A Dance with Dragons

I think if I had been reading this series all along and had been waiting for this book for six years, I'd be a little disappointed. Luckily, I was waiting for less than two. While a bit of that feeling is still there, overall I loved the book while I was reading it and just enjoyed seeing more of that world. The Game of Thrones TV series is a worthy adaptation, but there's only so much you can show in ten hours, and getting back into the books, I was reminded of the almost absurd amount of detail within the writing. People make fun of George R. R. Martin for being fat, and he calls himself a "talented eater". His passion for food definitely shows up in the book, as pretty much every meal a character gets within sniffing distance of is described in detail. It's something I didn't really notice before, but after it was pointed out, it was kind of funny to see how much time is spent on just what people happen to be eating while wars are planned and secrets are revealed. It's not just the food that gets a lot of attention, pretty much everything you could want to know about the world is spelled out, from family trees to clothes to heraldry, sometimes repeatedly. It could have resulted in tedium, but I love the setting as much as anyone, and I love the focus it gets in these books.

The story definitely slowed down during the fourth and fifth books, which take place mostly in parallel. After a certain point characters and locations from the fourth book start appearing again, though generally it's just to give us a quick update on their situation before jumping back to the main threads of the story in this volume. The problem with the book is not the world count, or the increasingly large number of subplots sprinkled all over the world, it's just that not quite enough forward progress seems to be made in most areas. I think these two books came out of a planned skip forward in the series' timeline that ended up not happening, and there's a feeling of waiting in many of the characters' stories. Some POV characters are in positions of authority and mostly just try to manage their current situations, others make an expected progression in their personal arcs and then just drop out of the book completely.

There doesn't seem to be much of a climax to the story, things do get pretty exciting and even significantly game-changing near the end, but because of the staggered way all of the plots end up finishing, it sort of feels like Martin just decided to stop writing at a certain point after failing to find a suitable climactic event. I know he has a fairly significant amount of the next book already written, and I think he probably just cut it off to keep it to a semi-reasonable word count. Not that the cliffhangers he set up aren't intriguing and good fodder for speculation during the wait for the next book, it's just the way the story has swelled over the years make it hard to have everything seem totally cohesive. All that said, I had a great time reading the book, and continue to hope and believe Martin has some sort of plan that he's driving toward. He recently admitted that he might have to write three more books instead of two to wrap up everything, but if that happens, I'll try to appreciate the extra time spent in Westeros more than I rue the extra years of waiting for the ending.

A Feast for Crows

I'm not sure if splitting up this book and the next one by region instead of time was the right decision... but it's hard to say that the latter would actually be better. Getting interrupted in the middle of a story's flow is a drag, especially when the sequel goes from being hopefully released a year later to still not out after three more. But a lot of what happens in Crows just seems like filler. Really good filler - with the same quality of writing, a lot of great expansion on the story's incredibly deep world and cast of hundreds, and yeah, a few of those insane moments. But the driving force for a lot of the series' plot is being handled by the people who happen to be elsewhere, and it's hard not to miss what they brought to the books.

There are a few new areas of interest in Crows, mostly covered by several new POV characters who only get one or two chapters. They're interesting to read for the most part, giving a peek at how varied the cultures can be just within the borders of the setting's primary continent. But I had some trouble figuring out whether those chapters would actually be there if the two books were never split up. Significant things do occur, but not a whole lot of pages are dedicated to them and they're the sorts of events that the series usually manages to fill you in on anyway through messages and hearsay. The two most significant new POV characters are characters that have already been seen extensively previously, though they do a good job of shifting the focus a little bit to see what their sides of the story are.

Most of the returning narrators don't have a whole lot to do, really adding to the feeling of this book being a bit of a black sheep. I wouldn't go so far as to call it boring, it just seems like it's biding its time while something bigger prepares to happen in the last few volumes. Now that I have to wait with everyone else for A Dance of Dragons to come out I'm a little disappointed, especially since Crows ended well enough that waiting until two books from now to see what happens kind of blows. Hopefully the wait won't be much longer.

A Storm of Swords

Man, I love this series. Swords is even longer than the first two volumes and continues to escalate the drama of the story. I'd need more than two hand to count the number of times the plot took a turn that completely blindsided me. Even in the last fifty pages, when the pace is supposed to be winding down, I was taken by surprise repeatedly. But it's not just crazy happenings that make these books awesome, as I've said before. Martin's prose is still excellent, completely readable while still being intelligent, and occasionally artistic when called for. His capacity for building an enormous cast filled with characters that are three dimensional and almost universally generate a strong emotional reaction, whether good or bad, is astounding. Even ones who only occasionally show up in the background are generally memorable, only a few of the various knights and lords in the capital city tend to blur together in my mind.

The thing you have to understand before starting the series is that reading it is not always the most joyful experience. When the author admits to having trouble bringing himself to write an important chapter, you know that your heart's probably going to be broken a few times. It's not exactly constantly depressing, and there are plenty of moments as triumphant as any others are bleak. Still, the world these characters live in is a brutal and unforgiving one, and readers are constantly being reminded that no one is untouchable. Well, maybe a couple people are, but they're few and far between. I forgot to mention this back when I was saying that the good in the series wasn't all spectacle, but the subtle backstabbing and political maneuvering, involving lots of forced marriages, is just as engrossing as anything else in the story. It's a constant mystery who's really the cause of anything, and it's safe to say that you can't really be sure about anything at this point. The next book, A Feast for Crows, is limited to the largest of the multiple regions the story covers, due to the stuff happening in the other places giving Martin so much trouble writing that he decided to split them apart, and release Feast earlier. I've heard that it is less eventful than the first three books, which I think I'll be fine with, because I could use a breather, and it might be a chance to really enjoy the quieter aspects of the story.

A Clash of Kings

George R. R. Martin's follow-up to A Game of Thrones does nothing but expand upon the scope of the series, as things seem to have gotten bigger in every conceivable way. The cast of point of view characters and people in general only grows to compensate for the many who lose their lives (and believe me, that's a lot); the number of different factions all clawing for a foothold in the increasingly chaotic world, the amount of land actually covered, and heck, just the page count all increase as the originally planned trilogy exploded into what is now supposed to be seven novels. It is truly an epic among epics, one that I am relishing the opportunity to dive into, and I only wish Martin were a bit quicker about finishing it.

The most notable increase to me though was the increase in magic. In the beginning of the story, the last dragons had died out long ago, and anyone who claimed to know the ways of sorcery was scarcely able to prove it. But as the chaos of war has erupted, so to has the presence of arts that most believe no longer existed, or maybe never did. There are tastes of it here and there in the first part, and those glimpses start coming more frequently in Clash of Kings, although it's still only just getting going. These brief moments are much more exciting and dramatic than if it were a common thing to the setting, and you can tell that when the floodgates are finally unleashed they'll make what appeared to be a land boiling over look like it had barely begun to simmer.

I'm not sure if what I've built up in my head can possibly match what a writer can actually accomplish, but through two books he's never failed to impress me with how he can take one little thing and twist it until it breaks your heart. I could talk about how good the characterization is, how he can make you like or dislike anyone at any time without destroying that character's identity, but I sort of already just did and I should probably leave myself the scrap of something to talk about later. When I enjoy something this much, it's sometimes difficult to write about at length because all I can think to do is constantly mention how great it is.

A Game of Thrones

Here's yet another awesome thing that I heard about because of that one forum I go to. I might have been introduced to it pretty soon anyway because they're going to start shooting a pilot for a possible HBO adaptation next month, which I hope gets picked up for a series because it seems like a perfect fit. A Game of Thrones is the first novel in a saga called A Song of Ice and Fire, with four volumes released and three more planned. It's a fantasy series for adults, hinging not so much on a magical quest for goodness but a huge cast of complex characters, who meet and argue and screw and fight. It's very slow going, taking its time to develop the world and main players instead of diving into the action. The paperback version is over 800 pages, and this is the shortest entry yet, so you can already guess at how epic the story will end up being.

Despite the immense length and lack of immediate action, I was engrossed in the story right from the prologue to the final chapter, both of which contain the most "fantasy" of the story's fantasy elements. The story is told from the perspective of several different characters, with each chapter focusing on one. It's an effective way to tell the story, covering all the different locations of importance while capturing different aspects of the plot from different points of view. The setting is pretty interesting; the main action takes place on one continent, where seven kingdoms are united under the banner of a single king in the south. To the north is a great ice wall beyond which lies the remnants of many creatures of legend, and to the east over the sea is another land where the children of the last king to be deposed are exiled.

The weather is unique, with seasons being of indeterminate length, oftentimes lasting for years. When the story begins, a summer that has lasted nearly a decade is showing signs of ending, and by the end the winter is inevitable. It adds a nice sense of dread as things go from bad to worse for the protagonists. Despite the slowly developing plot, things are in full gear by the end, as the inevitable clashing of armies begins, and you can see it all building towards something amazing and terrible at once. You really don't know what's going to happen, as it becomes clear relatively early that no one is safe and things can become disastrous very quickly and without reason. I was growing depressed by the end at some of the events, but some of the final words gave cause for hope, and George R. R. Martin has really established one of the best, if not the best beginnings to a fantasy story I've ever read. I have the next two parts sitting on the shelf, and I know I'm going to be ripping into them as soon as I can.

Note: I wrote this last week while sitting next to my dog, who wasn't feeling well. Yesterday, she got worse suddenly and we had to put her to sleep. This post is dedicated to her.