A Song of Ice and Fire (5) - A Dance With Dragons: Book 5 of a Song of Ice and Fire [Hardcover]

ADWD was a loooong time in the waiting, and since the previous book was a character-driven travelogue, it was generally believed that this would make up for it with plenty of action and plot resolution. Not so. This, like A Feast For Crows, is 1000 pages of scenic character study.

The characters travel about, and have immense conversations with other people. These conversations are fascinating, and you can see the characters develop (and not always for the best) as the book goes on. But action? Not that much. We have been invested with these amazing characters for 20 years now, so watching them develop is rewarding - but it seems to be at the expense of story momentum.

By the end, we're not much further along in plot than we were by the end of Book 3. But it's now starting to become apparent that GRRM's focus is on character first and foremost, and plot must fit in the small gaps whenever the character is allowed to plateau for awhile.

So the real standout storylines in this book are oddly, the ones with characters with the fewest chapters. Then, they have to be sharp, succinct, focused and dramatic. But the "Big Three" characters each get about a dozen chapters each, and as a result have bloated, fuzzy, rather impotent storylines, where they talk a lot and worry a good deal, and evolve or devolve as people, but don't get much further towards their respective goals.

A great many new characters are introduced, but oddly, are not detailed that well. An important new figure in Dany's storyline, Hizdahr, is sketched so vaguely that you never get a sense of him at all, and care even less. It seems GRRM is too fascinated by the Big Three to be much interested in the lesser roles.

GRRM's writing style can be visceral, beautiful, haunting, unforgettable. But his weakness is wandering away into asides that are full of description and backstory, and that tendancy seems to be getting much stronger with each passing book. His editor apparently reveres him too much to call a halt to the endless minutiae. Allowing for that, how he proposes to tie up all the myriad loose ends in two more books is beyond me. I can't see it happening. This feels at the moment like it may turn into a never-ending series.

I'm still a massive fan and would recommend the series as a whole - there are too many moments of beauty not to. But I may not be first in the queue next time, as I was for this one. I have re-adjusted my expectations somewhat.

I am, I admit, new to A Song of Ice and Fire. I watched the fantastic series made by HBO and, as soon as the pilot ended, I picked up the books and fell in love. The first three volumes of this series, as any reader will know, are a tour de force of fantasy. A wonderfully realised world populated by fantastic characters that are loved and loathed to a high degree. An entanglement of plots is lightly touched by an unnerving thread of dark magic that lingers in the background to remind us that 'winter is coming'. I read the series, including the slower, less satisfactory 'A Feast for Crows' three times whilst waiting those couple of months for 'Dance'. Then this doorstop was in my hands and I read it eagerly, expecting a return to 'A Storm of Swords' quality.

I, like so many others, was vastly disappointed. This novel sees the return of the 'protagonists' of the epic: Jon Snow (who still knows nothing), Daenerys Targaryen (who has looked back and is now facing the wrong direction) and everyone's favourite sarcastic dwarf Tyrion Lannister. However, these three fan favourites accomplish precisely one act of significance between them, and that is a vastly annoying cliffhanger-a now overused hallmark of Martin's writing.

Jon Snow, stuck on the wall, is struggling to hold several factions together in the face of the approaching war with the Others in the long winter (which is supposedly still on its way, despite no evidence of it in this book). There are interesting parallels with Daenerys, who is trying to rule a city of people and customs that are not her own and who would gladly see her dead. Both of these young leaders struggle in their tasks. Jon grows into his position as a leader with satisfying, if not entirely realistic, maturity. His story arc is arguably the best of the three, but it ends in the most disgusting, hackneyed 'plot twist' I have ever seen. It WILL annoy the seven hells out of you.

Daenerys actually DEVOLVES as a character. The strong-minded young woman from 'A Storm of Swords' has lost her fire and dithers around doing nothing for the entire book. The effect is, of course, to show that the dragon queen has much to learn about ruling (though this does not dent her huge entitlement complex). However, this could have been shown in less than half of her chapters, with the rest devoted to some progression-whether meeting more of the legions of people sailing her way, or getting to Asshai, or reuniting with the Dothraki or...or...SOMETHING. Instead, she remains ineffectual throughout the whole book, proving to be the young (and hormonal) girl that she claims to be, despite previously being a competent leader in control of her own emotions. This 180 degree turn is exceptionally annoying, but this is not the biggest disservice done by Martin to his characters.

Tyrion Lannister, once the favourite of 90% of the fanbase, is reduced to wandering around asking where whores go, turtle-watching and playing chess. He is one of the many characters on his way to meet Daenerys, and this journey takes the entire book. And he still doesn't get there. His chapters, once full of intrigue, character development and humour, are a vapid travelogue-and not even a good one. Whilst he does develop (his interaction with Penny the dwarf is touching and exposes how good he did have it in Casterly Rock), he loses much of his charm and all of his humour. Bitterness is understandable in his position, but something about the way this bitterness is conveyed is unconvincing and unpalatable.

What about everyone else? Arya's scenes are entertaining as always, Bran's are interesting if sparse. Davos' chapters are among the most enjoyable due to his meeting one of the best characters yet introduced-Wyman Manderley (why are Martin's side characters always more interesting than his main ones?), Theon's are haunting and disturbing, and 'disturbing' is cranked up to eleven in this book. If rape, mutilation, bestiality, cannibalism, torture, voyeuristic humiliation, intense diarrhea and even more intense stupidity offends you, give this a miss. New point of view, Ser Barristan Selmy, is fantastic, and the only well-done viewpoint in Essos. Everyone else is largely dull and uninspired, and most people do nothing but travel around. One 'huge' reveal of a character that was supposed to be dead is flat and poorly executed. It produces a 'oh.' rather than a 'WOAH :O'
Which leads me to my actual point:

This is a book with several plot arcs building up to several promising climaxes. None of these climaxes arrive. We miss out on two major battles, we see Brienne (who ended 'Feast' in a cliffhanger) for a couple of pages which answer no questions before she whisks off Jaime Lannister into ANOTHER cliffhanger, several people are STILL travelling to meet Daenerys having accomplished nothing, and several people may or may not be dead. It is as if Martin bought himself two prize racehorses, Cliffhanger and Playing Around With Character Deaths, shot both of them and proceeded to beat them with a typewriter. A long, largely dull mess of travelogues leads to no climax, no katharsis, nothing of anything. It was a vast disappointment with a few high points, and I didn't have to wait for six years for it. I feel sorry for those souls who had a long wait filled with bad PR and timewasting on the part of the author. I fell in and out of love with this series in remarkably quick time, and I will be recommending this book to no one. Is winter coming? It is not known.

It's taken me a couple of weeks of reflection to decide whether or not Dance With Dragons was a decent-to-good addition to A Song of Ice and Fire or had taken the series further down the spiral towards mediocrity and filler which started with the 4th book, A Feast for Crows. I'm sorry to say that, quite frankly, the book is (with the exception of a couple of character arcs) a disaster and will take quite a stunning return to form on the part of George R.R. Martin to revive the series.

The positives in this book consist are as follows:

The Theon Greyjoy chapters which (while very painful to read) are amongst the strongest stuff Martin has written and make Theon's character development from A Game of Thrones to Dance with Dragons arguably the most intriguing of all characters.

The scenes involving Lord Manderley - who has come out of nowehere to become a firm fan favourite. I will not elaborate on how this character features as to do so would require spoilers but I will say that his scenes in the Davos Seaworth chapters provided the first genuinely uplifting moment I've had in this series in 10+ years.

I'm afraid that's all i can muster on the positive front. There are another couple of chapters/characters/subplots which are certainly interesting (Bran,Arya) but are so fleeting and incomplete that they merely add to the frustration with the book.

The negatives in this book:

Of the 'Big 3' characters - Jon, Dany, Tyrion - none are on form and the latter two in particular suffer in some of the most appallingly written chapters Martin has committed to paper. While Tyrion as a character is more or less recognisable his 'journey' is so mind numbingly dull and pointless that you find his chapters to be a chore. He picks up the most preposterous and unnecessary side-kick who a previous reviewer has quite aptly described as being this series answer to Jar-Jar Binks. Dany has had a personality transplant and has become, to be honest, a seriously silly little adolescent girl. The difference between the Dany of the first 3 books and the idiotic Dany of this installment is so great - it's as if she's become possessed by Sansa's naive pre Ned execution personality (that is, if Sansa had also been a bit of a slut) - that it is actually jarring and you find yourself sighing at the sight of her name starting any chapter. Jon Snow is more or less the same and we do get some interesting developments at the wall but his arc is left on a totally needless cliffhanger which will no doubt take some 6+ years for us to resolve given Martin's current writing speed.

There are several chapters (Jamie/Cersei) which quite clearly should have been part of A Feast for Crows (and would have geniunely improved that book) and clearly stick out in this installment.

Victarion/Ironborn chapters add nothing. Stannis finally goes somewhere then gets caught in a blizzard for pretty much the entirity of the book (a fair metaphor for Martin's progress with this series over the last 11 years).

Pointless description/waffle/travelogue - as many (MANY) other reviewers have pointed out this book is very bad for filler and repititions. One might think that the book had gone straight from GRRM's computer to the printing presses without the intermediate stage of proof-reading/editing. Even if this was the case you would think that Martin himself would be capable of editing some of the truly inexcusable filler out of this book but since writing Storm of Swords he seems to have become incapable of discriminating between relevant, concisely written plot developments and waffling descriptions of foodstores/eating/diarrhoea.

In conclusion, you could combine this book with A Feast for Crows and cut some 1000-1200 pages from the resulting tome and you would have a decent addition to the series. It would still be the weakest installment thus far but it would be infinitely better than what we have in the two seperate books.