Swords. He announced this decision, along with the new title A Feast for Crows, at Worldcon in Philadelphia on September 1, 2001. He also announced that A Dance with Dragons would now be the fifth book in the sequence. In May 2005, Martin announced that his manuscript for A Feast for Crows had hit 1527 completed pages but still remained unfinished, with "another hundred or so pages of roughs and incomplete chapters, as well as other chapters, sketched out but entirely unwritten." As the size of the manuscript for the 2000s A Storm of Swords, his previous novel, had been a problem for publishers around the world at 1521 pages, Martin and his publishers had decided to split the narrative planned for A Feast for Crows into two books. Rather than divide the text in half chronologically, Martin opted to instead split the material by character and location: It was my feeling ... that we were better off telling all the story for half the characters, rather than half the story for all the characters. Cutting the novel in half would have produced two half-novels; our approach will produce two novels taking place simultaneously, but set hundreds or even thousands of miles apart, and involving different casts of characters (with some overlap). Martin noted that A Feast for Crows would focus on "Westeros, King's Landing, the riverlands, Dorne, and the Iron Islands," and that the next novel, A Dance with Dragons, would cover "events in the east and north." Martin also added that the A Song of Ice and Fire series would now likely total seven novels. A Feast for Crows was published months later on October 17, 2005, over five years after the previous volume in the series, A Storm of Swords. The parallel novel A Dance with Dragons was released on July 12, 2011. Release details 2005, UK, Voyager , Pub date October 17, 2005, hardback 2005, UK, Voyager , Pub date ? ? 2005, hardback (presentation edition) 2005, US, Spectra Books , Pub date November 8, 2005, hardback 2006, UK, Voyager , Pub date April 25, 2006, paperback Reception Though A Feast for Crows was the first novel in the sequence to debut at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list, it received more negative reviews in comparison with the previous novels in the series. Martin's decision to halve the plot in terms of