Warning: The dragons in this review are named Giant and Spoilers. I have tried to shield most of them from view, but don’t get mad at me if one of them burns you. With this book, it was bound to happen.

This one was a real mudfight. Between me, myself and I.

Me didn’t get beyond “SQUEEE!” for several hundred pages,
Myself, while also trying to get over her grammatically awkward name, came up with the logical reasoning why this reaction was totally okay and based on something other than left over teenage hormones
...and I glared at both of these two delusional fools and tried to figure out what was wrong with them.

With these three in my head, along with GRRM’s cast of thousands, it made for a very messy, crowded and contradictory reading experience. It didn’t take me a week to finish this book because it was long. It took me a week to finish this book because the three people in my head needed to have it out after every chapter and big moment and would not shut up. Needless to say this is going to be a bit of a mixed review. So. Let’s start with the good stuff and get everybody settled in, shall we?

The Good: So, as usual, GRRM’s world is three dimensional (or perhaps more, I might’ve lost track in one of the appendices), sprawling, dirty, pulsing and real. It’s a banner of spices, wine, and gardens in full bloom unfurling. Opening these books is walking into a forest and picking up a handful of dirt, letting it run through your fingers as you start on one of the hundred paths you know are waiting. After six years, it was a thrill to let it envelope me, and at least at first, I was totally fine just letting myself be guided unresisting through the scenery.

I also think that this book has a lot of really good things to say about politics, law, war, and the realities of being a ruler or a subject. The first few chapters seemed a treatise on how fragile the foundations of law are, and in particular international law of any kind. GRRM shows everyone still scrambling from the disasters of Storm of Swords, trying to find some way to survive, after all existing law and order has disappeared. The law is just another chimera is people resort to: using outdated or foreign or superseded laws as weapons, and applying them wildly out of context because that’s the only way they can justify themselves.

He’s even better at talking about the wages of war and the realities of the aftermath. Aside from his squirm inducing descriptions of battle wounds, entrails hanging in bushes, and flies crawling out of eyeballs which, if nothing else, will not let anyone reading forget what war is, GRRM is excellent at showing how the cycle of conflict never, never, ever ends. We’re five books and twenty years on from the rebellion that put the events of Game of Thrones in motion, and there are at least four wars going on and three generations fighting them. The kids die and these old men linger on and on, cherishing plots within plots in hopes of revenge for events that occurred thirty years before. And the thing is that they still matter, because they’re still sitting there in their positions of power, long after the world is supposedly fighting about something else. They will rear their heads and stab the only good man in a viper’s nest because he is threatening them with peace in a way that they have not planned. Peace and war mean nothing next to utopia and imperfections- waiting for it all to turn out just the way they planned is their ultimate payoff for years of humiliations and insults. Old men with all their eggs in one basket ar terrifying. The last chapter of this book was, ultimately, one of the more satisfying (though not as much as it could have been, see below) things in the book- as Varys, poor, forgotten old still powerful, connected Varys who no one could ever entirely control comes out of nowhere. It’s always the butler, you guys. But someone forgot to tell that to the Seven Kingdoms.

It was also great that along with these never ending generational conflicts, there were plots within plots with little tunnels leading to other plots. Those in Plot A might be involved in/aware of B, but certainly don’t know about C, though people in D are certainly aware of A but not B, etc, and are clearly going to have spectacular head-on collisions from flailing about in the dark, or thinking they understood the plan when they were very very wrong. I am a big fan of dropping Life Happens into carefully plotted stories. Just because. Because traffic jams on the interstate don’t know that you have an hour to defuse the bomb, and the lady next door was in a bad mood yesterday. You can’t just trust that you can go through the motions you have planned out and it will be okay- you have to work at each motion and there’s someone to be paid off, distracted, appeased, or avoided at each step.

I also d that this book was an up close and personal look at all the stuff that King Robert was whining about in the first book- winning a kingdom is relatively easy compared to holding it. Winning is hammers and glory and a single purpose, holding is compromising and trudging your feet in the mud to get one inch of what you really want done. In a country where presidential campaigns get longer every year, and the news media prefers to analyze who ‘won’ and ‘lost’ at every political occasion ever, I feel this is not an unimportant insight to bring up and explore. Of course they prefer to concentrate on the gladiatorial aspect- it is easy, clear, and not fraught with moral tangles that would be ‘elitist’ to try to discuss in a complex way on national television. Plus, ruling every day is boring and almost universally depressing. The wages of winning wars are getting what you wish for, over and over again, and finding out that what you wish for is just going to make someone else want to kill you as much as you wanted to kill the guy before. Martin is upfront about the terrible choices available to even a well meaning ruler (though from Stannis to Daenerys, the definition of ‘well meaning’ certainly varies), and the realization that you will never, ever make a choice that will not hurt someone.

A lot of people think that this book could have been skipped over, but I don’t think so. This is a necessary book in an epic that is really, in the end, thousands of pages about the nature of war and kings. Again, a lot of people don’t all the random peripheral characters introduced, and the consequent lessening of the amount of screen time that we spend with old favorites, but I actually d it. Ongoing conflicts and uncertainty will continue to involve more and more people, forced to finally become involved, or become something they weren’t before, and the game board will change day by day according to how desperate people get to live or how irresistible taking advantage of the chaos becomes. There are so many types of wounds, from so many different times and places, and Martin manages to show them all (everything from that excellent moment where Tyrion slaps Penny, which kind of broke my heart a little to the disturbing, hard to read Reek chapters. Do I think that his sprawling, ungainly cast of characters were all necessary? No. Do I think that we needed two books this? No. I also don’t think he probably needed ten years and nearly two thousand pages to do this. In addition, I think that the map he’s laid out for himself is going to cause him problems in the future. But for now, this is an extremely effective book about how surreal, insane and mindboggingly awful war is. That works for me.

All right, now we come to the not-so-good to bad areas. Unfortunately, there were quite a few of these. First of all, while Martin’s world is three dimensional and vivid, he forgot to make his characters that way in this book. This is an odd occurrence. One of his strong points is generally how character focused these books are. But the story’s gotten away from Martin is my opinion. He’s gotten to the point in his series where he needs to start marching people along to a particular place, and people are now becoming signposts, of a sort. I think so many of these characters have now been stuck along a sort of continuum from innocence to corruption, from power mad to submissive, that that’s all that matters about them anymore. Either they are the extreme of innocence (Quentyn, Penny) or they are incredibly worldly wise, and there’s very little room for grey in the middle. Martin’s characterizations are not about people who sing, or a guy who moves his head in a weird way, or a man who must have three eggs every morning, the way you would usually do a character study, but simply what incarnation of power they are. And then he took an overly long time to tell me about their classification. Tyrion is perhaps the exception, and there are several moments that defied this, such as the killing of Janos Slynt, the chapter where the Dorne kid gets burned up, a moment where Barristan Selmy wrestles with his service of Robert, these felt real. Because they were sudden, made sense with characterization, had complex history and motivations behind them, and told me all I needed to know. But with the exception of the Slynt part, he took ten unnecessary chapters to lead up to one good moment. Aside a few moments and Tyrion, Martin tears down any other motivation someone might have for something. There’s no room for a combined grey area of delusion, belief, family, the desire to be good, desire to improve, to make a name, the motivations of guilt and/or grief. It’s always, always, always about power. I don’t think that this is a realistic way of depicting why people act the way they do. Did he maybe take this back with the last chapter? With Varys and his long cherished belief in the prince? I don’t know. Somehow I don’t think so. We’ll have to see in another five years.

Also, although I thought that Martin did make a number of good points (as detailed above), he also spent a thousand pages belaboring four points into the ground, and telling me rather than showing me, most of the time. Or showing me and then telling me later, which was almost worse. One: Everything is ugly/anything that is pretty is evil or doomed (um, the entire book), Two: love is always something else in reality (Tyrion, Quentyn, Daenerys, etc), Three: “words are wind” (EVER AGAIN, TOO SOON), Four: Clothes make the man (Cersei, Tyrion, Arya, Quentyn, Daenerys, the “mummers”). He hit me in the face with these points so many times, it went from being interesting and/or vivid to me wondering what sort of complexes he was working out on the page or asking mself he was just lazy or tired enough by the end of the book to just not care very much, and so repeating himself from earlier. I mean, I have so many questions. For example, why is it that everyone who is beautiful must be punished? I understand the skin deep thing and beauty is definitely a tool in the power game that can be taken away from someone, but why is it that it always, always must be wrong? You’re all about realism- it felt a point, not the random lottery it should be of beautiful people who are nice and those who are jerks, those who are innocent and those who are manipulative. Did we really need Arya’s entire storyline and most of Cersei’s to tell us that people see what you look ? That social rank is all trappings? I don’t think so. And yet, there seemed to be little point other than that.

Also, the bigger issue for me was that, I don’t know how to say this, but I think that Martin has forgotten why we all d him in the first place. Or at least why I do, in large part. Because of his insistence on breaking down delusions and tales and attempting to retell legends with a dose of messy reality. The biggest symbol of this seemed to be his ability to deal with the most difficult reality of all: death. Fantasy and sci-fi genres have a lot of tools at their disposal to ensure that main characters never need to face this permanently. He chose to insist on it, quite effectively, starting right away in GoT. And now, five books laterit seems he’s decided to backpedal on the one thing that made him famous, he can’t live up to the way he helped transform the genre (or part of it) and the others who have followed in the kind of ‘movement’ he began. Guys Joe Abercrombie and Scott Lynch and all the rest. The genre’s moved on from where it was when he first killed Eddard Stark, and it seems he’s moved backwards and he regrets his decision that war and violence have permanent consequences and people who are important and able can die. Jon gets stabbed at the end of the book, but after all the false cliffhangers and people returned from the dead, who reading this ACTUALLY believes he is dead? I haven’t the slightest faith that he is. Nor that Daenerys is in any danger. Nor that Ned or Rhaegar are dead, either. Okay, Ned probably is, but at this point, why not? Why would you go back on the thing you’re most known for? I don't get his thinking. Just getting too attached to characters and exercising his powers as God to bring back anyone he regrets killing now? Maybe this would have been fine if all these books had come out one after the other in the late 1990s, but his audience (including me) has grown up now. I was in my early teen years when I started these books. They shaped my idea of what awesome fantasy was in a lot of ways since they got me so young and impressionable. But even I’m impatient with him now. The trappings aren’t enough to convince me he’s Important in some way. He’s still writing the same book he did in 1996, and not writing it as well.

I mean, I did try to put myself in his shoes. He’s probably been surrounded at conventions by fanboys and girls for ten years now, and in addition, my understanding is that he has been very lightly edited by his publishing house for at least the last two volumes because they just want to get the things out on the market and make some money. I can’t conceive that he gets challenged a great deal about whatever he writes, so he has little motivation to think that he’s doing anything less than perfect. I mean, I don’t know, it’s just a conjecture. At the opposite end of the spectrum, he’s held onto this book for so long and the hype has become so breathless that he must’ve felt the overwhelming need for some good old fashioned shock and awe. Hence those silly cliffhangers at the end of each chapter, and the amount of people getting brought back from the dead. I can see someone getting to that point after wracking their brain for six years to come up with something so startling we’d wait another half decade for the next one. I can only imagine the pressure. He wrote on his blog constantly about untangling the Meereenese knot. And the thing is.. after six years I don’t think he did. I think he wrote about the knot itself. Is that what I just paid for? 1000 pages of you telling me why you couldn’t move the plot forward? After 900 pages of doing that in the last book? I have a lot of patience for big books, and as I stated I don’t in principle mind peripheral characters, but I think we have to admit that he’s making his task in moving forward all the harder by introducing all these new threads and names, when he doesn’t even know what to do with the main storyline. Oh, maybe that’s why he did it. Just to stall. I don’t know.

In the end, my reaction to this book was, “Oh. So GRRM is just a normal fantasy writer now. Okay.” That's pretty much the point. His methods and plotting is no longer vanguard, different, or really, much above average for the genre. I mean, that isn't a horrible put down. Says a lot about the quality of at least the first three books, or at least my experience of them. It’s just run of the mill fantasy, from a plot perspective, with some writing skill and ideas that rise above, at times.

Just not enough times. Not nearly enough times.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’ll be in line with all of you for Winds of Winter when it comes out sometime in my old age. He’s earned that much, and at this point, his books have been big milestones of my adult reading life. I just expect that I will be reading it with more realistic expectations, rather than with the wide eyed breathless staying-up-all-night attitude that I dove into this one with.

Sorry, y’all. I won this particular mudfight. And I didn’t even really want to. Damnit.
* * *
UPDATE: Where all my nerds be at? BECAUSE THIS JUST GOT REAL: http://georgerrmartin.com/if-update.html
* * *
ORIGINAL: Amazon NOW claims that this book is coming out next fall. I'll believe it when I see it in my hands, George. Until then, I will assume this is another in your WEB OF LIES.fantasy-and-scifi fiction grand-opera ...more664 s4 comments Nataliya855 14.2k

Dear George R.R. Martin. Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You may have killed my favorite character. Prepare to die roll in dough as we continue buying your brick-sized creations.


(The above is what you'd expect from a book titled "A Dance with Dragons." Disclaimer: For the vast majority of this book's pages, none of it happens.)Yes, I have a few problems with this latest installment in GRRM's neverending magnum opus. I have high standards for GRRM after ASOIAF 1-3. Hey, I read GRRM before I ever read Tolkien. He showed me that it was okay to hold fantasy to high standards, for crying out loud! And now I am disappointed. *sadface* So allow me to use this review space for the gripe-fest. A thousand-plus pages doorstopper (this book can easily serve as a self-defense weapon in a dark alley) - and yet the story advances by a few millimeters at best. Nothing gets resolved. The characters spend pages and pages going about mundane tasks, participating in endless drawn-out conversations, pissing, eating, drinking, pissing, whoring, eating some more, pissing again. Is it supposed to make the story GRRM's trademark "gritty and realistic"? Seriously, I have not encountered this much information about bodily functions and food outside of nephrology textbooks and Food Network. This overload of description of landscapes, clothing, banquets, people, and food makes me snooze. FILLER! And it makes me wonder whether any editors AT ALL were involved in the creative process.


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GRRM's trademark move is ending everything with an "OMG CLIFFHANGER!!!!!". Maybe it stems from his TV-writing days: the notion that the readers will tune back in, despite nothing really happening in the entire episode, only if the hero is left hanging off the cliff at the end?



That's what this book felt to me: pages and pages of very little happening, of a narrative stagnation, of endless repetitive conversations. And then, with a few chapters left to go - BAM! POW! BOOM! ( Dragons are released! Jon (maybe) dies! Dany flies Drogon and meets Dothraki! Aegon invades! Jaime trades one cliffhanger for another! Which guarantees that we will read the next book. Cheap and lazy trick, Mr. Martin.

In the meantime, I see another Tyrion or Dany or Quentyn or Davos chapter and get a nagging feeling - wait, haven't I read this already?
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WORDS ARE WIND - GRRM seems to hammer this message in on what feels every other page. Yet if this book is any indication, given the lack of overall storyline development, HE HAS PASSED MORE THAN ENOUGH OF IT.


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Neverending repetition in this book is grating. Just to name a few: "Words are wind", "leal", "neeps", "where do whores go?", "kissed by fire", "Reek rhymes with...", "jape", "nipples on a breastplate", "kill the boy", "it is known", "must needs"... Enough already! I miss the times when I was just eyerolling at "You know nothing, Jon Snow". Which makes its appearance here as well, by the way.
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My problem with this book is that I expected a story. You know, where things are happening and storylines advance. VERY LITTLE OF THAT HAPPENS. Very few of the storylines led anywhere. Those that advanced somewhat were Jon's, Dany's, and Bran's (and the first two should have been trimmed a bit), and Theon/Reek's story was fascinating in its horror (Ramsay Snow Bolton joins the list of most hated characters EVER). And yet we are still barely a step away from the events that transpired back in Storm of Swords.

And as for other storylines... Tyrion gives us a travelogue, and nothing that we could not have covered in a single chapter. Arya is doing pretty much the same stuff as before. Jaime's chapter traded one cliffhanger for another, and frankly, just Cersei's chapters, was not necessary. Davos's and Quentyn's arcs could have been summed up with a sentence each in somebody else's POV. The ironborn, Dorne, Barristan - why were they needed in this book, again?


A pictographic summary of ADWD.
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Which leads me neatly to what I think is the root of all evil. GRRM's trademark move number two is supposed to be killing off characters. I call BS on that. Yes, he killed a few protagonists. BUT IN THEIR STEAD HE UNFAILINGLY SPROUTS WHAT FEELS LIKE DOZENS MORE.

It seems that everyone and their grandmother is getting a POV chapter these days, which bogs down the story quite a bit. I really only care about the characters that we met in the first couple of books. I do understand the need to occasionally give us a perspective through a fresh set of eyes. That's cool. But here is a problem: (a) Do I really need an insight into the head of EVERYONE? Leave me with some mystery, please.

(b) Too many cooks spoil the soup. I lose track of the overall story which comes to a standstill dealing with its ever-expanding cast.

(c) The entire story arc of Quentyn Martell. Why? The details of his voyage were unnecessary to the story. His ultimate act was interesting, yes - so why not dedicate just ONE chapter to him turning into a crisp? The story by now seems to have sprawled too wide and out of Mr. Martin's control. How can he satisfactorily wrap up this monster of a story with only two more planned volumes unless he pulls a Steven King in The Stand and suddenly kills off most of his POV characters? Which raises a question - why the need to introduce them in the first place?

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Martin is still a better writer than many out there - despite the gripe-fest above. But this was a mostly unsatisfying read which could have benefited from some serious editing and trimming of the verbal diarrhea. I will still read the next installment (when it's out, in a decade or so) - mainly because I need some resolution to this story despite its declining quality. I hope the next book will resemble the first three volumes. 3 stars.2012-reads hugo-nebula-nominees-and-winners locus-winner642 s4 comments Michael274 801

Tyrion Lannister's horse was rubbing him raw as they rode onward, the branches of the trees above them swaying in a branch- way. Ravens flew about among them, and clouds of dust hovered halos around the hooves of their steeds.

Wiping sweat from his brow, Tyrion spoke to yet another minor character you've never seen before. "I hear that the Morvin and the Shornpel clans have sided with Darvus Farier from the great city of Bee Eff Eee, and are pushing forward late king Baratheon's bastard's scullery maid's uncle's melanoma as the true heir to the throne."

The minor character chortled as he spooned up some of the newt egg soup. It had been spiced with cloves and the lightest touch of pepper, and leaves of cilantro floated corpses upon its surface. Eating a side of braised elk spleen and a hunk of bread with a cheese sauce, the minor character said, "If so, even more of the action is ly to shift away from the viewpoint characters, and THEN we'll see whether any of the characters from the first volume even make it to the final book, A Trample of Turtles."

"But," Tyrion pondered aloud, eating inch-long prawns from a trencher filled with a hot butter sauce, "If the Starks send nine hundred of their men from the outer borders of ThatoneplaceImentionedOnce, and they move down toward the Lannister forces on Dragon's Fjord before the Lannister forces can unite with the Great Army of the Unwashed Men, perhaps they can defeat the bunjillion soldiers in the south now being ushered in the general direction of King's Landing by that one other guy. I can't remember his name. You know, the one?"

The minor character shrugged, tearing a piece from his bread bowl and dipping it into a small puddle of balsamic vinegar. "You forget about the people beyond the wall, and the dragons in the east, and Bobbert, King Robert's mechanic. He now claims to have been conceived with the king's own cum, and thus has a claim to the throne."

Tyrion scratched his chin. "That does throw a new light on how convoluted things are becoming."

They continued riding, their horses traveling gradually. More branches passed overhead. It felt as if the traveling had gone on indefinitely, and the audience was more than capable of empathizing. Tyrion munched on fresh radishes and drank a bold red wine from a skin hanging from his belt. The wine was rich, with plum flavorings and an oaky aftertaste.

"But," said Tyrion, suggesting another possible set of things that could happen. He made reference to an event that happened nine-hundred pages ago, but remembered it wrong, then postulated what the possible outcome could be. They rode onward. Minor Character munched on some pine nuts.

SUDDENLY, SOMETHING EPIC WAS ABOUT TO HAPPEN!

Chapter 2

Eudaknow An Eudongivafuck, minor noble from Shelbyville, rubbed his temple, filled with anxiety at being introduced as a new viewpoint character 9,600 pages into the series. How would he live up to the amazing characters who had come before him and died so tragically? Perhaps because he had a valid claim to the throne, Having been the barista in King Robert's favorite coffeehouse. Yeah, that was the ticket. Riding his steed/ship across the desert/glenn/ocean/alley, he traveled gradually, wondering when he would arrive. Discussing with the others upon the ship, he theorized about possible outcomes of the conflicts in Westeros, all the while eating a succulent pomegranate, red juices running down his chin he'd just been chewing on afterbirth.

SUDDENLY, SOMETHING AMAZING WAS ABOUT TO HAPPEN!

Chapter 3

The titties tittied, jiggling with much breastful bosomliness. The oiled girls with Brazilian waxes down below wrestled and licked each other's areolas, but it was only to help you become immersed in a realistic depiction of the ancient world. As the breasts bosomed with titful abandon, Tyrion ate shark flank. It had been buttered, cooked for twenty minutes at 345 degrees, then drizzled with a lemon sauce and allowed to cool for five minutes. The flavor was only mildly fishy, and Tyrion burped, taking another drink of the white zinfandel before digging into the raspberry crepes with a chocolate fondu. "But still, Measter, you must understand the possibilities of that event rely on Stannis placing all of his trust in the moody lords of the upper northwest. They are known for being fickle and not holding to their oaths, and Stannis is more ly to try and seize the Port of Skulls. Will the king's ninth bastard even survive that battle? If so, at what cost to Stannis? Plus, what happens if the Lannisters and the Starks team up, and get Batman to join them, and Stannis can only get Iron Man? What then?"

Measter laughed at the dwarf. "That may be, dwarf. You might be short and a dwarf, but you have a mind as sharp as a blade. But you are very tiny, in case that had escaped anyone's notice. Even so, if Stannis enlists Dumbledore, Gandalf and Belgarion, he will be more than a match for the team-up of Lannister, Batman and Stark. Even if they get Rocky Balboa and Wesley Willis on their side."

Tyrion watched the boobs. "But what about Joshua Lyman? Because he could totally take Dumbledore, and maybe Iron Man."

Tyrion ate a lamb gyro, thinking back to the exciting thing that happened after the last chapter ended, thinking of it in an ambiguous and incomplete way. Since it had been 100 pages since his last chapter, you had entirely forgotten what the exciting thing at the end of the chapter was anyway, so it was not much of a loss. "Well," he said, "Now that all of the titties have jiggled sufficiently, we must needs be back on the road."

They rode their steeds along a road, hooves raising up halos of dust, the ravens flittering about in the branches and saying what words they had picked up from the conversation.
"Death!"
"Dumbledore!"
"Titties!"

The half-man, who was short and a dwarf, wiped the sweat from his brow.

SUDDENLY. . . most-popular- sf-fantasy607 s Andrew99 21

"Words are wind," says George R. R. Martin (GRRM) no less than 13 times in the latest installment of his A Song of Ice and Fire series. In this incredibly windy tome there was very little advancement of the overall story and no resolution to any of the myriad plot threads. Instead, most of the book followed characters travelling, yet in its 1,000+ pages only one reaches his destination while the rest are still travelling.

Words are wind, and GRRM is a windbag. His predilection for overwriting is ridiculous; an editor was desperately needed and sorely missed. Had this book been properly edited, we might have been saved 129 appearances of GRRM's new favorite words: leal, niello, neeps, nightsoil, serjeant, jape, and nuncle. Or spared 151 repetitions of annoying phrases :
Where do whores go?
You know nothing, Jon Snow.
words are wind
it is known
much and more
little and less
must needs
a man grown
a woman grown and flowered
nipples on a breastplate
Reek, rhymes with...
(he/she/name) was not wrong

GRRM s to flood the reader with lists. Lists of dishes served at every meal, the exact order people entered and left rooms, a list of over 40 heraldic shields that used to hang in the Shieldhall of Castle Black: Hundreds of knights meant hundreds of shields. Hawks and eagles, dragons and griffins, suns and stags, wolves and wyverns, manticores, bulls, trees and flowers, harps, spears, crabs and krakens, red lions and golden lions and chequy lions, owls, lambs, maids and mermen, stallions, stars, buckets and buckles, flayed men and hanged men and burning men, axes, longswords, turtles, unicorns, bears, quills, spiders and snakes and scorpions, and a hundred other heraldic charges had adorned the Shieldhall walls, blazoned in more colors than any rainbow ever dreamed of. I do not lists, GRRM. I would not them here or there. I would not them anywhere. I do not lists. I do not them, GRRM.

GRRM has become so well-known for killing off characters that he made a joke of it when he introduced a brand new POV character in the prologue, spent 33 pages (on my ereader) developing the character, then killed him off at the end of the prologue. All of which was entirely pointless to the story.

GRRM ruined two of my favorite characters. Tyrion has become a whiny obsessive with daddy issues. Danaerys went from a strong-willed, self-righteous, slaughtering conqueror to a helpless, love-torn, indecisive, ineffectual character from a Jane Austen novel. GRRM cannot seem to write a strong female character unless she's a warrior (Brienne, Ygritte, Arya). He's disturbingly focused on tits and cunny (his word).

Robert Jordan's Crossroads of Twilight has often been called "Characters Show Up", which would be an equally appropriate title for GRRM's A Dance with Dragons . I couldn't put it down, not because it was great, but because I couldn't wait to be done with it and move on to a better book. It's sad that's the best thing I can say about it.read-2011625 s2 comments Jayson2,264 3,633

(B+) 78% | Good
Notes: Picks up near the end, but having so many viewpoints waters down tension and makes things difficult to remember.600-plus-pp author-american genre-adult-fantasy ...more602 s Mark LawrenceAuthor 73 books53.4k

Released eleven years ago today!

This is the review I did for the Sunday Express. It only appeared in hardcopy so I can't link it.

Since it's a national newspaper and many of the readers may never have read a fantasy book, let alone the first four in the ASOIAF series, the review is less about this book and more about the series and the author. I hope to make them the gift of a great reading experience.

My rating for the book is set in the context of the alternative works of fantasy on the shelves rather than in an attempt to rank this volume amongst its predecessors (I would say signficantly better than A Feast For Crows - less good than the first three, still excellent)


[Sunday Express review]

By the time you reach the end of George Martin’s A Dance with Dragons you will be nearly two million words into A Song of Ice and Fire, a sprawling epic fantasy series that is for many readers the single most defining work in the genre for a generation. A Dance with Dragons is itself over four hundred thousand words (one thousand printed pages), not that far shy of the whole of The Lord of the Rings or War and Peace - not that literary worth is measured on weighing scales.

Martin’s series, starting with A Game of Thrones, has been a slow-burning phenomenon, dwarfed only by the colossus that is Harry Potter. Right now all the volumes are on the Amazon top twenty list. When A Dance With Dragons was released in hardback last month it immediately became the fastest-selling fiction hardback this year in the UK.

It has probably been the most anticipated (adult) fantasy novel ever published, helped of course by the recent excellent serialisation of the first book by HBO. A significant contribution to the anticipation has been the six-year wait since the last book, a source of controversy and teeth grinding amongst the readership. Internet grumbling about the delay reached such a pitch it prompted Neil Gaiman to blog to fans: ‘George Martin is not your bitch’. Whilst the books may roll out of the printing house on a conveyor belt, the words themselves cannot simply be squeezed out of the author by mounting pressure!

So, has it been worth the six year wait? There was a five-year wait for book four, A Feast for Crows, and many fans felt the novel didn’t fulfill the promise of the first three, making the critical success of book five the focus of still more intense speculation.

Martin’s success stands on the simple fact that he has brought to the fantasy genre the mature skills of realism, characterisation, and observation more commonly associated with literary fiction, and married them to a vivid and endless imagination. His commercial success derives from the fact that the books are addictively enjoyable.

You don’t need to be a reader of fantasy to enjoy Martin’s work. Martin writes primarily about people. You will have fallen in love with, or at least be fascinated by, his characters long before you see your first dragon. By that point you’ll believe in the dragon because you believe in the people through whose eyes you see it.

A Dance with Dragons advances the story with more purpose and scope than its predecessor, reacquainting us with favourite characters (Tyrion, Jon, Dany, and Bran) we’ve not seen since A Storm of Swords (2000). The story ranges across thousands of miles from icy wastes to dusty desert, expanding the incredible diversity of Martin’s world, showing stories on the small scale (Arya’s training) and the grand (Daenerys’ realpolitik). And although the 1000 pages meander through many lives and situations, there are hints at the ultimate convergence and conflict of disparate story threads, a slow building sense of momentum, and finally a rising tension and pace that drives us breathless to the edge of several cliffs.

One quote that stuck with me is “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” And George Martin offers you a fair portion of those thousand right here.

Turning the final page you can only be disappointed . . . to find it is the last, and you’ll immediately want to reach for the next volume. And there maybe lies the rub.

Edit - and 10 years later it's really starting to rub! Here are the books I've published in between book 5 & 6 of this series




Though to be fair, GRRM's books are MUCH longer than mine and sell a lot better too!


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..588 s Jayson2,264 3,633

(B+) 78% | Good
Notes: A mire of minutiae, pointless quarrels in its quiver, with birdshot aim, it's kitten-tame, building fights it can't deliver.audiobook-audible author-american genre-adult-fantasy ...more567 s1 comment Valerie2,031 182

Purchased anew, and laid it beside her bed,
Conflicting thoughts flying through her head.
Afraid almost to crack the covers, read the pages,
What if it was the last book? "No, More," she rages.
What if it wasn't? How long the wait next time?
Five years? Seven? Thirteen? Unlucky, even in rhyme.
First I must reread all the others...
refresh my brain of Snow and all his Brothers.
Sansa is no smarter than I did recall.
Starks should avoid other Kings Halls.
Weddings never make things merry,
The price too high for use of ferry.
Mouse, wolf, frog, fish, crow
Dragon fire will lay them low.



l354 s Petrik735 52.2k

A Dance with Disappointments.

I really thought A Feast for Crows would’ve been the lowest point of the main series. I was wrong because this book didn’t show any sign of improvement. In fact, I thought this was even worse due to the boring setting and unnecessary length of this tome. If it weren’t obvious before, this book displayed Martin’s struggle with writing his main series even more. Realistically speaking, due to the direction of the story in this book, I’m quite confident that A Song of Ice and Fire most ly will never be completed.

“Winter is coming, Jon reflected. And soon, too soon. He wondered if they would ever see a spring.”

Me too, Jon Snow. Me too. I do believe that we’ll get The Winds of Winter eventually, but the planned final book of the series, A Dream of Spring, is indeed a dream.

Picture: A Dance with Dragons by Marc Simonetti



Focusing on a different set of characters geographically, the story in A Dance with Dragons starts simultaneously with A Feast for Crows. It eventually went further beyond the one in the previous installment. How further though? Not by much; definitely doesn’t require a book this massive (400k words) to achieve. The last 15% was great. Yes, once again it ended in a massive cliffhanger—with no sequel in sight—but man the last 150ish (out of 1,100) pages of this book were awesome. The first 85%, however, is a different story.

I honestly don’t have too many things to say other than the parts that didn’t work for me here. The parts that worked for me were so small on the larger scale of things so I'll start with saying that Jon Snow’s POV was great, I was never bored with his storyline. I consider Bran’s and Reek’s POV a pleasant surprise because I certainly didn’t expect to enjoy their POV that much. Seeing Reek suffered repeatedly gave me immense satisfaction. Cersei’s walk of shame was also incredibly well-written and I felt Martin was back at his best in this scene. Just A Feast for Crows, almost all the final chapters of each character were superb. However, to reach them I practically had to REALLY force myself in order to finish this book.

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”

The main reason why I’m disappointed with this one is very simple to talk about: there were too many unnecessary contents. A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons could’ve been easily compressed into one book. The cumulative word count of these two books reached 700k words and yet the actual storyline progressed the least; the content in A Clash of Kings (318k words) alone have so much more significant plot progression compared to these two. There were also too many repetitive phrases. How many times do I have to read the phrases “words are wind,”? I guess Martin was emphasizing how the hundreds of thousands of words in his two books were unnecessary, but still. It was highly infuriating reading Daenerys’s indecisive libido spiraling out of control for hundreds of pages. “I want to fuck him hard,” and “oh no, but I must not show my horniness,” line of thoughts regarding Daario being repeated so many times pissed me off so hard; it felt I was reading a teenage (technically, she is a teenager I know) angst story that's usually found in YA books. Plus, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Tyrion’s POV ended up being one of the most boring POV to read in this book. Not THE most, we have Victarion Greyjoy and the Martell to thank for that, but Tyrion spent almost the entirety of the book getting wasted and asking “where do the whore go?”, to every person he met. C’mon… enough already. Go to a brothel.

No matter how you look at it, proceeding an installment geographically is not a good choice in an epic fantasy. It was very obvious from A Feast for Crows and this book that Martin was stuck in his writing that he had to divide his books this way. Doing this kind of storytelling makes The Winds of Winter extremely hard to write. The characters cast have grown so large—18 POV in this book—pointlessly and now Martin has to make sure that the huge number of POV's he separated in book 4 and 5 both converged and proceed together in the sixth book. There’s no way he can afford another repetition of the divisive storytelling method, especially when the fans have been waiting for eight years for the next book to come out. Book purists have complained a lot about Dorne’s storyline being cut off the TV shows; I disagree with this. What made this book worse for me was how uninteresting all the story beyond Westeros were. I loved the characters and setting of Westeros; I want to read more about them. I don't want to read this Meeren, Volantis, Pentos, or Dorne. There’s a good reason why season 5 of the TV show is filled with the content of book 4 and book 5. A Storm of Swords had to be divided into two seasons because there's so much amazing content in them. Book 4 and 5 is the other way around. When you take away all the repetitive and the boring content, the plot progression of these two books was utterly small and I think the TV adaptation up to season 6 did a better job in making sure the story remains engaging to the viewers.

I may be the odd one here, but I honestly think A Dance with Dragons was even weaker than A Feast for Crows; the pacing of these two books was simply abysmal. I still love A Song of Ice and Fire and Martin’s writing; the first three books in this series were absolutely amazing. I stand by my words that Martin is an extremely important figure in modern fantasy, but this and the previous book were a huge disappointment. I've heard from many readers of the same opinion as I did towards A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons that on reread, their reading experience of these two books improved significantly. I'm looking forward to the day when I reread this series, and hopefully, I sincerely hope I will end up agreeing with them. If I do, I'll rewrite my review for A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons. I don't know how Martin will be able to get his series back on track and I sincerely hope he will be able to. For now, let's just say that I’m glad I've read this book because now I can wait for The Winds of Winter without getting my hopes up.

You can order the book from: Book Depository (Free shipping)

You can find this and the rest of my at Novel Notions333 s1 comment James Broussard49 3

I'm blown away that someone could write a book so long in which nothing actually happens

I wrote a longer review at http://allthenominees.blogspot.com

But it says pretty much the same thing.322 s J. Denton1 review8

PROLOGUE

He awoke to the warmth of sunlight on his face. At last the day had come. He stretched to work out the kinks in his joints and muscles and groaned at the throbbing in his head. On his nightstand lay a bottle of Dornish red, which he downed in one long swallow to clear his mind, wine dribbling down his beard and tunic. He spied the book at the corner of his room where he had hurled it, and nearly threw the bottle too as the rage resurfaced along with his senses.

The book was called A Dance with Dragons, a book that he had vowed to write a review for to publish on Amazon.com. The ending had left him dazed and confused the night before, and he longed to leech the foulness from his blood in the form of a scathing review to warn others of the horrifying tedium that awaited them. But first...

His bladder was full to burst, and he propelled himself to the privy to relieve himself of his heavy load. A steaming stream shot from his hose the boiling vomit of a sick dragon; far more than what he had anticipated. He counted five and ten seconds gone by as he continued to shoot and spurt, and when it ended he sighed in satisfaction. He shook off the last drops and pulled up his smallclothes, mission accomplished, but what was this...

His tummy rumbled.

A dragon's roar erupted from his hind quarters, a sound that bellowed the wet cheeks of thunder itself. The smell was revolting, and flakes of brown and bubbling slime oozed down his legs gravy.

"Farts are wind." He chuckled, saliva running down his beard and undershirt.

CHAPTER ONE

He opened his refrigerator to check its contents. He was hungry, and he was not going to write his review until he was full and sated. Much and more can be done in a day, and he wasn't about to rush himself.

Within were foods beyond count and description, but he was going to try anyway. Two cartons of eggs sat at the top shelf, each carton containing sixteen shells filled with delicious yolk and white. On the shelf below there were meats of every kind: ham and beef and pork, bacon and roast beef and steak, enough to make his mouth water and his stomach jiggle with hunger winds. Yogurts dominated the third shelf of at least three different brands and ten different flavors. Orange juice, apple juice, grape juice, juice of every fruit and flavor. He would not go thirsty, mayhaps. There were also cakes of cheese and chocolate and strawberry short, as well as pies of apple and custard for when he tired of cake. Winter may come, but he would not go hungry. The bottom shelves were for vegetables, cabbages and carrots, broccoli and lettuce, tomatoes and...what...

"Neeps? What the hell are neeps?" He shrugged.

He broke his fast on fried neeps and bacon, scooping them up in week old hard bread that he hollowed out and used as a trencher. He tipped the delicious soup into his mouth, bits of neep and bacon grease running down his chin and robe. When that was done he ate the trencher too, the soggy crumbs clinging to his facial hair. He mopped up the excess grease with his beard, saving it for future consumption. If there was anything he hated more than procrastination, it was wastefulness.

His review was in his mind. He yearned to write it, as that was his true purpose and he despised these bothersome distractions! But first, he had to travel. Surely there was plenty of time. Much and more can be done in a day, after all. Much and more.

CHAPTER FIVE

The ship sailed down the river.

In truth, he was not on a ship, nor was he in a river. But he had always longed to go sailing, and if he could, he would write about it incessantly and without restraint. But as of now, he drove a car, and while there was no river, there was a road, a long strip of gray asphalt that continued on to the vast horizon, leading to his destination, wherever that would be, and oh the Seven only knew when he would get there. The cement was cracked and the paint that divided it chipped and faded, mayhaps from age and use. The buildings passed by in a vague blur, but he could not pay attention to them now. He had to look ahead, or risk getting lost at sea. If I look left I am lost.

the outstretched hand of a giant, a red light loomed before him, forcing him to stop in his tracks. There were three lights in all, red and orange and green. They played in sequence, herding the ships about kings in an ocean court. He wanted to push on past that oppressive red god, but he knew to do so would be a one way ticket to the black cells. And the jail was dark and full of terrors.

He could not afford to risk that, to be held captive for the tenth time some onion smuggler. He had a review to write, and no time to waste. But he would get there, he assured himself. He only had to sail - drive - thrice more. But first comes the setup, and then he would put his pieces to play.

CHAPTER THIRTY

"Good morning, sir. It's good to see you again!"

"Hello, wench." He greeted. On the counter was an assortment of goods and food products. He had enumerated them in excruciating detail the chapter before, but he saw no reason not to do so again. Packs of lunchables were stacked a mountain of prepared meals to lazily break his fasts on on the counter before him. Jugs of milk stood next to them, flanked by bags of cookies and crackers in varying brands and flavors. And oh R'hllord the cheese! Sliced cheese, round cheese, white cheese, blue cheese, string cheese and cream cheese. New pieces of hardbread were grouped to the side, of which he would use as trenchers when they become old and tough as rocks. And-

"That would be thirty-six fifty, sir.", said the wench.

"What?"

"Thirty six fifty. I rang them up while you were describing them. I to pretend we're racing. I always win though." She smiled.

"Ah, I see." His eyes squinted at her, as if seeing her for the first time. Her hair was the color of straw and flowed past her shoulders and held in a band with a cute lion face (LANNISTER!) so as not to be obtrusive, culminating in a widow's peak at her hairline. Her eyes were brown m&m's swimming in puddles of fresh milk. She wore a white blouse slashed with yellow with the top two buttons open. Her bosom was impressive, and on the left was a nametag.

"Darianne. Oh Darianne! How have I not noticed you before!", he crooned.

"Um...I don't know. We see eachother everyday...you to describe your purchases while I-"

"Silence! Don't speak! You have awakened the dragon, and oh how he roars. I wish to sit for ten chapters straight and repeat your name! Darianne! Darianne! Darianne! And please, call me nuncle!" Suddenly he shook his head, and his eyes focusing and his gut retracting, as if waking up from a terrible spell. "No, I must not! I have a review to write, and these random romantic dalliances will only waste time!" But as if succumbing to an invisible force that filled with extreme laziness, his eyes glossed over and his stomach spilled over his belt, and once again he was lost. "Please, take me through your Myrish swamp!"

"..."

CHAPTER 52 - 88

"Go Giants!"

CHAPTER 89

It had been a long day, longer than the longest of books, longer than even the longest installments of the most epic of epic sagas. There had been many distractions along the way (through no fault of mine!), many foods to enumerate and much sailing - driving - to do, and he was contented to immerse himself in all of it. But the end had come at last; there was no more time for those distractions. It was time for the climax, and he must needs go with a bang. If there was actually anyone waiting, this was the moment they were waiting for.

He sat in his chair, facing the computer screen, ready to write his review. The time was twelve and twenty, his cheek still stinging from the slap Darianne had given him, and his fingers flexed and ached to at last express what he felt after reading A Dance with Dragons. He glanced at the mirror hanging at his side, and for a fraction of a second he glimpsed the face of a rotund old man with a snowy white beard wearing a newsboy hat and an NFL jersey, who somehow reminded him of a greedy Santa. He shook his head. He must be weary from lack of writing.

His fingers twitched over the keyboard, eyes glued forward at the screen. There was no shirking it now. The end would have to come. No more excuses. It was the end of the road. The final countdown. Duh duh DUHduh, duhduh duhduhDUH! The "setup" was complete, and his characters waited in place, ready to make their moves. This was the moment he had spent an entire day and one thousand figurative pages preparing for. At last the day had come. His beard smelled awful. A Dance With Dragons was...

He wrote a word.adwd asoiaf boring ...more277 s NickReads461 1,177

I have no words. This series is something else.244 s Luca Ambrosino97 13.6k

ENGLISH (A Dance with Dragons) / ITALIANO

The fifth chapter of "A song of ice and fire" is yet another confirmation that George R.R. Martin, in the field of the epic-medieval fantasy, is the most worthy successor of J.R.R. Tolkien. The universe molded by Martin is described with a manic cure and with so many details that some readers are rather disappointed, accusing the work to be too long and/or boring. I do not agree. Game of Thrones has become what we today know exactly thanks to the painful precision of the author in painting the houses and the mechanisms that regulate their everyday life. The meticulous work done by Martin to draw up the genealogy of the main houses accompanying each volume recalls once again to Tolkien. At the moment, my reading experience is so immersive that I would probably guess the noble family of any new character only from the description of his ethics and behaviors. This means in my opinion that Martin has created a world, and he did it damn well.
«Life is not a ballad» the bitter thought of Theon the "turncoat", the outcast Geyjoy, beautifully contrasts with the fact that Game of Thrones is one of the most beautiful ballads that contemporary literature has given us.Lannister, Baratheon, Targaryen, Stark, Greyjoy, Bolton, Martell and many other houses continue their game for power constantly passing through alliances and betrayal, in which you can not trust anyone, not even your own children. The only voice out of the chorus is that of Jon Snow, who is not able to make everybody around him understand that there will be no Iron Throne to conquer unless the dark presence beyond the Barrier, the Enemy of all, will not be overthrown. Therefore, long life to George Martin. I hope he will leave his mortal coil at least in one hundred years. And not before finalizing A Song of Ice and Fire.Winter is coming. Aye.Vote: 8


Quinto capitolo delle cronache del ghiaccio e del fuoco ed ennesima conferma che il successore più degno di J.R.R. Tolkien in materia di fantasy epico-medievale è George R.R. Martin. L'universo plasmato da Martin è descritto con una cura maniacale, con una dovizia di dettagli che fanno storcere il naso a molti lettori, che accusano l'opera di essere lunga e/o noiosa. Non sono d'accordo. Il Trono di Spade è diventato quello che conosciamo grazie alla morbosa precisione dell'autore nel dipingere le casate e i meccanismi che ne regolano la vita quotidiana, più che gli eventi. Molto "tolkieniano" è anche il lavoro svolto a stilare la genealogia delle principali casate a corredo di ciascun volume. A questo punto della lettura, la mia esperienza è stata talmente "immersiva" che riuscirei probabilmente ad indovinare la nobile famiglia di appartenenza di un qualsiasi nuovo personaggio solo dalla descrizione che l'autore fa della sua etica e dei suoi comportamenti. Per me questo significa che Martin ha creato un mondo, e l'ha fatto bene.«La vita non è una ballata» è l'amaro pensiero di Theon, il voltagabbana, il reietto Greyjoy. Strano, perchè Il Trono di Spade è una delle più belle ballate che la letteratura contemporanea ci ha donato.Lannister, Baratheon, Targaryen, Stark, Greyjoy, Bolton, Martell e tante altre casate continuano il loro gioco per il potere fatto di alleanze e tradimenti continui, in cui non ci si può fidare di nessuno, nemmeno dei propri figli. Unica voce fuori dal coro è quella del povero Jon Snow, che non riesce a far capire a chi gli sta intorno che non ci sarà nessun trono di spade per cui combattere se non verrà arginata l'oscura presenza oltre la Barriera, il Nemico di tutti. Pertanto, lunga vita a George Martin, che possa abbandonare le sue spoglie mortali tra cent'anni almeno. E non prima di aver terminato il Trono di Spade.L'inverno sta arrivando. Aye.Voto: 8233 s Nico325 60

Spoilers Included, so skip if you feel the need...

So, it's this. You hotdogs. Hotdogs are your favorite food. And there's a jumbo hotdog coming out on the 12th, so yay. Come the twelfth, all you get is the bread, and they say, eat that, the sausage is coming. It's so meaty, you're already salivating, dribbling on yourself in public a fool.
Munch, munch, munch. But the bread is dry... Then you come upon a sausage factory. The Jumbo Sausage factory, and you get a grand tour, up and down every aisle, seeing the ins and out of sausage world, how they grind the meat, and all the health precautions and what-not.
At the end of the tour, you get a frozen ketchup packet. Half the day is gone, and you've seen the jumbo sausage showcased in the window but all you get is dry bread and a ketchup pack that promises to melt in the next five to ten years.

See how long-winded, pointless and totally irrelevant that was? It don't have nothing on ADWD.

I used to Tyrion, but he spent half the book rowing down a river, and the other half wiping a man's ass.

Dany, reminds me of Brionny from Shadowmarch - clothes, food, suitors galore and loving servants willing to eat a sword for her. Dragons too, for about 50 pages, but mostly just food and tokars.

Jon, hopefully dead. Yes, I said it. I used to Jon, but he turned into a wilding-lover, an idiot, and a Stannis enthusiast. He knew nothing, Jon Snow.

And those three make up 90% of the book.

Theon was good, until the repetitive nature of his POV became boring.

BTW, Aegon is still alive, which isn't really a shocker since the whole "There must be one more" vision, but we see him for all of five minutes. His bodyguard, the only truly interesting POV in the series gets two chapters. They are the only people who accomplish anything, and they do the majority off-page.

One Jaime chapter, which was more pointless than Tyrion's stint as a pig-riding slave, if such a level of pointlessness is possible. The two Cersei chapters read nice, but are still pointless, (we've had enough introspection from her, right? Time for the trial/axman/exile).

The whole thing is one massive filler that makes AFFC look 5 star stuff.

1000 pages plus? 90% based in Asia/Persia/Egypt/Greece/wherever the eff Meereen is supposed to be beside a cesspit. It's a literal cesspit... literally. That pale mare is going to leave its hoof prints on your soul. Raise your hand if you want the entire continent burnt to the ground! Who cares?

I feel as if someone farted in my brain. And gave it the flux. Or if GRRM had the flux while he was writing this.

Winds of winter though is poised to be beautiful, at least. Hopefully no more Wall, and no more Meereen, but I get a feeling we still have some "Selmy's Round Table Rule" to mock through.

Victarion was in it, but he was on a boat too. Asha wasn't on a boat, but she was in the snow. Everybody was either in the snow, on a boat, or getting married and eating food. Even people get married in the snow.

One star for Aegon, the next star for Bran and the Bloodraven cameo. A thousand eyes and one... That was nice.




Imagine a morbidly obese Brad Pitt. (Upwards of 600lbs.) That's what ASOIAF is right now.

It'll take one hell of a fix up to return it to its former glory. TWOW should be good, but then ADDW was supposed to be good too, right? Am I holding my breath?
211 s Sean Barrs 1,122 46.6k

So where were the dancing dragons?

This book was so bad. Not a single dragon danced once. I’m so disappointed. Gosh! I may not even read the next one! You call that dancing?



I’m, of course, kidding. When the next book comes out I will devour it in an angry sort of way. It’s been far, far, far, too long.



Well, I should say “if” the next book comes out. But, let’s not go there it is far too painful to think about. I’m annoyed at the wait. I’ll curse George R.R. Martin for leaving me in suspense, but I’ll then praise his name whilst I’m reading again.

Enough of that, let’s talk about this book. This really wasn’t Dany’s finest hour. It seems everything she has created has fallen apart in her absence. Every Queenly decision she has made has backfired on her. Her people are angry with her; they’re turning against her, and she can do little to prevent it. Here resides a massive flaw within her character. She has the strength to inspire, but she does not have the wisdom to rule effectively and efficiently. Her decisions are not constant. Some are governed by mercy and empathy whereas others are guided by cold logic and revenge. There is no sense of right or wrong anymore. She doesn’t know what to do. Instead of governing by an effective amount of either, she governs with a touch of both which is completely detrimental to her rule. She looks a foolish despot.



What she needs is advice, what she needs is a friend; what she needs is some with the wisdom to help guide her compassion: what she needs is Tyrion Lannister. We all know is half way to her in this book. In the show he’s already there. But, I can’t wait to see it happen on the page. I can’t wait to see him guide her back to Westeros, join up with the reanimated Jon Snow, kick some ass and join ice with fire. Well, that’s what I want to see happen. Though in reality, something much more unusual will ly happen. What I want to see feels a lot a typical plot line; it sounds an obvious route for this to go down. George R.R Martin s to be unpredictable, so it will probably end with something unforeseen, which will hopefully be better. I want to be surprised in the ending despite my investment with these characters.

Well, either way, I want to see Dany get the ending she deserves. I feel she is the character who has, arguably, gone through the most; yes, all the characters have a rough time, but she has an especially rough time. She’s got a lot resting on her shoulders. I’m hoping she learns from her mistakes in Mereen, and uses them to benefit her possible rule is Westeros. Hopefully, she, with the help of Tyrion, will unite Westeros and destroy the Others.

I did enjoy this book, and the one before it, though the plot didn’t progress a great deal in either. It’s quite worrying to think that this story could be concluded in two books. I mean….if it’s another two these two, where would that leave us?

A Song of Ice and Fire
1. A Game of Thrones- A life chnaging five stars
2.A Clash of Kings- An Impish five stars
3. A Storm of Swords - A Lannister loving five stars
4. A Feast for Crows - A flat 3.5 stars
5. A Dance with Dragons- A convoluted four stars
6. The Winds of Winter- Will I ever read you?

I think it’s become far too big with unnecessary point of view characters. That’s why I knocked my rating down a star; the book was very convoluted. I’m hoping with the rest of the series there is a focus back onto the main characters. Well, at this point, I’m hoping that this series actually gets an ending in the first place. As the years goes on it becomes less and less ly. I will be keeping my fingers crossed, waving my three headed dragon banner and wishing for Dany to finally take back what is hers.



5-star-reads fantasy201 s Melissa ? Dog/Wolf Lover ? Martin3,587 10.8k

So now it's getting to where my watching the shows before the books are confusing me. I mean I have the pre-order of season 7 coming next week and I feel this book isn't up to date. Then I remember that we are still waiting for the next book. Well, next 3 books according to GR.

Anyhoo, I'm going to add some spoiler gifs next. So if you haven't read or seen any of the shows you can pass up the next 3 gifs.

I will scroll down a wee bit before adding.



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