A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5)
Author: George R.R. Martin
Rating: ā 3/5
Date Read: 2014/10/07
Pages: 1125
(Iāll hide any spoilers for A Dance With Dragons behind spoiler tags, but Iāll be spoiling the previous four books with impunity. Youāve been warned.)
Reading A Dance With Dragons made me feel a little bad for George R.R. Martin. Not that bad, mind you: heās a best selling author whose epic fantasy series is so ground-breaking that itās constantly compared to Lord of the Rings. Still, Iām someone who writes somewhat compulsively (I was about to say āfor funā but then I realized that itās not particularly fun, I just canāt stop myself from doing it), and one thing was clear to me when I trudged through the first half of A Dance With Dragons: it must have been a bitch to write.
Note that I donāt mean that in the way that most things are a bitch to write, but in that soul-crushing, maddening way where nothing seems to be cooperating, and the page taunts you, and the process is complete anguish. It doesnāt really satisfy the reader, and I think thatās because it wasnāt that satisfying for Martin himself. I could be wrong, but given the storied history of this particular volume Iām guessing Iām right in saying that Martin is as frustrated with the last two books as we are.
A Dance With Dragons is set in parallel with A Feast for Crows. Ish. When we left our friends and frenemies in Westeros at the end of the last book, not much had happened, but we were satisfied in knowing that the next book would finally shed light on what was happening with the best characters in the series. Tyrion! Jon Snow! Daenerys! All killer, no filler! How could a book that focused on the most interesting characters doing some really badass things possibly go wrong?
Answer: by making us forget why these characters were interesting and badass in the first place. Do you want to see how awesome it is when Tyrion and Daenerys get together and plot to overthrow King Tommen? Tough, because youāre going to have to endure Tyrion on a boat and Daenerys ruling Meereen. With lots of trivial details, even though we really could not care less. Do you want to know how Lord Snow will deal with this whole game of thrones shit while heās the commander of the wall? Also tough, because he doesnāt do much either.
On the plus side, the book starts picking up about halfway through. On the downside, we see the return of Asha and Victarion, whose chapters leave this reader with a lot of head scratching and āwho are they talking about again?ā moments. Reading this, I felt like I couldnāt catch a break. And I started really noticing how overblown the whole thing is. There used to be just two major belief systems, the old gods and The Seven. Now we also have The Lord of Light, The Many Faced God, The Drowned God, and whatever they believe across the narrow sea. I can barely even keep track of how many people have claimed the throne of Westeros. The whole thing is starting to become exhausting.
There were some positives: Bran got interesting. We saw the resolution of
Still, the whole book felt like a lot of waiting.
Seven years ago, my dad and I flew to London on my best international flight ever (Virgin Atlantic, Business Class, not paid for by us). The first part of the flight was awesome: champagne, hot towels, and the knowledge that we weāre headed to a particularly incredible city. The end was also awesome: more free drinks, and views of London, and the feeling of being in said incredible city. But the middle part was a lot of waiting. Sure, yes, there were free drinks throughout, and I managed to watch some movies, but there was a lot of anticipation knowing that something was about to happen, in quite a few more hours, but we still had a lot of time to go. Reading A Song of Ice and Fire recently feels a lot like that, and I hope the ending actually feels like touching down in London, instead of Houston or Miami or Los Angeles or any number of cities that Iād prefer not to visit. Only time will tell.