Martin's books are a retelling of a story about the War of the Roses, with a couple of fantasy elements slapped on top. The amount of world-building is pretty m

Martin's books are a retelling of a story about the War of the Roses, with a couple of fantasy elements slapped on top. The amount of world-building is pretty minimal for a large-scale fantasy series. The reason Martin doesn't produce a lot of work is because a) he only writes at home, and spends most of his time travelling, b) when he does write, it's other books and not ASoIaF, c) he's had problems with losing chunks of work, continuity errors and other issues that have required rework and/or rewrites, and d) he's just not a fast writer at his best.