A Song Of Ice And Fire: book discussion thread

[Bosh]

It's already the 12th in Korea
Bwaaahahahahah!

Non-spoiler impressions of what I've read so far, I'll spoiler block it just in case you're extra paranoid but it's really not spoilery at all.

Spoiler:

So far to talk about what I've read, it seems very consistent. The same sort of mood and happenings from different characters and the same sorts of events. It feels a lot more like one book telling one story than a bunch of disparate plotlines slapped together like AFfCs. There haven't been any stand-out awesome scenes so far (which is a bit annoying) and the overall tone is a bit grim but there's a real sense that the climax of this book is going to be just insane and have everything feed into it since almost every POV line seems to all be feeding into one huge massive climax to end all climaxes.

Just too much damn travelogue to get there, it's more travaloguey than any other book so far.

[Dinner]

Yes. And my wife has now convinced me to drive across two states to go to the first stop on his book tour tomorrow for signed copies.

Now that is dedication.

[Guynemer]

Page 110ish:

Spoiler:

Slynt

Who was it that, in the TV show thread, was complaining about the punishments (or lack thereof) meted out by/on the Black Brothers? They'll love that.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Yes. And my wife has now convinced me to drive across two states to go to the first stop on his book tour tomorrow for signed copies.

This ended up being a bit of a disaster. The event was scheduled to begin at 7PM. We arrived, after a five hour drive, at 4:30PM. This put us somewhere around 600th in line. Barnes and Noble was clearly not able to handle the crowd that showed up, we were standing around outside in high heat/humidity for nearly 4.5 hours. A bit after 5, an employee came out and told everybody to put their chairs in their cars since the line would be moving soon. This sounds good in theory, but given that we didn't get in the building until 9 may have been a bit, uh, premature...it would have been nice to have those chairs during that four hour gap. The major reason we went was to hear GRRM talk, but if you weren't there by about 1:30 they didn't have space to let you in to hear him. Apparently he told the first group that he likes to have people ask him a question or something, but by the time our part of the line got in nobody knew that so we were all just mutely rushing through. Total face time: about 10 seconds between my wife and I.

The B&N really screwed up, in my opinion. I understand there are fire codes, but they obviously were expecting the numbers that appeared so they could have done a bit more to accommodate the crowd (or at least not actively pissed us off).

But at least we now have signed books!

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Page 110ish:

Spoiler:

Slynt

[Bosh]

Just finished ADwD. I'm pretty disappointed with it overall. A lot of this is more my fault than Martins, due to me expecting a different kind of book than Martin gave me and there's a lot of good stuff there, but overall this is just not the book I hoped it would be and there's a lot of things I think are wrong with it. More in-depth review/rant to come later.

[Bosh]

Stupid Martin.

Spoiler:

When you have "an awesome Machiavellian dwarf who's one of the world's experts on dragons, a silver queen of blood and fire, a Cthulhu worshiping Viking with a magic horn, the last great knight, a prince sent off to secure vengeance for his people, barbarian hordes, 10,000 mercenaries of all of the most badass exiles of Westeros, the armed forced of a thousand slavelords and three freaking dragons" all converging on one spot for an epic throwdown and make THAT boring, I'm just not sure what I can say.

I never ever thought I'd say this but, I wish A Dance with Dragon's had Robert Jordan's pacing, whatever else his (many many) flaws as a writer, Robert Jordon could take a whole bunch of plot threads and bring them together for a smash bang climax for his book. What the Mereen plotline needed was blood and fire and instead what we got was floppy bunny ears with a side order of diarrhea.

What's especially galling is that it's the Mereen stuff that's held things up and Martin spent years rewriting and rewriting in order to make it work and THIS is the best he can do? Seriously? The climax was basically things going back to more or less the status quo ante with Barristan filling in for Dany. **** that.

There's some great bits in the book but the overall plot was a massive disappointment, so much buildup for what should of been awesome just dribbling away.

At least the Northern plotline was mostly OK, except now I'm pretty weirded by some of what seem to be Martin's fetishes and Jon really really really didn't need 12 chapters.

I really don't have any trust in Martin anymore. AFfC being weak I could stomach, but taking 11 years to produce two subpar books just takes all of my enthusiasm out of the series. At this point I have more trust in the TV show writers than Martin to do the story right.

What's really really galling is that all of the talent is still there. There are some beautiful beautiful chapters that are just perfect and even the chapters in the bits I hate are OK by themselves and have some great little bits. It's just not coming together.

[Arrian]

I really hope that

Spoiler:

Jon Snow's oh so honorable repeated refusal to take Stannis up on his offer [of being made Lord Stark of Winterfell] actually works out well for somebody. Also, having stopped right before finding out, I rather hope Tyrion doesn't get that leprosy-like disease from his encounter with the stone men. He doesn't need any more physical afflictions

[Jon Miller]

Ack

I need to read the books!

Must stay away from this thread.

JM

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Stupid Martin.

Spoiler:

When you have "an awesome Machiavellian dwarf who's one of the world's experts on dragons, a silver queen of blood and fire, a Cthulhu worshiping Viking with a magic horn, the last great knight, a prince sent off to secure vengeance for his people, barbarian hordes, 10,000 mercenaries of all of the most badass exiles of Westeros, the armed forced of a thousand slavelords and three freaking dragons" all converging on one spot for an epic throwdown and make THAT boring, I'm just not sure what I can say.

I never ever thought I'd say this but, I wish A Dance with Dragon's had Robert Jordan's pacing, whatever else his (many many) flaws as a writer, Robert Jordon could take a whole bunch of plot threads and bring them together for a smash bang climax for his book. What the Mereen plotline needed was blood and fire and instead what we got was floppy bunny ears with a side order of diarrhea.

What's especially galling is that it's the Mereen stuff that's held things up and Martin spent years rewriting and rewriting in order to make it work and THIS is the best he can do? Seriously? The climax was basically things going back to more or less the status quo ante with Barristan filling in for Dany. **** that.

There's some great bits in the book but the overall plot was a massive disappointment, so much buildup for what should of been awesome just dribbling away.

At least the Northern plotline was mostly OK, except now I'm pretty weirded by some of what seem to be Martin's fetishes and Jon really really really didn't need 12 chapters.

I really don't have any trust in Martin anymore. AFfC being weak I could stomach, but taking 11 years to produce two subpar books just takes all of my enthusiasm out of the series. At this point I have more trust in the TV show writers than Martin to do the story right.

What's really really galling is that all of the talent is still there. There are some beautiful beautiful chapters that are just perfect and even the chapters in the bits I hate are OK by themselves and have some great little bits. It's just not coming together.

Spoiler:

It's middle book syndrome, more or less. The problem with these last two books is that they are all about repositioning the characters for the final burst. He's not quite done yet either, as all the people he sent to Meereen now have to get back to Westeros...but at least they're more or less together, and there is a pretty clear path back (the Iron fleet).

I can't say that I'm not annoyed by the lack of payoff to either of the big battles that were set up, but given everything else that went on in the book I'm willing to let them slide into the next book. For that matter, I'll be perfectly happy if Meereen never gets a big battle...armies decimated by disease is fine, the point of all of that is to get Dany the experience she needs to actually be an effective leader and show that she's not just going to be another idealistic Ned. She compromised her principles for a greater good, and now she also realizes that it's time to go home.

I thought the Jon stuff was good, actually. He did the right thing, tried to set it up so that it was to his advantage, but he didn't take care of business at home and it cost him. I didn't think it was too long at all.

I found pig-girl problematic, particularly as it doesn't seem to have had any real impact on Tyrion's character. He did what he has to do to keep alive, talked his way into and out of situations, etc. I thought she was supposed to teach him what it's like to be a low-born dwarf and show him everything that his money and name gave him, but that never really happened. Jorah was also misused throughout that arc.

I liked the advancement of Varys as somebody who is really taking action, not just in the epilogue but also with the prince (though I'm not convinced that's really the prince). Also really liked Theon and the look at the Boltons, some pretty good stuff in there.

It'll be awesome if the bank actually decides the winner of the war.

So who actually wrote the letter, Mel?

[Guynemer]

Up to page 400.

I saw

Spoiler:

Mormont taking Tyrion to Dany, not Cersei

coming, as well as

Spoiler:

Manderly pulling a fast one on the mother****ing Freys jesus god how I hate those mother****ers,

but they were welcome developments all the same.

[Guynemer]

Okay, I knew something was up with

Spoiler:

Rattleshirt,

and the scene of

Spoiler:

Mance's execution

seemed off and all kinds of wrong, but I did not see that one coming.

[Jon Miller]

Argh, so hard to not read spoilers..
.
JM

[Kuciwalker]

Nothing actually happened in ADWD so it doesn't really matter if you read them. A bunch of characters walked a long way while having zany adventures and then the book ended.

[Kuciwalker]

ADWD : ASOIAF :: Winter's Heart : The Wheel of Time.