A Dance With Dragons: Book Five of a Song of Fire and Ice

A Dance With Dragons: Book Five of A Song of Fire and Ice

By George R.R. Martin

I'm there. I'm finally there!

Two years and 4884 pages later, I'm finally caught up. As of today (May 21, 2013, 26 days after starting the latest installment) I am completely up to date on The Song of Fire and Ice by George R.R. Martin. It's been a long and grueling road. At points I thought I'd never get to this point. I'd like to thank R'hollor, the Seven and the old gods as well as my agent, Petyr Baelish, my publicist, Cersei Lannister and my spin doctor, Davos Seaworth. Davos! Dude! We did it! I owe you a bushel of onions! Wait... wait! Before you cue the music, I'd just like to say that now that I am caught up, I wish I wasn't. I wish I could dive right back into Martin's world.  I'm completely hooked in and I'm not sure what I'm going to do while waiting for the next installment. 

Yeah, that's right. I'm a fully converted and completely unrepentant Game of Thrones fanboy. Sue me.

So it should come as no surprise that I say, without hyperbole, that this series has been the single greatest undertaking in my reading career. It has been every bit as monumental as reading the Old Testament, as thoroughly time-consuming as Infinite Jest and as satisfying as completing my first Shakespeare play in the ninth grade (Twelfth Night for those keeping score at home). But what sets Martin's series apart from those other reading peaks is the sheer scale of the series. 

A Song of Fire and Ice has thrice the number of characters as the Old Testament (There might be more Freys alone than characters in the entire Book of Genesis), four times the amount of pages as Infinite Jest and.... well, okay, Shakespeare is still a better writer than George R.R. Martin, but he's at least in the same ballpark when it comes to writing epic histories. And there's still two books to go!

Furthermore, As of today I join the legion of fans eagerly awaiting The Winds of Winter. More precisely, because I have not seen a single second of the television series I can count myself among the bookishly elite uber-nerds who have forsaken the television series in a vainglorious quest to keep the series intellectually pure. My vision of Daenerys Targaryen is a unique snowflake that will remain untarnished by the creative limitations of the boob tube. How many of the readers of the series can say that? Sometimes living in Taiwan has its perks. One of them is the ability to completely avoid American popular culture if the need arises (as it does here and in the case of Justin Beiber, reality television and the cult of celebrity).

As well, I can now join the increasing cacophony of impatience bombarding Martin as he works furiously (alas, not furiously enough to satisfy this reader) to finish the series (Please take care of yourself Mr. Martin and, please, consider moving closer to a healthcare provider in case you suffer any unexpected medical emergencies). Sure, I'm joining the back of the line, but I am officially in that line and I'm guessing that you are now. (The law of averages says that the last sentence will be true of most of the visitors to this site. If that last sentence does not pertain to you, trust that I didn't mean YOU).

So, what of A Dance With Dragons? Well, I do not want to be the bearer of spoilers for those either A) still mired deep in the printed series or B) those unfortunate souls who have opted for the television version. I will try my best to maintain a spoiler free take on the novel but please, if you are at all worried, stop reading here.

I thought it unfair of reviewers to have been so hard on the fourth book, A Feast for Crows. As I said in my review of that installment, it wasn't warranted. Oddly enough, I might be inclined to be a little hard on the fifth novel given that match of its one thousand plus pages seemed like a never-ending build-up to nothing. I was about 70% into the novel when I realized that very little had yet happened. The proverbial dust from the previous novel settled nicely but following that it was simply a lot of characters moving about Westeros and Essos without actually doing much of anything. Fortunately the final third of the novel more than made up for the slow-pace of the first two-thirds and there were enough holy-shit moments in the last few chapters to satisfy even the most jaded fans of the series. 

There are a could of narrative specific thought I had while reading that are worth noting: 

It took five books but Martin finally managed to generate some heated interest in the story lines emanating out of Dorne. Up until A Dance With Dragons, I cringed at a Dornish chapter heading. Now, Dorne finally figured into the storyline in a more concrete and meaningful way. Now if he can just do that for anything happening in the Eyrie all bases would be covered. 

Tyrion continues to be my favorite character, though he lost a little something now that he's off his high horse. Here's to hoping for a return to form in the next installment. I also liked the inclusion (finally) of Barristan Selmy as a POV character. He's always been one of my favorites. But the one character that I want to see done as a POV is the one I fear will never be done: Varys.

I've never been a huge fan of Bran Stark's storyline but it took such a boring, pseudo-spiritual turn in this book that almost stalled out in his chapters. I know Martin is gearing up for something special with Bran but I wish he'd keep the hocus pocus to a minimum.

I'm hoping that Martin gives us a POV character from the House Martell in The Winds of Winter. Of the seven kingdoms, Highgarden is the only one that has yet to have its own POV character and I would really like to understand their motivations better. Or perhaps I'm not supposed to know.

And who the hell is Robert the Strong?

Anyway, as I said, A Dance With Dragons started out slow but those last few chapters made the entire ride so very much worthwhile. So many changes. So many questions. So much uncertainty. My only fear is that, like so many mediocre writers, Martin will end up creating such a masterful set up that he will be unable to follow through. I sincerely hope he knows where this narrative is going because other than in the most general terms, I haven't the foggiest. The rightful holder of the Iron Throne could be Stannis, Tommen, Daenerys or Moon Boy, for all I know. 

And of course, I know nothing.

Previous reviews in this series:

A Game of Thrones

A Clash of Kings

A Storm of Swords

A Feast For Crows

A Clash of Kings: Book Two of A Song of Ice and Fire

A Clash of Kings: Book Two of A Song of Fire and Ice

By George R.R. Martin

I'm doing good on my new year's resolution to make some progression in the multitude of series I have begun over the past couple of years. Of all the series I have started, it was the Game of Thrones series I was most excited to continue, because it kicks ass, but also most frightened to pick up, because it's over 1000 pages. I'm not frightened of large books so much as the investment of time a thousand page book presents. Since I never, ever put a book down (no matter how much it sucks), I have to be pretty sure a thousand page book is going to entertain. That's a lot of potentially crappy pages to read.

I needn't have worried. George R.R. Martin puts out.

For those of you living under a rock, this is the second book in the Song of Fire and Ice series by Martin. For those of you who have already read all five of the books currently available and came here for information on the upcoming sixth and seventh novels, I can't help you. For those who are a fan of the television series and haven't read the books, there might be some spoilers. I dunno. I'm light years behind in the novel series and I've only watched the first two episodes of the television series. Don't you roll your eyes at me! I'm lucky I've gotten this far considering the way I acquire books. It's not like I can walk down to the local bookstore. The closest English bookstore is a three hour train ride away! Back off!

Anyway...

A Clash of Kings starts up where A Game of Thrones left off. King Robert is dead, Joffery Lannister is sits on the Iron Throne at King's Landing, Eddard Stark has been executed as a traitor, Eddard's son has ceded from the Seven Kingdoms and declared himself King of the North and all hell is breaking loose. Meanwhile, somewhere in Mongolia (I mean the Dothraki Plains and the Red Waste), Daenerys Targaryen, the last surviving offspring of the Targaryen royal family rambles on with her newly hatched dragons and not much else. MEANWHILE, north of The Wall, Mance Rayder (that's a Star Wars name if I ever heard one) is rumored to be amassing an army to advance on the Seven Kingdoms who are not paying attention (due to the aforementioned Civil War). Giants and mammoths and shape shifters are rumored to be involved.

Along with King Joffrey, King Robb and Queen Daenerys, three more contenders to the Iron Throne emerge throughout the book (though some of them die along the way) and hints at a few others that may make a play in the forthcoming (for me) books. It's all very confusing, but that's the nature of Seven Kingdoms politics. It's a damned good thing the Westeros doesn't have 24-hour news programming and screaming pundits pettifogging the already murky political landscape south of the Trident. It takes all 1000 pages of this novel to untangle this bureaucratic Gordian Knot. Even then, there's still five books to come. Jeez Louise, why would anyone even want to sit on that damned throne. It's cursed.

For me, this series always hinges on it's relationship with classic Tolkien-style fantasy, which I despise. The reason I loved the first book so much was that magic and dragons and elves and all that nonsense was virtually non-existent throughout. While the fantasy element is scaled up a bit in this novel, it was done in such a way as to assist non-fantasy fans like me into the idea of perhaps accepting a little of the unexplainable. It was like easing myself down into a scalding hot bathtub. It took some time, but ultimately I got comfortable enough. There were times that I had to remind myself that I was reading fantasy. That's encouraging news for book three.

But....

I do have a few complaints about the second novel, and the series as a whole.

First, I'm a little dismayed by the fact that George R.R. Martin stacks his readers so heavily behind the Starks of Winterfell. He has done such a wonderful job of creating this world with competing families plotting and scheming and allying themselves with each other. It seems unlikely that one of those families would be as noble as the Starks (and still be able to compete in this cutthroat environment). And it seems that Martin writes his book with the intent of making his readers cheer for the Starks. They are wonderful and all, but the entire family reminds me of the Seavers from Growing Pains. Too blandly righteous. Well, I'm having none of that! Go Team Targaryen!

And while we are on the topic of teams, what's with the Lannister's? How the hell are they so feared among the families of the Seven Kingdoms? The Lannister's remind me of the Bluth Family without the Banana Stand. Tyrion is Michael, Cersei is Lindsay/Lucille, Jaime is GOB, Joffrey is Buster and Twyin as George. Add Varys as Lupe and the circle is complete. With this comparison firmly entrenched in my head, it was so hard to take them seriously throughout this book. I do like Tyrion, though.

Finally, I had a really hard time with the amount of dream sequences in this book. I'm already bogged down in a thousand pages of reading, four page dream scenes involving direwolves and symbolic  foreshadowing really dragged me down. In fact, I'm really uninspired by the trajectory of the Bran storyline. Every time I got to the beginning of a Bran chapter, I audibly groaned. Furthermore, the Daenerys storyline was hampered by a litany of acid trips (I mean, dreams and trips to weird temples) that really bothered the hell out of me. As much as I like the potential of Daenerys as a character, she did very little in this novel other than loaf around Qarth begging for stuff she never got. Absolutely no progression in her story whatsoever. Shame. She's my favorite.

When the hell is Mance Rayder going to make an actual appearance?

Overall, A Clash of Kings is a solid read and progresses the overall story of the Iron Throne very well. There are lots of nice twists and turns and surprises along the way. Just enough was resolved to give the reader a sense of closure and just enough was introduced or left dangling to make the reader ache for the next novel. While I'm going to take a break from the series once again, it won't be nearly as long as my first hiatus. There's so much more trouble brewing in the Seven Kingdoms. I've been sufficiently sucked in to care how it turns out.

Other reviews from A Song of Ice and Fire:

A Game of Thrones
A Storm of Swords
A Feast for Crows