I feel this kind of reasoning is weird. If an author writes a book as a part of a series he's clearly telling you "this book is part of a bigger story which I h

I feel this kind of reasoning is weird. If an author writes a book as a part of a series he's clearly telling you "this book is part of a bigger story which I have my most sincere intention of telling and reaching its conclussion, eventually". There's clearly a convention here, which doesn't necessarily translate into an actionable obligation (which is what you wanted to say). You don't want to get into that implicit contract? Then don't write a series, or write it for yourself and don't publish it. I don't agree with those who whine because Martin doesn't finish the series, but I also don't agree with those who say that we should expect nothing from him. When I started reading this series (about 15 years ago) they were supposed to be 4 books to be released at 2-year intervals. Then he added more books, took a lot of time to write them (between 5 and 6 years for the last 2) and now I can't even say "could I at least expect that you will finish the series sometime?".