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

Fifth Business

Fifth Business

By Robertson Davies

Fun fact: One of my high school English teachers had a nervous breakdown.

Actually Ms. Sturgess had two nervous breakdowns over the course of two years and she was my teacher both years.

Before you jump to conclusions, I was not the cause of these mental breakdowns. I was a pretty quiet high school student and I liked English class so I was hardly the sort of student that causes emotional and psychological duress among the faculty. I was more likely to be forgotten in a classroom than cause shenanigans. But suffer breakdowns she did, much to my academic disadvantage.

OK, I'm not trying to belittle Ms. Sturgess' psychological suffering. I am sure she suffered far more tragically during those few years (and beyond, perhaps, I have no idea) than I did. I have been blessed in the fact that I am (currently) mentally and emotionally stable. I have no real understanding of what sort of suffering is endured by those who experience a breakdown. I hope I never do. I didn't have bad feelings toward Ms. Sturgess, but she was my teacher for such a short time that I also didn't have particularly strong feelings for her either. As an adult I have looked back on her class and felt terrible for her. Whatever it may have been that caused such pain, I hope she overcame it. But at the time I was a kid and a breakdown seemed pretty unreal to me.

Back to the point. Regardless of Ms. Sturgess' mental health, I did suffer academically.

My high school English career started well enough. My grade 9 teacher was great. He had enough zeal to instill a love for reading and writing among a motley crew of slackers and burnouts. I don't envy teaching North american high school kids, especially the younger variety. It's really hard to make them care. I remember reading Twelfth Night and To Kill a Mockingbird, both stock standards of the Halton Board of Education at the time and both among my favorite books. By the time I started grade 10 I was really stoked about English, a testament to my grade 9 teacher. In grade 10 I was assigned Ms. Sturgess.

I don't remember much about the actual breakdown. She didn't break down dramatically in front of my class (or any class that I'm aware of) but she started to miss classes regularly by the third week of the semester. But week four or five (that's almost half the semester) we still had not been issued a novel. Eventually we were assigned a permanent temporary teacher whose name I have forgotten and no clear reason for Ms. Sturgess' absence was given. Rumors abounded, but the only clear reason was that she had had some sort of "episode." The sub was in a bit of a no-win situation taking over a class of students who had gotten used to the idea of not doing any real work in class. I'm sure she did her best, but I do not remember a single moment from that year's English class aside from Romeo and Juliet, which I hated at the time.

So I was really looking forward to grade 11 English and getting back on track with reading and writing. When September rolled around once again and I was assigned Ms. Sturgess, I was cautiously optimistic. Maybe a year's convalescence had helped and she was better prepared to deal with the rigors of teaching English. I was wrong. She never even showed up on the first day and we were assigned another permanent substitute for the semester. Try as they may, when a student knows a teacher is a substitute, it is never quite the same. The class was a dud from the get go.

I should have raised a stink but at the time I wasn't the sort of student that rocked the boat. I assumed you got the cards that were deal you and you made due. I suppose I could have transfered to another class with a more able teacher, but it just didn't occur to me.

So my stalled high school English career didn't really get off the ground until grade 12, which, I'm sorry to say, is a couple of years too late. My writing ability was in a sorry state (some might wonder whether it has ever truly recovered) and my depth of reading was pretty shallow. If it weren't for a series of extraordinary history teachers and one extremely excellent English teacher in my final year (Thank you Mr. Manzl and Mr. Switzer, wherever you two may be) I'm not entirely sure what would have become of me. That's not melodrama, that's the plain truth.

So what's this got to do with anything? Well, due to my two lost years of English, I'm probably the only student in the entire Halton School Board that didn't read Fifth Business. This Robertson Davies classic was used as an example of great Canadian literature and was virtually mandatory reading for high school kids in the 1990s. Not sure whether it remains part of the curriculum or not.

I'm actually glad I didn't get get around to reading this book until now. I don't think I would have liked this book in high school. Too slow, too thoughtful, too Canadian. I was all about the shock in high school. Give me All Quiet on the Western Front or Brave New World or something equally disturbing. A novel like Fifth Business would have seemed too plain, too close to home to enjoy.

Twenty years on, Fifth Business was a great book. I liked that my life is exactly half of Dunstan Ramsay's so that I could share in his reminiscence of his childhood, empathize in his musings on early middle age and read with interest his reflections on aging. It was a nice mix of remembrance and experience.

More importantly, I got the impression that this is not a great example of CanLit for young Canadians. It is much to conservative in nature for modern Canadian students (although there is something to be said about the conservative nature of Canadians, especially those of Robertson Davies generation). This book would have been out of touch in my day. It would seem positively archaic today. While I really did like this book as a stunning portrait of a Canada that ceases to be, I do hope that they have changed the curriculum and have found a new, better example of Canadian fiction for students to read.

As for Ms. Sturgess, I hope that she has recovered, found a modicum of happiness and has gone on to life to a ripe old age.