A Feast for Crows: Book Four of A Song of Ice and Fire

A Feast for Crows: Book Four of a Song of Ice and Fire

By George R.R. Martin

Note: I promise, there are no overt spoilers in this post.

Trying to avoid Game of Thrones spoilers on the Internet is like trying to shield yourself from the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan two decades on. Everyone knows that Spock was going to die in the end and everyone knows A Feast for Crows is the weakest of the Song of Ice and Fire series. Or so the Internet would like you to believe.

I admit it, I had put off reading the fourth installment of the series because it has been roundly discussed over the Intrawebs that this book is the bad apple in the proverbial bushel, the weakest link in the maester's chain, if you excuse my nerdiness. If Sesame Street did a 30 second bit on the series it would the one thing that doesn't belong. If A Feast for Crows were a movie it would be Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull or The Godfather III. If it were television, it would be the first season of The Simpsons. If it were music it would be post-David Lee Roth Van Halen. Hell, even George R.R. Martin himself felt the need to write an epilogue to this installment explaining why it is the way it is. Apparently he had to divide the fourth installment into two books to accommodate the entire story. Fine by me. He shouldn't apologize or explain his work. All this awesomeness came out of his head and nobody else's. He reserves the right to tell his story the way he wants. To hell with us critics, right? So what if A Feast for Crows is different.

And make no mistake, A Feast for Crows is indeed the odd man out of the series in a lot of ways. Rather than continue the stories of Bran Stark, Daenerys Targaryen and Tyrion Lannister, Martin opts to introduce narratives from a host of other characters, most notably Cersei Lannister and a bunch of Vikings, I mean Iron Islanders. As well, Martin introduces a few extremely dull characters from Dorne (yawn). But seriously, if you have been on Team Cersei through the first three books, this is the book for you. A solid 40% of the book is told from the perspective of the cruelest of the Lannister clan. By the end of this novel I'm not sure whether I want to punch Cersei in the throat or take her out for a nice seafood dinner. Either way, I don't think her behavior would have been at all believable without the first hand account of why she does what she does. If nothing else, one could regard A Feast for Crows as a primer for all things Lannister.

Furthermore, by adding characters into the narrative mix Martin fleshes out the situation in Westeros a lot more. Up until now, the happenings in Dorne, the Vale and the Iron Islands, have been sorely ignored. This was the first novel in which I got the feeling that things were afoot in all corners of the realm. Though I'm going to be honest here... I'm still entirely uninterested in what is happening in Dorne. Who cares about the Dornish? They are even less interesting than the Tullys.

And despite radio silence from my two favorite characters (Daenerys and Tyrion) and a complete lack of The Others, Martin hasn't abandoned all the familiars. Sansa and Arya Stark, Brienne of Tarth, Jaime Lannister and Samwell Tarly are all represented and their stories have progressed sufficiently. And the absence, for a novel, of Varys was refreshing. Don't get me wrong, Varys is a great character, but he's creepy and there was enough Robert Arryn and The Brotherhood Without Banners in A Feast for Crows to keep the creep factor high.

So, to make a long blog post short, A Feast for Crows isn't as bad as people say it is. It's different, that's for sure, and it doesn't follow the formula of the previous three novels and there is absolutely zero Tyrion represented (that did sting) but it's all logical progression and I finished the novel excited to sink my teeth into A Dance with Dragons. Am I glad to be over the hump? Yes. Was it as painful as it could have been? Well, if I had read this when it came out and had to wait a year for the next novel, yes, it would have been. As it stands, I can start A Dance with Dragons any time I want and that makes a load of difference.

Previous reviews in this series:

A Game of Thrones
A Clash of Kings
A Storm of Swords

Lirael

Lirael

By Garth Nix

Here I am, dipping back into the fantasy genre. What gives?!?!

Long time readers of my blog (all four of you) might be wondering: "Wait a minute, Ryan. You have professed over and over again you staunch hatred for fantasy and yet here you are, yet again, reading a fantasy book."

You're right! And my reasoning is twofold...

First, I'm running out of books! I have precious few books on my shelf at the moment and none of them look especially appealing. I'm heading to Taipei this weekend and there is a shipment of books coming in from Canada soon, so my dearth shall last no more than a few more weeks. But it shall be slim pickins' here in Hualien for a while yet. Oh, I'm sure there are some really good books among the seven that currently reside on my shelf but none of them are jumping out at me. So it's really a sort of crapshoot at this point. Let's hope I get lucky with what I have.

Second, I went back to fantasy because of a a promise I made to commenter when I read the first novel in Garth Nix's Old Kingdom Series (Sabriel, reviewed... poorly... here). I used Sabriel (unfairly) as a vehicle in which to lash out at fantasy fans and (incorrectly) accused Garth Nix of copying both Harry Potter and Game of Thrones (both of which were published after Sabriel). It was an embarrassing post to say the least.

A commenter named Merc took me to task on my glaring factual errors and dismissive review. One thing led to another and I promised him/her that I would read the second in the series since I hardly gave the first novel a chance amidst my own biases against the genre.

So here I am making good on a promise to an anonymous commenter from over a year ago who probably hasn't been back to my blog since. Don't anyone ever accuse me of not paying my dues.

Anyway, turns out Merc was right. Lirael, the second novel in the Old Kingdom Series, is far superior to Sabriel (which despite my dismissiveness and unfairness I still dislike). In fact I would go so far as to say the book is downright good.

Lirael picks up fourteen years after the end of Sabriel. Lirael is an orphaned daughter of the Clayr who has not yet received "the sight." Through a series of events Lirael comes to work in a library. During that time she uncovers a long buried secret.... about herself. This secret is directly responsible for her leaving the Clayr on a mission to save the Old Kingdom and have a novel named after her.

Meanwhile, Sabriel and Touchstone rule the Old Kingdom hand-in-hand and have sired two children: Sameth and Ellimere. Hamlet.... I mean Sameth is an ungrateful, whiny, indecisive shit of a kid who was educated in Ancelstierre (the country south of The Wall, completely devoid of magic and suspiciously similar to 1920s England). Sameth's Ancelstierrean school buddy, Nick, decides to visit the Old Kingdom (which is apparently akin to trying to visit North Korea) at precisely the same time as an ancient free magic entity has awoken and begun to cause serious trouble.... with zombies. Naturally, everyone's stories overlap and things happen.

Oh yeah, and there is also a character called the Disreputable Dog.

Despite my terrible attempt to recount the plot (it does requires a lot of explaining), this is really a decent little book (and when I say little, I mean 700 pages). So how do I go from hating the first book to liking the second? Good question. Easy answer.

Garth Nix is simply a better writer this time around. He does a far better job of explaining important elements of his world in Lirael. My major complaint about Sabriel was the fact that Nix didn't take enough time to explain key concepts such as Free Magic, Charter Magic, Charter marks, the Abhorsen's bells and their relationship with each other. Not only does he cover these things in Lirael but he also fills us in on some of the pertinent history of the Old Kingdom. Furthermore, in Lirael, Nix elaborates on the hierarchical system of the Old Kingdom and how it works. He discusses the bloodlines of the royal family, the Abhorsens and the Clayr. This made for a far more enjoyable read.

Don't get me wrong, I still don't like fantasy, I still don't like magic and the end of this book was TERRIBLE but I found that Lirael has softened me a little on the genre. It has softened me enough to finish the series (due to the terrible ending I actually have no choice in that matter), and perhaps enough to delve a little deeper into the pool of fantasy novels.

But don't think for a second this will get me to crack Lord of the Rings. No sir... I won't do it again.

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

Sabriel

Sabriel

By Garth Nix

(edit: As a commenter noted below, Sabriel was published in 1995, predating both Harry Potter and Game of Thrones. My claim of plagerism is both inaccurate and most likely offensive. I don't know how I missed that, but I did. Sorry to Garth Nix and anyone who might take offense. I'll be careful about my research in the future. Anyway, I'm leaving my gaffe up for all to see. I'm not going to edit out my stupidity and gross inaccuracies.}

What is it with fantasy fans?

Mention to a fantasy fan that you don't happen to like fantasy and you're going to get this annoyingly predictable response:

"Oh! Well, you've haven't read the right stuff! Let me lend you..."

And now you're obliged to read a bunch of nonsense about mages and wizards and some sort of underaged Christ/David metaphor wrestling with a Satan/Goliath archetype with elves and dwarves and elementals and other such nonsense because said fantasy fan really believes they can turn you on to their particular brand of nerdism. Fantasy fans possess an almost fundamentalist missionary zeal. They're like the Jehovah's Witnesses of book readers. It's almost Jihadic.

I've blogged on this phenomenon before when I wrote about Game of Thrones, which I happened to enjoy. I knew at the time that I should curb my enthusiasm for the book lest my friends, who know I hate fantasy, interpret my enjoyment of George R. R. Martin's opus as an invitation for recommendations and book lends that will only lead to hurt feelings when I tell them how much I hate their taste in books (you must remember that I will and do read everything that I get due to my lack of English books). I'm all about honesty when it comes to books.

Unfortunately, I raved about Game of Thrones and lo and behold one of my friends leant me a series of books by Garth Nix called The Old Kingdom Trilogy. The first in the series is called Sabriel and so resembles the plots of both Game of Thrones and Harry Potter that I considered filing a plagiarism lawsuit myself (but then I reminded myself that all fantasy is plagiarized Tolkien and let it slide). The story revolves around a young woman named, oddly enough, Sabriel, who is the daughter of something called an Abhorsen, a term that is never fully explained (forgive me if this is common vernacular in the fantasy lexicon. I'm a bit of an innocent). She lives in a place called Anceltierre which sounds and feels suspiciously like England circa 1916 with its fancy new motor cars and biplanes and machine guns and (gasp!) tanks.

Ancelstierre borders something called the Old Kingdom. There is a (surprise, surprise) wall between the two countries, mainly because one country (Ancelstierre) is modern and free of magic and the other (the Old Kingdom) is freaking riddled with the stuff and they seem to want to keep it that way. The Old Kingdom is governed by something called the Charter and Charter marks, neither of which is ever explained (at all) and something else known as Free Magic (another term left suspiciously unexplained). The line between life and death is decidedly fuzzy. There seems to exist several gates after death and a soul must travel through them all before it is well and truly dead (leaving it virtually impossible to actually die in the Old Kingdom... Billy Crystal would be heartened to know that many people can be simply "mostly dead.") Charter mages, necromancers and Abhorsens can move freely between life and death. How and why? I still don't know. I guess the Abhorsen's job is to guide restless souls past the final gates so that they don't disturb the living. If that's the case, a lot of Abhorsens have been slacking on the job. Apparently there is a war brewing between the living and the dead, and the dead have the upper hand.

All of this might sound intriguing, and I suppose it is. early-modern western nation bordering on a fantasy world that is on the brink of a Civil War of biblical proportions. It's just that there is so much nonsense about bells and Charter marks and Mordicants and Charter stones and free magic and the rules of the Old Kingdom that were never once fully explained to me. I know Sabriel is the first in a series of three books (I have all three) and I kept checking and rechecking to see whether I was inadvertently reading the second in the series.

Furthermore, this book read like a really bad second rate Hollywood blockbuster. It had all the trappings of a typical action movie arch. A slow start followed by a seemingly never ending chase that, only at the very end, takes a turn and allows our hero to gain the final advantage and secure the climactic ending.

This last point is a personal pet peeve of mine. In recent years, far too many authors have adopted the story arches used in Hollywood movies and superimposed them onto novels. Novels, like movies, have become little more than flash-quick action sequences followed by a brief lulls to catch the reader/viewer up with the plot advances. Add a romantic sub-plot and a sassy sidekick and the formula is complete.

Nix does very little with this book other than drive the plot along. As much as I hate fantasy, one of the hallmarks of the genre is the way the best writers establish their character's personalities and idiosyncrasies as well as the beauty and majesty of the setting. Nix does absolutely none of this. Sabriel, her father and Touchstone remain as two-dimensional now as they were when they were introduced and Ancelstierre and the Old Kingdom remain nothing more than cardboard backdrops behind these entirely uninteresting characters. Never mind the realms of death. Here Nix had a wonderful opportunity to describe the corporeal world beyond the grave and failed entirely. By the end I found myself cheering for the bad guy, Voldemo... I mean Kerrigor. He seemed to be the only character of any interest although his descent into evil was (also) never fully explained. Do you notice a pattern with this book yet?

Anyway, Sabriel fails on so many levels that I'm really hesitant to pick up the second in the series. I know I will because they're on my shelf, but I suspect they will wait for a long time. Honestly, fantasy fans... if this is anything close to a good example of modern fantasy writing, you're never going to win converts, even if you hand this book out door to door.

Also reviewed from this series:

Lirael

A Game of Thrones: Book One of A Song of Ice and Fire

A Game of Thrones: Book One of A Song of Fire and Ice

By George R.R. Martin

(Some spoilers. Nothing major)

This is the first book I read on my new Kindle (or any sort of e-reader, for that matter). Got it for my birthday a few weeks back and I have not been disappointed. There was an adjustment period, but by the middle of the book I hardly noticed the difference from a real book. I guess this ushers in a whole new era of reading for me and given my proximity to English books, I can honestly say I'm stoked about the prospect of reading whatever. I. want.

Now, onto George R.R. Martin's genre-arching, mega-selling, multi-billion dollar ultra-hit fantasy series A Game of Thrones.

I have to admit I was more than a little hesitant to pick this book up as I have had terrible luck with the fantasy genre over my reading career. Actually, that's a really nice way of saying that I flat-out detest fantasy as a genre. I think Id rather read Harlequin romances before fantasy if that gives you an indication of my loathing for the genre.

And don't tell me I haven't tried. Fantasy freaks are always telling me I haven't read this yet, or that yet. Save it. Your favorite genre sucks. I tried Tolkien. Lord of the Rings is one of the only books I have ever started and not finished (I got about 250 pages in before Tom Bombadil made me throw this bloviated heap of trash out the window). I have tried on a couple of occasions to plow my way through one of the Shannara books by Terry Brooks (I think it was The Elfstones of Shannara or the Firepits of Shannara or the Teacups of Shannara. I forget). I have (grudgingly) read the first three books in the Narnia series by C.S. Lewis, two books by Neil Gaiman, all the Harry Potters and one of the Dark Tower books by Stephen King, so don't tell me I haven't sampled a cross-section. The only thing I learned in all that reading is that I did not enjoy a single page of any of the books mentioned above (except Harry Potter, I admit).

I always find fantasy novels get bogged down in contrived verbal nonsense. Long-winded introductions where titles and land-holdings and prior achievements are bandied about. Honor, courtesy and gallantry slow the plot down to a snail's pace. If there is one thing I can't stand it's entertainment that doesn't get on with the plot (this is why I hate musicals). It's always an Elvish Lord pledging his unyielding allegiance to the Dwarfish Baron over six and a half pages with talk of dragons and enchantments and defending the Keep.

Ugh.

Give me science fiction any day of the week.

I think my dislike for the fantasy genre stems from my passion for real medieval history. Fantasy is a weird, bastardized version of a very misunderstood and completely fascinating period in Western history and I find that the genre does much harm in most people's understanding of Europe and the Middle East during the era of knights and castles and chivalry.

Which gets me to George R.R. Martin.

By no stretch of the imagination am I suggesting that Martin remains loyal to medieval history. He has, after all, created his own world a la Middle Earth (or Shannara) populated by feuding families and the hint of mystical creatures. But his focus (at least in book one) on the political wrangling of the Seven Kingdoms and the eventual disintegration of the alliance in the wake of King Robert's death ring true to the brutal game of succession that existed in medieval Europe. I was reminded on more that one occasion of the centuries-long battle between the Carolingians and Merovingians in early Medieval France and many of the events in the book mirror real events in the early history of England when it was still divided into the kingdoms of Essex, Wessex and the like (Winterfell is quite obviously Scotland) as well as China and the Asian Steppe. That's cool.

While there were moments in the book where Martin lapsed into the tired cliches of a fantasy writer, he mostly maintains the plot and delivers literally dozens of compelling characters (none of which his is shy about killing off) and enough political intrigue to make Julian Assange blush. While he hints at the notion of dragons and giants, it would seem that the world of the Seven Kingdoms is rooted in reality (mostly) and there, mercifully, exists no magic in this world.

And that's how Martin was able to sucker this fantasy-hating reader in. By resisting the urge to fill the pages with wizards and warlocks and ballrogs and trolls, Martin was forced to conceive of a story based on the strength of his characters rather than the cleverness of his creatures. While I have not fallen for the series like others readers seem to have, I am looking forward to reading the second book in the series, although not right away. Think I'll start in on the HBO series tonight.

Oh, and there seem to be zombies in this book, which scores major points with this guy.

Other reviews from A Song of Ice and Fire:

A Clash of Kings
A Storm of Swords
A Feast for Crows