Tag: George R.R. Martin

I didn't expect that at the end of the available volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire I would feel like I had run headlong into a brick wall, but that is exactly what happened. I don't want to sound overly dramatic here but, while A Dance With Dragons is more of a "complete” book than A Feast For Crows (in that it covers more characters), it's less satisfactory. A Storm of Swords still stands as the single most delightful entry in this canon.

Enough quibbling, though: is A Dance With Dragons any good? Keeping in mind that I only had to wait one week for it rather than six years, I'm going to say that yes, it is. On reflection, its three main characters get three complete story arcs that naturally bleed into the next part of the story. It's just that, given its eighteen different points of view, a lot of the work that Martin performs between these pages is simple shuffling of pawns across the board so that they may be in place for greater things. None of which happen here.

Contains spoilers for volumes 1-4, not for A Dance With Dragons itself!

The second and third entries in the Tales of Dunk and Egg complement each other so well that it's hard to imagine that they were published seven years apart. It wasn't until I came to The Mystery Knight that I could appreciate The Sworn Sword for what it is. I realise that a large part of this is because of the significance of the characters at play: in The Mystery Knight Dunk and Egg participate in activities that have some bearing on the future of the realm, while in The Sworn Sword they're performing pure acts of hedge knighthood.

The fault in my interpretation lies not in Martin but in myself; with a fuller understanding of the canon of these characters to date I came to enjoy myself much more than I had beforehand. That Martin's work can grow in retrospect as well as in the telling is something that I can get behind.

A Week of Ice and Fire, Bonus Round II!

In the second part of the two part “Spoilers of Ice and Fire” series, I look into some other characters. I have no idea how I’m doing for timing, but by the time this is published I firmly hope to be reading A Dance With Dragons.

Remember that if you don’t want to know what has happened in the books leading up to A Dance With Dragon, avoid reading this for your own sanity!

Spoiler city! So many spoilers for A Game of Thrones to A Feast For Crows you won't know what to do with yourself!

A Week of Ice and Fire, Bonus Round I!

 

The rest of the Week of Ice and Fire has been dedicated to writing generally spoiler free impressions of A Song of Ice and Fire to date, carefully dancing around ruining anything for anyone. The final entries, however, are devoted to something else entirely: my thoughts on specific and sometimes horrific things that happened within the first four books.

If you don't want to know stuff that happens in the books, you'll want to avoid this. If you're already familiar with the books, or you don't care if you find out things ahead of time … step right in!

Spoiler city! So many spoilers for A Game of Thrones to A Feast For Crows you won't know what to do with yourself!

A Week of Ice and Fire, Day Three!

 

I couldn’t find the laughably terrible cover that I have at home at a suitable resolution online, and the new “classy CG” covers are just awful so I’ve declined the opportunity to put them up. Just imagine a book with a really cool cover, because damn fantasy gets poorly treated in the cover stakes.

A Storm of Swords is the most exciting entry in A Song of Ice and Fire of the first three. It's interesting to say this because it's essentially an exercise in sadism for Martin from start to finish. Gelling in a way that A Clash of Kings never quite managed, the sheer dynamism on display makes for an incredibly entertaining book. Certainly, the entertainment value falls within the bounds of believability, but … truly, nothing is sacred to Martin, and that is amazing.

Contains spoilers for A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings

A Week of Ice and Fire, Day Two!

A Clash of Kings is a good book, and, while it delivers on most of the promises of A Game of Thrones' explosive ending, it makes a point of emphasising the fantasy roots of the series and is significantly less pleasant all around in its developments.

Contains spoilers for A Game of Thrones