A Song Of Ice And Fire - George R R Martin (Spoilers allowed)

If you combine all of benhagy's posts in ACL, you'd have a book bigger than ADWD. <3

lol

that post wasn't that long

I've made many longer. But I expect I'll have more to say, as, since writing it like, what an hour ago? my opinion on the book has already softened up even more than it had. Pretty sure it's my second favorite. There are a number of things I really, really like about it. I'll post more (and more and MORE) words later once I have more collected thoughts I'm sure. That last post stands as a I-just-finished-like-10-minutes-ago post, so it'll be nice to refer back to.

Random thought/dangling plot thread:

I wonder if anything will ever come of Tyrion's silly mushrooms, other than just killing Nurse? Did he deplete his stock then and there?

Some points:

- No, Tyrion did not use up his stock of mushrooms
- The whole Mirri Maaz Duur "prophecy" had to do with Drogo coming back to life, not Danaerys' fertility, so it's obviously not happening
- Jon not looking all Targaryen is not all that surprising; presumably the characteristics are recessive genes. In the Dunk & Egg novellas they point out that Daeron II's children had dark hair (from his Dornish wife), although Aegon has silver hair

Yeah I figured on regarding the MMD 'prophecy', but nevertheless, Quentyn was a sun that rose in the west and set in the east, and I feel that's definitely worth noting for any number of reasons, even if it seems incidental.

I figured Tyrion still had his mushrooms (though you seem so sure of yourself; I don't remember any specific sentence that led me to believe he had some left over, unless the sentence where he talks bout using them on Nurse alludes to him having more, can't remember) but it's nevertheless a plot thread without a resolution in the novel, like so many,

I know there's lots of shit about Jon not looking like a Targ and that this doesn't disprove any specific theory, but I'm still on the boat that wishes rather strongly that he isn't a Targ, as i think it's just the kind of twist that verges on selling him short, especially at this point in the game. And if Tyrion is a Targ god help me...but, given Barristan's little bit, I'm pretty confident that's just a sly little red herring. Better be lol. Soon it will be revealed that everyone is a Targ in disguise!

This is the slowest I've ever read any of these books, due to working 80 hours a week at the moment. I have got 9 days off now though so have been reading a lot this last few days.

Got to page 913 just now.

Fuck.

Pretty much. How could you not want to race through the last couple of chapters and epilogue after that? I did.

Just finished it.

Hmm..

I do think it could have been a lot shorter, or at least, much of the slow going POVs that people have already pointed out could have been cut short and the missing chapters kept in.

The Winds of Winter should be absolutely insane though. I knew as soon as I found out that was going to be the title of the sixth book, that as soon as Winter finally fucking arrived, things were going to get intense. I think a lot of stuff is going to go down in that book and it will be very fast paced, a la ASOS.

Re-reading GoT right now as it's the only book I remembered to bring on vacation with me, and gotta say, the writing in this series takes a continual step up as it goes along.

Even CoK, which as I've mentioned has many of my favorite passages, seems to have more of a unity about its writing, while GoT is very brisk, and it feels like lots of details are just left out or glossed over compared to lots of the other books, as especially coming from ADWD.

That was one of the things I loved about ADWD, truly, as I'm so fascinated with the world here. Nevertheless, the re-read has been fun enough so far; I always forget how nice it is to be with Ned until I revisit the first book, and, again given ADWD, it's somewhat nice to get back to the beginning of things--Winterfell when all the kids were there, etc.

But I definitely think it's the weakest by a large margin in the writing department. I hope TWOW and future volumes that may be faster paced can keep up with the better writing that was really showcased in ADWD and, imo, lots of AFFC as well (though I'd appreciate PLOTTING more like in the first three, haha).

The last two books should move faster, as George has now progressed the story to the point where the 5 year gap would have ended, had he retained it.

Wait, why does the Drowned God have any power?

Not convinced. However, whatever happened to Patchface and maybe Aeron during their times in the sea *may* have been down to the Drowned God. We'll probably never find out about it though.

Damn, it's been a long time since I've read ACOK and SOS Pt 1. Can't even remember anything Patchface does/says!

One of the most significant is his whole "shadows come to play/dance my lord" song in the ACOK Prologue.

Ironically, while he sings this, he's wearing a bucket with antlers on it and I believe some green motley. lol renly.

The level of detail in foreshadowing in this series seriously boggles my mind.

It's like when writers/authors say that they've got the whole story mapped out, they've just go to write in the little details in between (ie. Lost (lol) or Harry Potter etc) and you come to the end and realise that actually they've made a lot of this up as they've gone along (or in LOST's case, they made the whole thing up as they went along). But with this series (and with certain events in DWD really showcasing this, as well as the many theories on Tower of the Hand that haven't come to pass yet) you really get to know just HOW much foreshadowing/back story is involved with this and how much GRRM really IS following one big masterplan. Mental.

So reading ADWD, I feel as if I've missed something big regarding Jon's parentage.. did I?

No, still only vague hints, nothing explicit.

Haven't read this thread at all because of fear of spoilers, but I just picked up Dance of Dragons at lunch today (finished Feast last night) so hopefully I will soon join the discussion. These books are like crack, if crack weren't bad for you.

Cool. Seems like we're about at the same place then.

You no nothing jon sn... oh, er Molon

Okay, just finished the fifth book. I just have this to say:

Jon Snow deserved what he got.

lol, you think he's done....but yeah. he did
EDIT: No.. he didn't

No, I don't think he's done and yes he did.

Christ I hope it's not 5 years until the next book is finished.

All I know is that we better get an actual Kraken just straight up wrecking shit before this story is done.

I'm on pg.130 of A Feast for Crows. I deliberately have been spacing out the books. I liked the first three but so far this one is terribly uninteresting. I'm already starting to speed skim pages and I'm barely 1/9th into it. The Drowned God stuff is kind of intriguing but so far that's about the only thing that I've found remotely engaging, and that's only in a rubbernecking kind of way.

Prologue, Epilogue, Iron Islands and Dorne are the best parts of that book IMO. The Brienne stuff is terrible. It's a good book though. I think we were spoiled by the pace of the first three books and when Feast came along with its much slower pace and greater amount of time between major events it feels a bit boring. The devil is in the details though and I think it's really important to have the slower stuff like Feast (and Dance) lay everything out for you and give all that exposition. You can tell that the next book (The Winds of Winter) will be fast paced and epic with the way Feast and Dance built everything up.

He's going to die before book 7. I'll bet money (It's an expression, no I won't but you get what I mean).

Had to buy ADWD in hardback because they don't get published in paperback for months after release in England.

In India at the moment, and went into a few bookshops today. Saw ADWD in paperback. Exactly the same book, dimensions, font, publisher (ie. not a fake) but in paperback. And here I am with all of the books in mass market paperback but ADWD in this humongous hardback on my shelf. Fuckers.

I bought the hardback-sized paperback version (whatever that kind is called..trade?) of A Game of Thrones and it fell apart on me very quickly.

really? I have that version for SOS and it's really resilient. read it twice and don't even have creases in the binding.

I'm about halfway through a storm of swords, and this is moving from a books I love situation to a full blown obsession.

I can't wait to read this thread!

Yeah I was surprised. The first eighth of the book just fell out after a little reading. I assume it was a bad batch of glue or something.

The below is a spoiler, as molon is likely to read this post.

Since that post, I've read another couple of chapters. Now I feel sick to my stomach. I had lunch plans, but I don't know if I can make them. I felt the same way with Bran and Rickon, but I doubt these two have any continues left.

One chapter further, still, and now I want to kill myself.

EDIT:

Seriously, so fucking sad about this. I don't know if I can forgive George for doing this to me (causing me the sadness, obviously I know it's his great writing ability that allows him to). Everybody's always saying that you can't expect characters to last the series, but after that shit with Bran and Rickon, I thought the Stark children were safe. Something to do with the direwolves. From whom can I expect vengeance? Obviously they've planted a tiny seed of hope in my mind with Jon Snow, but come on, who knows what the fuck is happening next with him. What house am I supposed to root for? I know there's been a theme in this book of "the lannisters aren't evil, they're just the opposition", but am I honestly expected to hope Joffrey and Tywin succeed?
I mean, the next chapter is Tyrion. Normally I love that, but I almost spat at the book when the next name was a fucking Lannister.

I MAD