Anticipating GRRM's A Dance With Dragons [HERE BE SPOILERS]

About time for this, right? I'm bummed that this comes out one day after I have to fly to China. Guess I'll have to read something else on the way out.

:D

Got my Amazon ship notice - should have it tomorrow.

I was much more excited before I reread the series (finished yesterday!) and was reminded of the hugely boring letdown of A Feast For Crows. The drop in quality between books 3 & 4 is HUGE.

I'm hoping it's the anti-Trek and that every odd-numbered book is good.

reviewer on Salon said it was awesome

Did he/she like the last one? That got okay reviews from what I remember but in retrospect is a neverending slog.

yeah i got a review copy today and raced through like half of it - think its greatly helped by focusing on more interesting characters than a feast for crows was but its also feels more focused and purposeful

You guys are making me happy...

one of the big contrasts is that 250+ pages in and theres only been one new character pov

biggest annoyance is recycling two chapters from the last book (or book three?)

actually thinking about it maybe those were teaser chapters haha

i'm rereading feast for crows right now and ... eesh, some of the iron islands stuff is boring. actually, the whole book is boring and sloglike and (unfortu) i can't skip it b/c i don't remember it well enough from 6 years ago or whatever

I had remembered all the big beats but not their context. Sadly, the context wasn't worth the reread.

one of the big contrasts is that 250+ pages in and theres only been one new character pov

glad of this, i think

i was about to start this thread since mine has shipped apparently, oh well

Right, i'm off to buy this

It's late. I'm in Taiwan, after four scotches. It's time for some DofD.

I bought this at 1:00 AM last night on my Nook and started reading it; maybe I should have slept instead

the library doesnt have it!!! nooo now i have to buy it :(

DUDE AT WORK JUST WALKED IN WITH A COPY AND I SHANKED HIS ASS AND STOLE IT!!!

That's the spirit!

did you slide a dirk under his breastplate, and feel his warm life dripping onto your hands?

Did he/she like the last one? That got okay reviews from what I remember but in retrospect is a neverending slog.

― EZ Snappin, Tuesday, July 12, 2011 1:45 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark

they were very disappointed in the last one.

i'm rereading feast for crows right now and ... eesh, some of the iron islands stuff is boring. actually, the whole book is boring and sloglike and (unfortu) i can't skip it b/c i don't remember it well enough from 6 years ago or whatever

― remy bean, Tuesday, 12 July 2011 01:56 (13 hours ago)

all that's good so far: Jaime, Pod, Lady Merryweather

this book is so long!!!

My wife woke up at 5 to make sure it had downloaded onto her Kindle. We're under strict instructions not to bug her for the next couple of days about anything less than nuclear war.

bought this at 1:00 AM last night on my Nook and started reading it; maybe I should have slept instead

LOL, why I am not surprised?

I have just started into the books so am not caught up enough to start reading the new one yet -- from the looks of this thread, Feast for Crows is going to be a bear to get through.

It's not as bad as everyone sez. It's just very disappointing in the context of the previous book and because it took so long for the next one to come out.

^^^ OTM

it isn't... really... but its got a very very slow start. once it gets to about 50% it improves; there's a plot amongst the meandering.

I don't remember the beginning so much. The Dorne parts definitely take a while to get going, but they have a good payoff. Agree the Iron Islands stuff is mostly dull. As is Sam. But the rest is good esp. if you like Cersei and Arya and Brianne as characters.

Cersei sections are just the same damn thing over and over and over ("I'm Tywin's real son!" "I'm Tywin's real son!" Might as well be a crow saying, "Corn!"). One dimensional character repeats behavior with a wide variety of uninteresting people. Dorne didn't bug me - at least it's a new cultural pastiche - Iron Islands hella dull, as is Sam in this book. Jaime sections work well though.

Main thing is it is just too long for the amount of plot & character development.

the brienne bits are just kinda meandering though, you don't really learn much that's new about her and nothing noteworthy happens to her until the end of the book. getting the first-hand view of cersei's downward spiral of paranoia is somewhat interesting. plus the continuation of jaime's quest for redemption i guess but he's already become likeable by the end of book 3.

also i had completely forgot about davos getting beheaded mentioned as just an aside, wtf was that. he's like the one true 'good guy' in the series, you'd think that would happen on-screen if it really happened.

anyway i assume this thread is spoiler-bound so i should probably vacate until i've finished the new book

i went to barnes & noble at lunch! this jawn is MINE :) : ) :)

(though i'm such a good husband i'm gonna let the missus read it first)

UPS finally got here. See everyone in a few days.

ok picked it up on my way home from work, am now in internet exile until it's done (or at least message board/facebook/twitter exile)

considering ole george set this up as a companion piece to 'feast for crows' has anyone else been struck by the similarities btw the main pov chapters? like:

daenrys = cersei
jon = brienne
reek = alyse
tyrion = jaime
bran = arya

also i had completely forgot about davos getting beheaded mentioned as just an aside, wtf was that. he's like the one true 'good guy' in the series, you'd think that would happen on-screen if it really happened.

he's pov in the new one, it's part of the whole 'and now we see what the other half did'

it's a bit like shining force three scenario two

lol

p43: first mention of olives

haha thom within the first like 20 pages there is some ridic description of a meal--tyrion at illyrio's place i think?--but NO OLIVES

are we allowed to do spoilers yet? im ~400 pages in, enjoying it more than feast of crows tho a couple things are really bugging me

Page 515... I'm having trouble keeping track of everyone.

Page 40 help

There are ridiculous amount of food descriptions in this book, even more so than normal

I've finished it and i was a little disappointed tbh

max i rather enjoyed that feast, it was sort of cod-medieval fusion cuisine but that sort of makes sense with what he's set the free cities/pentos/illyrio up as; in general it does seem like (though this does sort of mean expanding what i'm saying about the book into spheres wider than the culinary, which i am loathe to do) he's put a little more effort into working out how these places work, rather than having westeros fully-realised and the others just sort of .. there

People eat a lot of "neeps" in this book

and tatties?

Not that i recall

no spoilers yet, plz, i'm moving more slowly through this one than the last four

tho we should maybe set a cut-off date for spoilers? like if you haven't read the thing in another week and a half, tough shit?

btw Martin's annoying new habit of giving chapters pretentious titles instead of using the character's name is even more pronounced in this one. I know it's a minor thing but it really pisses me off

kind think we should just make this full-on spoilers and just stop reading the thread till u finish

btw Martin's annoying new habit of giving chapters pretentious titles instead of using the character's name is even more pronounced in this one. I know it's a minor thing but it really pisses me off

― Number None, Saturday, July 16, 2011 11:49 AM (15 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah this shit is corny

it's so weird when you have one that's like THE OATHSLAYER and then there's one headed JON. i mean even putting the guys' names up there is already kind of silly viz. i know this chapter is about jon, he is the subject of the first sentence

i am about 11.5% of the way through, i am glad to note that i now know how to pronounce 'maester'

Yeah but it's nice to just turn the page and see the name of a character you've been wanting to get back to. When it's some wanky title it's not quite the same

kind think we should just make this full-on spoilers and just stop reading the thread till u finish

― max, Saturday, July 16, 2011 10:49 AM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

ok :(

i kind of "get" why he does it with new characters? because then he can do a slow reveal. (not that the reveal is ever that slow). but it annoys me when he keeps it up with that same character even when you know who it is, or when he keeps switching the name and youre like george stop

i think that slow reveal is probably top of the list of fantasy prose cliches i despise

not wild abt Tyrion's new catchphrase

That's another thing he overdoes now, the various catchphrases that the characters have. I actually think he's becoming a worse writer

theres a lot of, not exposition, but this weird kind of... explanation thing he seems to do a lot? like he seems to be writing very defensively right now and trying to explain away problems aggressively before they even pop up, in a really awkward way. i wish i could think of an example. when i get the book ill find one.

http://i.imgur.com/h3y9K.jpg

martins seemingly inexhaustible supply of fatguy hats is one of the best things about him

its funny to see ppl complain abt the ~mysterious~ chapter headings since i thought that was something hed toned down from a feast for crows!

like he seems to be writing very defensively right now and trying to explain away problems aggressively before they even pop up, in a really awkward way. i wish i could think of an example

yeah i felt like he was trying to take less risks w/ this book than he did in book 4 but im not sure if thats not mostly because he focuses on better liked/more interesting characters in this one. structurally both of the last couple of books have been a mess, theres no real climax, theyre both 'transitional' books but for all its faults i did feel like four had more purpose & was ultimately more 'interesting'. this one (which i liked) just feels sorta like 'heres some characters you love & heres some stuff that happens to them!'

anyway this is the basic dichotomy that im left with: book 5 was more fun to read but book 4 was more fun to think about. i think theyre both p flawed overall tho

He definitely hasn't toned down the chapter names thing. How many different titles do Theon's chapters have for example? Agree that this book is badly structured. There's a couple of characters here with one or two chapters who feel like they've just been shoved in there cos there would be outrage if they didn't appear.

Book is a complete mess. There's probably about 3 or 4 too many plot lines, 8 too many free cities, maybe 30 too many characters. Still enjoyable enough, I guess, but the good instincts that kept the first three books relatively tight have been completely absent for the last two.

He's totally wasted Jon and Daenerys as characters as well. Who wants to read a 1000 page book about these two whining "but we can just let them die!"

yeah i'm only halfway through but this is way closer to the slow-burn of book 4 than the relentless shit-going-down of the earlier ones. Theon chapters are far and away the best so far. i'm starting to wonder if he's actually going to manage to finish the story satisfactorily in 2 more books, since almost none of the billion character arcs have shown signs of converging or resolving yet.

Frankly I'm wondering the same thing (I have no idea how he can possibly pull Arya back in successfully at this point, her chapters almost feel like they are from a completely different book at this point.) I got to the end of the book and I was thinking "okay that was overload", but then I remembered that two main characters (Sansa and Sam) NEVER EVEN APPEAR in the book and one major subplot (Cat/Brienne) is only passingly touched upon (not to mention that Rickon's completely disappeared and Bran should have.)

just finished this

overall i think a small disappointment. i need to think abt it more though.... definitely could have used some better editing. both this book and the last one i think. very last scene is almost parody.

but, oof, the big thing that happens at the end there. oof.

At the of which part? The epilogue?

are we doing spoilers

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the whole scene with varys and kevan just came across as *dumb*

jon getting killed was "oof"

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I can't believe Jon is really dead though.

I thought the Kevan thing was fine except that Varys kept talking like a James Bond villain who explains everything.

i dunno! at this point hes had enough fake-outs that i feel like he needs to re-up his credibility w/r/t character deaths

i agree i wouldnt necessarily be surprised if he lives... i suppose melisandre might re-animate him

Also the reveal of Varys' army of little shadow children was kind of lame.

yeah that was what bugged me about it, the whole varys stepping out of the shadows cool as a cucumber explaining his plot

would rather have it just end with kevan recognizing varys as his killer

There is no way Jon is dead guys

"i dunno! at this point hes had enough fake-outs that i feel like he needs to re-up his credibility w/r/t character deaths"

This is true. I was very bummed that the biggest deaths were Janos Slynt and Quentyn Martell. Lame.

Quentyn Martell's chapters were so pointless. On further reflection i think i actually hated this book

Yeah woo hoo lets introduce an annoying pointless character, give him 100 pages and kill him at the end of the book.

Aegon stuff also feels equally pointless to me. Like wasn't this story complicated enough already without FAKEOUT another Tarygarean (sic).

Like it was pretty badass at the end of AFFC when Doran Martell was like "actually, i've been playing you all this whole time", and then in this book we meet his wimpy son who messes up the whole plan

Agree about Aegon, and of course he's gonna turn out be a fake

yeh one of the disappointing things about this was how lame the new characters ended up being

"and of course i knew all along you were none other than Jon Connington" WHO?

Victarion parts, on the other hand, I really dug.

I think you mean THE IRON SUITOR

"Like it was pretty badass at the end of AFFC when Doran Martell was like "actually, i've been playing you all this whole time", and then in this book we meet his wimpy son who messes up the whole plan"

Yeah if I was his daughter I would have been like "huh you sent that dork to do what?"

I didn't read most of the Chapter titles.

At least it should be cool having the Martell ladies in King's Landing

Sorta. I don't think there'll be much to it now that Kevan is dead. It's not like the Tyrell's or Tarly's are going to have much patience with them.

why wont they? the tyrells have as much of an interest in holding dorne as kevan did

Yeah if I was his daughter I would have been like "huh you sent that dork to do what?"

its sad, he was a plot device

both this book and the last one i think. very last scene is almost parody

i think the problem is that the series isnt really 'about' anything (in the larger sense) anymore. the more i thought & wrote abt 'dance' the more i realized i felt like i understood the characters less than i did @ the end of book 3 and the less i understood what (if any) thematic concerns undergird the series. it increasingly feels like a series of things that happen w/o purpose or design.

i mean like i posted upthread it felt to me like there was an attempt to draw parallels btw the major pov characters in books 4 and 5 but those parallels dont illuminate anything its just kinda 'DO YOU SEE?' & the more he draws things out the less the historical basis for the books feels instructive.

yeah, i think that's fair. hard not to note that everything sort of seemed to fall apart once the action moved significantly away from westeros...

truthbomb

this book btw very much put me in mind of mordy's complaints on the other thread. i was trying to think of a single significant plot development in this book and all i could come up with is jon mayyyybe dying? everything that happens/happened in meereen seems so secondary to what we're supposed to be interested in, and it seems like a big mistake to send half his characters over there

warning: spoilers and bitching at unreasonable length to follow

overall feeling is that grrm has lost some of his handle on what made the earlier books so compelling. it was cooler when this was political soap opera masquerading as fantasy and not the other way round.

first half of the book was mostly awesome. i was loving the intriguey stuff with the lords in the north and davos, i was sad that it didn't really come to anything, not yet i guess. brief mention of rickon possibly on that island with the cannibals (?? not sure how much this was just my guess/hallucination) was promising but not followed up.

all the theon stuff was great. the inevitable reunion of theon and asha, plus victarion going east, retroactively made book 2 better for me because the iron islands stuff seemed less tangential somehow.

similarly, the quentyn and aegon stuff made the dorne stuff from book 4 seem more substantial, although personally i always liked that part anyway. however, that was all the good they did, because those strands were dump otherwise. i call bullshit on aegon. if he is not fake i will be pretty annoyed. grrm can't resist a bit of foreshadowing and there was no suggestion at all that baby aegon wasn't really smashed to bits before this. and the quentyn story was a real damp squib of a dropped ball. the least engaging character so far.

meereen was also a missed opportunity. there was scope to have a nice bit of cloak and dagger a la book 1 with an exotic spice. what we got instead was one dimensional and dull, little in the way of fully realized characters. there was barely any point making the effort to get the names straight. dany could've done with taking more of a back seat in this part of the story. the bits of events that were closest to her were often the least interesting and the repeated chapters of dany tediously mulling over the same problems seemed a lot like treading water. and the cackhanded way she was just yanked away for plot purposes was so a real eyeroller.

the repeated chapters of jon tediously mulling over the same problems also seemed a lot like treading water. such a fucking meal was made of the whole wildling thing and the friction with the other watch dudes. THIS IS CAUSING TENSION DO YOU SEE? so with that signposting and melisandre's vision we were obviously being hoodwinked by that cunning rogue grrm into thinking that the watch dudes were going to stab jon, until...oh wait. bulllllshiiiiit. so, the watch dudes, being afraid of the massed wildling horde turning on them, openly kill the one and only guy holding the fragile alliance together and preventing that from happening? really?? really? really.

there generally seems to have been a deterioration in subtlety and cleverness in the plotting, whether sacrificied to the need to pull everything together towards a conclusion or for whatever other reasons. this was nicely symbolized by behind-the-throne puppeteer varys coming out of the shadows with crossbow in hand, accompanied by dagger wielding children. it was a clumsy and lame way to close out.

going forward: at this point, if littlefinger is scheming towards a plauisble and satisfying endgame i will be surprised but delighted. little finger, big if. how is arya going to be reintegrated at this point? am i being fed pages of the many-faced god creedo only for her to flush it down the pan and tell the kindly dude to f himself, i kills just who i wants to. and if not, where is this going? the bran stuff is cool for now but that magicky business is one hell of a tightrope and doing too little or too much of it would be easy and lame. the zombie cat/brienne/jaime piece feels like it is getting left behind by the rest of the narrative. is that shit really going somewhere consequential? i am excited to have my doubts dispelled over the coming decade!

good post

the davos and "reek" chapters were definitely the best i thought. there is so. much. treading. water. in these books now. is he afraid that people will be mad if we don't get enough of danaerys or jon? i was basically okay with not hearing about them in feast for crows. in fact in retrospect feast for crows was more interesting than this. at least, it didnt make me feel worried that he was going to bungle the whole effing thing.

it just seems so weird to me that he thinks he needs two more 900-page books when he didnt really need this one at all

yea there is a whiff of fan service about some of the decisions here

also he was *particularly* fond of the word "cunt" in this book

"so, the watch dudes, being afraid of the massed wildling horde turning on them, openly kill the one and only guy holding the fragile alliance together and preventing that from happening?"

I thought they "killed" him because he was leaving the watching, breaking his vow, etc.

I loved the Jon parts of the first three books, but he was super tedious in this one. Daenarys even worse though. Blech.

so the next commander will be #999, right? and then he'll die in time for the book to end with the election of night's watch commander lucky #1,000??

i suppose this is all tired ground but the fact that grrm had to completely revise his initial plan for the series after he realized that he didnt know how to get danny (and arya?) back where he wants them feels like novels original sin: most of the major problems ive had w/ it stem from that lack of direction and purpose thats infected p much all the storylines

mereen was a disaster, partly because even weteros is sketchily realized at best, it was clear he had no vision of what mereenese society should look or feel like. like i dont expect extensive research but he couldnt have picked up a couple of books on middle eastern cultures? or yknow, made some cool shit up? even the history is an unconvincing mess and thats something i think he does well (although he can be about too schematic at times). i really qn what was gained by not sticking to the original time skip idea atp

The problem isn't getting Danny back though, it's getting her back without it being completely anti-climactic. Last two books haven't solved that problem at all (the bigger the dragons get, the bigger the problem becomes.)

Not to mention I don't think he has any idea how he is going to integrate the Walking Dead part of the storyline with the Clash of Kings one (or if he's even going to try.)

i'm not speculating on why they turned on jon, just noting the effect. the other senior watch ppl may not like what he's done but it's way too late to intervene. what is the game plan if jon is actually dead? "sorry scumbags who massively outnumber us. we don't want you this side of the wall. pls form an orderly queue outta here". but jon surely has to survive or else wtf happens up there?

also, i am assuming victarion's crazy horn + dany's resistance to burning = dragons under control. the dragon action back west is surely going to be the decisive element vs the others

i really qn what was gained by not sticking to the original time skip idea atp

yeah, really. i dont particularly like where we're "at" right now but theres no real reason he needed two whole books to get us here.

its just insane to me--storm of swords had 3 times as many actually significant plot developments than the last two books combined

I think it was pretty crucial for Tyrion's character development that we know about his brief stint as a pig jouster though

The problem isn't getting Danny back though, it's getting her back without it being completely anti-climactic. Last two books haven't solved that problem at all

well that was my point! he originally said he had scrapped his five book outline w/ the five year time jump because it didnt have a plausible explanation for how danny gets to westeros but he... still doesnt seem to have a plausible explanation for how danny gets to westeros two books later. (well ~the iron suitor~ and his red priest appear to be the method but that still hasnt happened).

i dont want it to seem like i care only about servicing the plot either - i loved all the stuff w/ the mendicant priest and his dog & the silent abbey in book 4 for ex, even if much of didnt directly forward the action, but too little of the stuff in books 4 and 5 were that well written or deepened the world or its characters imo

The problem isn't that they can't control the dragons. The problem is that the dragons make any conflict a foregone conclusion! SHE HAS DRAGONS! WHAT IS SHE GOING TO LOSE A BATTLE TO SOME KNIGHTS OR WIGHTS?

also since were spoiled itt:

- i thought the high fantasy stuff w/ bran was p good, i liked the revelation about 'a thousand eyes and one' and the generally creepy atmosphere under the old earth

- the ending to jon's arc in this book was so so so terrible

Jon's arc was completely terrible thoughout.

yeah i dug the bran stuff. kept expecting him to holler @ ppl thru the trees

"yo theon"

he did tho?

xxp i disagree! i thought much of the stuff about the difficulty in dealing w/ the burdens of leadership was p good. dude was stuck in a hard, shitty job with few resources and even fewer good options tryna balance half a dozen competing loyalties and obligations! fuck treading water dude accomplished a lot all things considered imo

& i wouldnt have wanted to read a book where getting all that shit done was a breezy or a song or some shit, kid earned it. hell even the part where he completely ignored the ~ominous foreshadowing~ seemed p reasonable given how retarded it was to ceaser him

xp to max - theon heard the weirwoods at winterfell calling his name. i thought was a pretty explicit ref to bran watching events. i think he spoke to jon too, maybe? someone else. i remember thinking it was cool that although bran's chapters were dropped part way through his presence was acknowledged.

lamp, it seemed like treading water because it was the same thing over and over, stretched thin.

yeah i got that, meant "waiting for" not "expecting"

oic. anyhow, i thought nicely handled. could've been overdone.

lamp, it seemed like treading water because it was the same thing over and over, stretched thin.

yeah that seems to be the more common reaction idk i thought it made sense that it was a little repetitive/painful, its a process &c &c.

have no idea if the timeline works or not but curious whether bran (or i guess bloodraven but why wld he care?) had been speaking to/watching arya and sansa during their time in the godswoods

in the tree he exists outside of time. trees know nothing of your puny human time.

jon's arc was a little water-tready but compared to danaerys and tyrion it was like [something really plot-heavy]

well i just spent way too long reading the westeros.org message boards

i may actaully stop reading this thread until i've finished the book! i guess that makes me more invested than i thought, i don't usually care about 'spoilers'

ok i just finished this. sadly it seems like he's never going to recapture the tremendous momentum of plot he had going by the end of book 3. he's also kind of lost his ability to surprise; the only things that got me in this one were the Aegon reveal and Jon getting killed off prematurely after a shitload of foreshadowing of his importance wrt the mystery of his parents etc etc

and Theon basically stole the show in this one, his chapters were far and away the most enjoyable.

this book is making me more and more mad the more i think about it

Yeah, it definitely grows worse in the memory

alright so now that i've slept on it:

i don't want to accuse GRRM of 'making it up as he goes along' but it's really starting to feel this way. it's pretty clear at this point that he doesn't actually have an overarching plot pinning everything down, it's just 'here's some stuff that happens to these characters' and every time a character like Cersei or Melisandre gets given POV chapters and shoved from 'evil' to 'neutral' kinda reinforces that. i think Jaime is the only character whose transformation actually felt correct and not just a 'oh, you thought this person was bad? let's pan out a bit and show you someone even worse'. and i think he's hit a dead end on that now with Ramsay Bolton so hopefully it'll stop.

also there's absolutely nothing in the first 4 books that even gave the slightest hint or foreshadowing that Rhaegar's kid was still alive, to the point where it almost feels like he turned the story in on itself at the last minute just because he realized nothing interesting was happening in the existing character arcs.

but yeah anyway i'm still enjoying reading these, its just a bummer that it's lost the sense of purpose that was there through the end of book 3

Not quite true about Aegon. Most people are assuming he's the "mummer's dragon" of Quaithe's prophecy and Dany did have a vision of a cloth dragon on poles in the House of the Undying

i read somewhere that he had everything up through the red wedding planned out before he began book 1, and has been making it up as he goes since. even if thats wrong its what it feels like!

I buy that. I remember reading a while back an interview with GRRM where he said he didn't want to pull a Lost wrt finishing the series, which suggested to me that he didn't have any idea where he was going with the story. Oh well, at least it's unlikely that everyone is really in heaven/purgatory/whatever.

Turns out the whole thing was a dream Hodor was having

i think the best way for him to redeem things at this point is to resolve all the Mereen stuff in the first 100-200 pages of the next book and send all those characters back towards Westeros nice and quick, even if it means ignoring them for half a book while they make the journey. i don't think anyone really cares about the slavers' bay subplot and i just don't see him wrapping up all the loose ends in 2000 more pages otherwise.

the jon thing seems weirder the more i think about it, since i had always assumed he was one of the 5 'untouchable' characters (the other 4 being dany, tyrion, bran, arya)

Yeah but he's not dead!

i have a sneaking suspicion dany wont even make it back to westeros till the end of book 6/beginning of book 7, which would be incredibly unfortunate

as alex in sf points out, if the gang shows up in westeros right away its like game over

I've kind of been assuming that one or more of the various factions are gonna get control of a dragon for themselves to even up things a little.

yeah i guess thats the point of victarion

im trying to think of positive things to say about it now

i think ramsay bolton is his most successful villain so far, dude is completely ott

heh, i kinda disagree--i mean he's "fun" but i vastly prefer the uhhh "believable" villains like the lannisters

i should say that i actually *like* the cersei p.o.v. chapters, i dont think they absolve her of being a bad guy but its nice to think about her motivations a little bit. one of the best things martin does in the series--and he does it well in this book too, actually--is slowly reveal the way that personal & political motivations are shaped.

the most obvious being how you start out believing that rhaegar was a horrible person who kidnapped and raped lyanna stark and only as you hear more an the story goes on do you realize that its much more complicated

(i mean some of it is kind of obvious and not particularly interesting, like learning that tywin lannister is an asshole because his wife died)

I much prefer Roose as a character to Ramsay.

oh me too but roose isn't particularly a straight-up Bad Guy? its hard to tell what his goals are if there are any beyond ruling the north

like i could definitely imagine him getting a POV chapter

Yeah, that's why i like him

one of the best things martin does in the series--and he does it well in this book too, actually--is slowly reveal the way that personal & political motivations are shaped.

yeah this is otm w/ the caveat that he can sometimes end up being too schematic w/ this stuff. like it makes sense that tywin's father was a notoriously weak and incompetent ruler so hes spent his life overcompensating for that but not every character needs some clearly explained motivation rooted in their personal history. & i think he does underplay how important institutions & wider social forces are in shaping ppl's motivations/character.

"did you see how long it will take us to reach Meereen?"
"You are eager to behold the world's deliverer?"
"Not me," said Tyrion. "For me, it is all about the olives. Though I fear I may grow old and die before I taste one."

shit is basically sent to try me imo

Sucks for him that the SON OF THE HARPY burned all the olive trees!

WHO IS....
THE HARPY....
ONLY HIS SON KNOWS!

Fucking stupid.

its just insane to me--storm of swords had 3 times as many actually significant plot developments than the last two books combined

This statement from max upthread is spot on. So much needless repetition and stretched out bullshit.

I assume Melisandre is going to make Jon an undead dude like what Beric was made into by his red priest. Maybe he'll be the "reborn lord of light" from her prophecy.

Regardless, I'm afraid it'll be as lame as the Quentyn, the Prince of Yawn.

Sad to say that the best thing about this book is I'm done and now I can read something better.

as of page 632 this is my favourite entry in the series since the first, i think

I agree with mostt of the criticisms itt but I enjoyed this

rn i am feeling mad about the character "penny the dwarf"

yeah i had absolutely 0 interest in that character or really any of tyrion's arc after he got dragged away from Aegon Crew

aw, no happy ending for Tyrion? you guys are mean

j/k Penny was terrible, I was rooting for the lions

I didn't really have a problem with the epilogue beyond wishing Varys had just said, "your family will ruin the kingdom; I'm sorry" and then left Kevan to his murderkids; that speech went on for way too long.

i am basically never going to get around to finish this, skimmed the thread and stopped because apparently jon dies? oh well --

anyway, what lamp said about the series not really being about anything anymore seems v much true: but this volume seems more comfortable with its essential irrelevancy than any of the others. more or less convinced that at some point he's going to go 'okay, nine books it is then' though.

but yeah the idea in the first place was something like 'what if epic fantasy had to deal with realpolitik', right? but his continuing uselessness with geography, economics, &c. is making that recede into the distance. like the iron bank of braavos (which is, what, the only bank in the world?) seems to operate basically like your local branch of natwest, if natwest just happened to be in persia. also continuing to enjoy ansible ravens, plus i like that the white ppl of giant medieval england are born with a heartfelt moral opposition to slavery and everyone else ever thinks it is okay, that is a nice detail george

yet it's the first book that the free cities and slaver's bay and so forth assumed any kind of reality for me (maps helped) -- i don't think they're less plausible than westeros. they speak different languages and everything! i don't know, westeros's continent-wide monoculture continues to seem incredibly silly to me (there's this sense of a rather erratic zoom lens; the scale doesn't ever really work -- the amount of time taken to get from point a to point b is basically always invented; the sizes of armies, of cities are ridiculous to think about) -- the rest of the world at least seems to acknowledge that people speak different languages and stuff -- i would probably be happy to read about tyrion's random adventures in foreignland for a fair length of time, however dull the rest of the scooby gang would have to be

like, this world seems like it ought to operate like helliconia or something (nb. one wonders if martin got the idea for the long seasons there, or if it's his own personal astronomical justification for how they work)

also the burned olive trees bothered me and not for the reason that the other mentions of olives bother me. actually he's doing really well on the olive thing, i think that is actually why i like this book more than any since the first

&&& now i'm reading the thread. hm

"and of course i knew all along you were none other than Jon Connington" WHO?

― Number None, Tuesday, 19 July 2011 21:32 (1 week ago) Bookmark

cosign

Not to mention I don't think he has any idea how he is going to integrate the Walking Dead part of the storyline with the Clash of Kings one (or if he's even going to try.)

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Wednesday, 20 July 2011 01:07 (1 week ago) Bookmark

i think my problem with books 2 thro 4 is that the clash of kings plotline is really a sideshow to his 'larger plot'? & his overinvestment in it (dude really likes the war of the roses) is really the progenitor of the difficulties caused by dropping the original schema for the series

finished it. might as well have stopped two hundred pages away, in some ways. not really a fan of cliffhanger endings to thousand-page novels

i haven't read this because i stalled out 2/3rds through book 4 and everything thomp says is what i hoped wasn't coming. i loved this guy's sordid and intricate "realism" and the scrupulous Shading he hands out to all his characters, but as the story gets bigger it brushes the rafters of his idea of history.

which turns out to be mostly "wealthy white people and/or their dispossessed bastards bicker over a succession while in the orient a prophecy is coming true", which was totally cool for a while.

the succession/maedaevael politicks stuff is still the best stuff

which is kind of why its weird to me that danaerys' arc is so boring. youd think his strength would be the castle subterfuge! but instead meereen is repetitive and boring.

i think one problem is that we all know danaerys is going to return to westeros so its hard to get invested. it feels like a prequel almost, at least with the same lack of anything at stake

"oh no she is going to marry [some guy with forgettable oriental name] and then he will get killed eventually"

anyway everyone in this thread otm

^^^p much

just finished. theon bits were great, arya bit was dumb (though i was glad to see that he's finally pulling nymeria back into the mix), the mereen bits draaaaaaaaaaaged (and i thought they dragged in book 4, too), the dorne stuff was stupid and seemed to serve only to loose the dragons, the stuff at the wall oscillated between interesting and boring (it's kinda the only place that has any tangible connectons to the events/"feeling" of the preceding novels), and the varys reveal was hilar

i'm p sure jon is dead-dead, and has jumped into ghost or something---the whole skinchanger guy showing up seems to have been to remind the reader that ps jon can do that

also i'm guessing that the letter from the bastard is false. i know grrm likes to have battles and important stuff happen off-screen and suddenly, but that just seemed ~tooooooo~ pat.

i've been waffling over whether or not ramsay actually wrote it, or if it's some ruse by mance, but i sincerely doubt the contents are true, regardless.

if it's ramsay, then he's just being a nutter. my guess is that there was no battle. if ramsay actually wrote it, the motivation could be shrewd or totally zany. if mance wrote it, then it might be because he was trying to provoke a reaction from jon (why, though, i'm not sure). if it's some machination of melisandre's, though, it might make sense? like, goad jon into making a brash and unpopular move because it'll get him knifed by his men.

i dunno. good thing there's 21 pages of message board over at westeros.org to read o_O

There is no way Stannis lost that battle if it actually happened IMO. I just thought it was the Bastard being cruel because he could.

Dear BASTARD

also o_O at the return of the mountain

Kingsguard should probably have a more stringent background check

What makes you think there is something wrong with Robert Strong's credit score?

guys guys guys i just finished and, uh, what the hell?

Have you read the thread?

the issues i had weren't with the water-treading, they were with the totally-at-random plot developments, and the fact that nothing that happened mattered

arya: still doing the same thing as in the last book
tyrion: wandering, mad, now a mercenary again, same as first book
jon: still alone at the wall, besieged and compromised, same as first book
cersei: compromised, powerless, same as the last book
varys: plotting, playing the long game, same as the last book
martells & tyrells: putting pieces on the board, same as the last book
dany: stuck w/ the dothraki, same as the first book
stannis: noble but probably hopeless and lost: same as the first book,
jaime: not really in the book
brienne: not really in the book
catlyn: not really in the book
rickon: not really in this book
sansa: not really in this book
littlefinger: not really in this book

"nothing that happened mattered" = water-treading, but yeah, glad to see were on the same page

yeah, i just read top to bottom. kinda feel like the problem isn't with THIS book, per se, it's that GRRM is holding onto the good stuff for the next book, that he's got an assload of things that are being set up, but characters need to be moved into place for this to plausibly happen. seems to me that Feast for Crows started his constipation, and that Dance for Dragons is the big sideways shit that clears out the system for the onslaught of shit that will happen in 6 & 7

I'd like to believe that but i honestly don't think he knows what he's doing anymore. Stuff like Rickon being on Skagos, you just know he has no fucking idea what he's supposed to be doing there.

I sympathize with GRMM a lot here, in that he's clearly having some kind of legitimate plotting/storyline-synchronizing trouble with regard to all of the threads he's created. I think he's as clear as anybody else that not a lot of active stuff happens in books 4 and 5, besides consolidation of political power for the new players, and an eroding of the old order. And this is important, too –– but books 4 & 5 could have accomplished it as one volume. His (over-)frequent use and insertion of the word cyvasse is kind of a hand-tipper, for me, of of how he sees his job: arranging pieces in secrecy before revealing the starting position for the 'second' plot. I suspect that the final order of the book is in a humungous battle between the forces of Ice and Fire (either one one side, or together), and that the players are going to line up one one side or another for a giant pitched War (as opposed to the ugly feudal conflict of 1-3).

And since he's created the expectation that every thread receives some kind of closure, he's got to follow through now. I *don't* think that the Rickon omission is accidental, though. His character – and the weird feral roughness of Shaggydog in II and III, are prefiguring something that probably looked great in a grander scheme, but is conspicuously absent now.

yeah all that sounds otm to me

I *don't* think that the Rickon omission is accidental, though.

well i think it all goes back to the fact that he had originally planned to just skip fwd a bunch of time and then felt he couldnt cuz like, i imagine w/e he had planned w/rickon hinged on him not being a toddler, yknow?

cuz as it is hes mostly just interesting a plot device or a pawn for the different non-stark factions in the north, rather than as an actual pov character

he's gonna be a baddy isn't he

hope so. think arya might too?

there are no true bad guys only children raised by wolves and cannibals

I think that a lot depends on Sansa. She's the only Stark left?

Ned = dead
Catelyn = undead
Robb = dead
Jon = undead?
Bran = tree
Arya = nobody
Rickon = whoevenknows

Jon's a wolf now

man i hope remy's right and the next two books will be fuckin awesome. i think he still has it in him! still dont understand why he didnt just go ahead with his time-skip idea but wv

Jon's a wolf now

yeah I'm with this too

this did not occur to me. I assumed Ghost was dead in the ice cell? Also I can imagine Bran and Jon joining forces to lead a warg army. I want to restate my idea that each of the 7 faces of the gods will have an avatar, either explicitly or implied. Maybe this is a reach, but as I see it now

Jaime's the Father
Brienne's the Maid
Stannis the Stranger
Dany the Mother
Catelyn or Cersei the Crone
______ the Smith (Qyburn?)
________ the warrior

smith: robert's bastard? whatever happened to him?

hes working at the orphan's inn lately the place where brienne killed the biter

smith: robert's bastard? whatever happened to him?

fucking pissed I can't think of a single good Cure joke

OK, braving this thread despite only being 250 pages in -- zomg Lord Too Fat To Sit a Horse has just condemned Davos to death!! -- way more intersting than AFFC, why because the POV characters aren't such creepy black holes of development.

Loving the Bran chapters so far, even though his POVs were the most exasperating for me in books 2 and 3; otoh, Tyrion's have been a slog.

Ok, the last Bran chapter I read was zzzz.

Anyway, I'm more than halfway through, just read the first chapter with the Martells and the Sand Snakes post-Marcella abduction debacle, so I'm guessing that I'm at or reaching the point where the chronology is being advanced. (Not sure if I'm at the "new" material yet, since the Martells haven't seemed to have heard about Cersei and Margaery getting locked up... which brings up another question -- Cersei's scheme that Prince Doran describes about going to KL with his son and getting ambushed by outlaws on the way -- was that mentioned in AFFC?)

http://i.imgur.com/vN9KS.jpg

i finally read this, it was alright. i actually liked AFFC more, which surprised me. i think the main reason is that AFFC was mostly westeros, which is a milieu that martin is clearly way more comfortable writing about. plus the little character details were more interesting there

theon's POVs were the strongest, i thought. i actually liked penny. i may be the only one.

felt really gypped that we didnt get tyrion & dany meeting. that was the big thing i was looking forward to

hes written himself into a corner with those dragons. they're flying nukes. he's constantly contriving ways to keep them out of the action, and that kind of artificiality in the plotting has generally been something he's decent about avoiding - one of the hallmarks of the series at its best is the presence of consequences that feel natural and earned

xxp i disagree! i thought much of the stuff about the difficulty in dealing w/ the burdens of leadership was p good. dude was stuck in a hard, shitty job with few resources and even fewer good options tryna balance half a dozen competing loyalties and obligations! fuck treading water dude accomplished a lot all things considered imo

& i wouldnt have wanted to read a book where getting all that shit done was a breezy or a song or some shit, kid earned it. hell even the part where he completely ignored the ~ominous foreshadowing~ seemed p reasonable given how retarded it was to ceaser him

― 404 (Lamp), Tuesday, July 19, 2011 9:50 PM (5 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is sorta what i liked about dany's POVs tbh. when i read her first chapter and it was nothing but introducing complications to her little conquering spree, i thought it was a very apt development - i think other writers would've been tempted to treat yunkai, astapor and meereen as occupied territories on a Risk board, instead of places with the kind of history and self-interest that would make it impossible for some kid calling herself the unburnt to just sweep through and make them play by her rules with zero complications. and i think showing dany struggle with ruling helps to keep her from becoming overly idealized

of course it all drags on way too long (hes trying to mirror an irl quagmire [ITS IRAQ!!!! MEEREENS IRAQ~!!!!!] and got stuck in a narrative one), and makes you question whether adding more 'complications' is what this series needs in any way

jons POV was more of a bummer for me because it was sorta boring how he handled everything with aplomb, and it's a bummer to have ~the lonely burden of command~ reiterated so much, with all the interesting supporting characters in jon's life either being killed or sent off. by the time tormund giantsbane shows up its a massive relief to have a character around who actually laughs and smiles. which is what i was doing when that no-good Snow finally got a knife in his stupid gut!!! im sure hes not really dead though so w/e

i enjoy this post and its accompanying diagrams

i thought snow might be another undead player? tho tbh i'm not sure that's any more interesting, a second time, than a 'and he's not really dead!!' reveal

As long as Dolorous Edd comes out ok, I couldn't give two whits about Jon.

BTW, GRRM put up a chapter for the new one, of course being a spoilerphobe I have stayed well away from it.

i actually liked penny.

going to engrave this on your tomb

There aren't many spoilers in the sample chapter, it's pretty good though

i actually liked AFFC more

me too, although i was also surprised by much of a companion piece this one was to affc and how often they seemed to mirror and i guess inform each other

going to engrave this on your tomb

― max, Monday, January 2, 2012 3:27 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol. i thought her dynamic w/tyrion was gold - the mix of guilt/repulsion/attraction w/which he regards her, the way he despises her for scraping and bowing through life, a fate that he was spared because of his noble birth, the ~hint of romance~ between them. there's a lot of potential there!

his chapters did drag a lot more once she came into the picture though

you didnt think it was too forced and obvious? like i agree with everything youve written but all that ended up seeming mechanical, like it lacked the charm and mystery of good fiction

yeah, no, that's totally fair. one reason it may have been effective for me is that tyrion had spent the previous 500 pages muttering to himself that all women are whores, so the change of focus was refreshing.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/these-last-two-are-gonna-be-real-turds-george-rr-m,26934/

I loved GRRM's crazy post on which nfl teams the seven kingdoms support:

http://grrm.livejournal.com/258190.html

lol that's awesome

One commonality unites all the Seven Kingdoms, and the lands beyond. Everyone everywhere hates the Patriots, and Evil Little Bill.

Oh great, now I have to stop reading these books because he's dissing the Pats.

I like to think he would've said the Cowboys, if only the did not choke (Tony Lolmo).

excerpt from winds of winter fyi

glad to see george is still ridin hard for the unreadable geocities aesthetic

haa i was saying the same thing to someone else

also his blog is on a livejournal

I think the section of society for whom livejournal is automatically embarrassing is actually quite small, is the thing (I mean obv it's the same section as 'people who had livejournals and now don't') (*checks to see if livejournal still exists*)

As a format it had a lot of advantages: still handles 'friends' and 'comments' better than do any of the srs blogging platforms, I think

just to make it clear when i *did this* i was making a joke about livejournal writing styles, you see

*nods in assent*

/derail

haha although now i kinda want to say s.thing abt how grim's garish late 90s online presence is a metaphor for his relaish w/contemp fantasy and his baggy ad hoc structures but i guess i should just ::pantomimes shooting self with invisible gun::

i think derailing is fair, there's not going to be anything relevant to talk about on this thread until i'm in my thirties

*hangs self*

thirties? I'm hoping before my fifties.

'/derail' was just me making another lol old skool internet joke :/

i would happily talk abt HTML-2 all day

personally i just want to talk about x-com

we could always use this to laugh at people making predictions in the tv show thread

mood: annoyed

can't think of a 'current music' gag

current music: olives

*applauds*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X66PDW1Mjf8

So wait, did I see Mountain vs. Viper at the end?

no, you didnt

quit pooping up our thread about poopy novels with your poopy tv show

you poop

Sorry, I should've pooped in the ASOS thread?

how many characters encountered the biggest breasts they'd ever seen in this book

usually just the one, over and over again

character i mean

just finished this... i def feel the same way everyone on this thread did. except for one thing. why the hell did everyone say the theon chapters were great? they sucked and i hated the whole "reek, reek, it rhymes with xxx". that's def one of the things i hated about this, the whole reek, reek thing, tyrion's where do whores go (which he luckily dropped alfway through cos that shit was weak (rhymes with reek)). was he trying to give everyone a catch phrase or something? also,those wordcount graphs upthread reminded me of something i realised during this one which is that sometimes grrm finds an expression he enjoys and then you see it appear every other page (as useless as nipples on a breastplate, worth half a groat etc).

^^^ otm, esp this:

why the hell did everyone say the theon chapters were great? they sucked and i hated the whole "reek, reek, it rhymes with xxx".

For whatever reason, I keep expecting the ASOIAF fandom to not be composed of tasteless mouthbreathers, and they always prove me wrong.

Nnnnggggg my dealer just canceled for tonight, so now I won't get any GoT until next week!

Leee ._.

I guess there's nothing wrong with being a tasteless mouthbreather?

(To be a little more specific, the Theon chapters read like rotely conventional redemption narratives to me, maybe with more sexual degradation.)

I was surprised how much I liked this, having heard bad things about it, though the six-year wait must have been a factor.

I bitched about all the Iron content last time but I was actually left vaguely satisfied by the end and find myself looking forward to where that goes.

Jon Snooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh wait he's probably not dead because reasons.

Finally, some movement on the Meereen story & the dragons.

I wasn't mad on the Theon chapters either, but I did have some sympathy for his character.

VARYS! My God, what an epilogue!

And "much and more" needs including on the wordgraphs.

A lot of people complained about the butchering of Tyrion's character, but I felt like the criticism was partly to do with him being much more sympathetic in the show.

Yeah even though books 4 & 5 both could have used a lot more streamlining (and really should have been one book) I still enjoyed reading them.

i read this again. it was actually a lot better the second time, i guess with aggravating plot turns and digressions being faits accomplis instead of fresh disappointments. still, the overall impression is that grrm found himself with a book and a half while working on feast for crows, leaving him with a few options, and he chose the worst one. the writing is getting lazier too, with grrm clutching many and more of the same tired stock phrases to his small, pale breasts. i guess if it takes that long to write, it is a lot to ask for any rewrites. but, like i said before i started complaining again, i found the book a lot more enjoyable this time round.

tyrion arc is actually great up until penny arrives on the scene. she is such a dreadful addition. i am not sure if she is going to serve some greater purpose, or if grrm threw her in there to illuminate tyrion from a different angle and now she is dead weight that he doesn’t know what to do with (hint: it is the latter). tyrion chapters manage to have enough to them to avoid the pacing malaise that crops up almost everywhere else. jon’s chapters are maybe the worst for this. i guess grrm felt he really had to sell jon getting attacked at the end, so we get those endless variations of tough at the top and the wilding/old skool watch tensions.

the rest of the stuff in the north might be the strongest parts of the book though. davos going to white harbour was great and any time with the boltons is well spent, even if grrm went ott with ramsay. when we get the banners inside winterfell waiting for stannis, the stately pacing finally fits and works perfectly, although i am sure this is a case of the broken clock being right twice a day. and bran north of the wall is okay, although i would have liked more. the set up there with him becoming the next man tree psychic whatever is cool, i can def get behind that. surely he won’t stay there tho. probably gonna got he way of luke leaving dagobah before his training is complete. bran is basically going to be the wizardy character when the old gang gets back together.

mereen…who cares? dany’s story gets progressively less interesting with every outing. it is telling that the only mereen bits i really enjoyed were the couple barristan chapters after she flies off. and the whole quentyn martell story was just thin and awful. maybe it is different if the very mention of dragons does it for you but i would be happier without them. i guess there will eventually be some worthwhile pay off in book 12, dragons vs others, but the going is slow in the meantime.

otherwise there were a lot of bit parts and cameos with variable success. i actually like the iron island stuff and victarion’s couple of chapters were cool, but not strictly necessary. he could’ve just turned up in mereen with the horn, it would have seemed no less tacked on. there is just the one jamie chapter i think, which is a nice window into how new jamie is developing as a person but stuck out oddly otherwise, and ended abruptly with his unsatisfying disappearance with brienne. however, there is an equally brief check in with dorne, but that actually felt important to the flow of the other things happening elsewhere. arya barely shows up but i guess we are supposed to get the impression of time passing while she is at ninja academy. an arya chapter is always a pleasure, anyway. and then there are the couple chapters with cersei, which were excellent, in a way challenging you to enjoy the ugly comeuppance of a character who you’ve been waiting to get theirs. i think that grrm wanted clearly westeros to be in a particularly fucked up state and cersei was his tool to accomplish that, but he couldn’t resist fucking her over, or his own drawn out timeline forced his hand, and that is essentially why he had to kill of kevan at the end, exactly as varys tells it, to stop him from unfucking things up.