress on the book too, as the author is well aware of the dangers of hyping it up too much. There’s not much he can do to prevent his fans from taking this into their own hands though, and sometimes even his silence can seemingly contribute to getting people additionally excited.
Hopefully this won’t turn out to be a disastrous release that spells the end of the series as a whole, as many fans would be quite annoyed to never get a conclusion to some plot lines.