A Dance with Dragons

OMG, it's here!  I have read it!  It was amazing!  I need more!!!!  (Ugh, I need some sleep, too.)

Having read through book four of George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, I could finally understand why people were getting really twitchy about his fifth book.  Why we'd get yet another person coming into the store looking for A Dance With Dragons and then heaving a tremendous sigh of disappointment when we said there wasn't a publication date available.

I get it now, I really do.

And that is why I read 1100+ pages in six days.  I'm probably going to spoil some things so you're forewarned.

We catch back up with Jon and the "rock and another rock and a hard place" situation of being Lord Commander of the Night's Watch when Stannis is trying to get him to reneg on his vows by offering him Winterfell, dead things walk in the night and try to kill people, and the sudden influx of Wildings causing a dire need for more food, shelter, and discipline, as well as distrust from half his Sworn Brothers.  Roose Bolton and his really, REALLY sadistic son also cause problems.  Tyrion has been smuggled out of King's Landing by Varys and sent to Illyrio (whom we haven't really seen since A Game of Thrones).  From there he is sent on a journey toward Daenerys and Mereen in the company of "Griff" and "Young Griff"... but gets waylaid and captured in a brothel (of all places) by Jorah Mormont.  He also meets another dwarf, Penny, whose brother was killed by men eager to claim Cersei's promised lordship, and she provides a new perspective on being a dwarf for Tyrion.  Daenerys has got herself into royally (pun intended) hot water by establishing herself at Mereen to keep the slave trade from reopening there and a guerilla war by the Sons of the Harpy forces her to make some really dense choices.  Her dragons are also causing serious trouble because, guess what, they have grown a great deal and seem to have started eating people (children at least).  At the end of the North and Essos chapters we start catching up with other characters, chiefly Jaime, Cersei, and Arya (Cersei's punishment...never, EVER could have guessed that, ever).

GRRM gives us great perspective chapters from old/new characters like Ser Barristan Selmy (yay!), Ser John Connington, Quentyn Martell, Asha Greyjoy and Melisandre (wtf! - need more from her/her history).  And THEN we get perspective chapters from Reek, aka the wreck-that-used-to-be-Theon-that-douche-who-double-crossed-Robb, AND DAVOS!!!  Can I just tell you how happy I was that Davos is still around?  Granted, his storyline just got wierder because he has to go find Rickon and Osha, whom we haven't seen since they parted company with Bran, Hodor, Jojen, and Meera, but he's not dead and he's one of my favorite POV characters.

Speaking of Bran, he's got really boring chapters.  As does Victarion Greyjoy.  We all have our favorite characters/characters we love to hate and I found myself starting to skim the POVs that I didn't care much for.  Although...GRRM did toss up something odd in one of Bran's chapters that I had to go back and re-read:  Bran can "jump" into the heart-tree at Winterfell and see its whole history and there was a brief flash of Eddard Stark praying something about Jon's mom....  And that was it!  I was like, wait, what???  Tell us more!!  People have some seriously crazy ideas about Jon being Lyanna and Rhaegar's kid (I'm fence-y, given that Jon would need to be at least a year older than Robb and it's acknowledged that he's younger because Eddard knocked up Catelyn before he went off to war) - when is someone going to let Jon know where he comes from??  All those chapters from characters I don't care so much about...they are important, just don't know why as yet.

However, two important characters didn't make an appearance at all in A Dance with Dragons:  Sam, now forging his chain in the Citadel, and Sansa, hiding in the Vale with Petyr.  Sam just has a great voice and I want to see how Maesters are trained.  Sansa, however, is a character I didn't like in A Game of Thrones but have come to be very invested in her outcome.  Her situation is just as dangerous as Arya's: she's masquerading as Petyr's illegitimate daughter, accused by Cersei of helping Tyrion poison Joffrey (it was really Petyr/Margery's kooky grandma), but GRRM makes it clear that Petyr thinks Sansa is as beautiful as her mom.  And Petyr still has a thing for Catelyn, as evidenced by how easily he pitched Lysa out the moon door in A Storm of Swords.

So...now I wait like everyone else.  What would I like to see in Book 6 (please GRRM, write fast!)?  Since we're giving out POV chapters to a wider range of characters I'd like to see ones from Jeyne Poole (poor girl), Jorah Mormont (dudes, he is OVERDUE for a chapter), Osha, Petyr (how does that sneaky little mind work), and Varys (how does HIS sneaky little mind work).  I'd love a chapter from Kevan's POV, but he got taken out by Varys's "birds" in the Epilogue.  ADDITIONALLY, I would really, REALLY like to see Daenerys take everyone (the dragons, Ser Barristan, Jorah, Tyrion, Penny, her Unsullied, etc) and get the heck out of Mereen, perhaps by way of Old Valyria - the Doom of Valyria keeps being mentioned, as well as how no one goes there anymore, and that seems important.

And then I'd like to see Arya let loose on Westeros.  She is now officially the scariest child-character in fiction.

(Apologies for the fangirl review)

I think I'm obsessed!

Soooo...I've just read four very long books, like almost 3500 pages, in about three weeks.

I keep checking a television show website and fan pages for clips because I don't get the channel.

I think I'm obsessed with Game of Thrones.

When does the fifth book come out again?  Glad I only have to wait one month because I can totally understand why people have been asking about A Dance with Dragons for years.

A Feast for Crows

I'll be writing about book four in a series, so be warned I'm going to spoil books one though three.

Pretty sure my eyes bugged out at the end of A Storm of Swords (there's an Epilogue that blows your mind in the second to last paragraph).  Some swearing occured, too, mostly along the lines of "Fuck!"  And then I went and downloaded A Feast for Crows right away so I could keep on reading.

So...Jon is now Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, Arya is roaming about the countryside with Sandor Clegane, Joffrey's dead because he was poisoned in a scheme so complicated it makes my head spin, Tyrion was tried for it - and lost his trial by battle - then Jaime decided to free him only Tyrion killed Lord Tywin while sneaking out of King's Landing with Varys, and Sansa was spirited off to the Vale by Littlefinger wherein he shoved Lysa out the Moon Door.

Shit gets real (after a Prologue that seems to make no sense until the end of the book). 

Everybody and their brother gets POV chapters in AFoC - the first chapter is from the POV of the "The Prophet" aka Damphair aka Aeron Greyjoy, the second "The Captain of Guards" aka Hotah, the Prince Doran's axe-wielding bodyguard (but we get to meet some of Prince Oberyn's daughters and they are a nasty bunch), and in chapter three we finally get a chapter from someone we know.  And it turns out to be Cersei, of all people, and let me tell you that is one unsympathetic character.  Didn't like her to start with, I like her even less by the end of the book.  Other new POV chapters come from Brienne, "The Kraken's Daughter" aka Asha Greyjoy, "The Soiled Knight" (which is a really interesting chapter, due to the turn of events in it), "The Iron Captain", "The Drowned Man", "The Queenmaker", etc. 

I'm not sure why GRRM switched from exclusively proper-named chapters to using more descriptive titles.  With character names as chapter titles, signalling the POV of the chapter, it gave no hint as to the tone of the chapter but something like "The Kraken's Daughter" indicates Asha's stance that she feels she is Balon Greyjoy's heir and should succeed her father on Pyke.  Sharp readers will figure out what's going on in those chapters ahead of time.  Maybe that's the point.

Now, here's the irritating thing about this book: it's only half a book.  GRRM split the narrative into two but he didn't do it chronologially.  He did it geographically.  Say what?  So AFoC follows Arya on Braavos, Samwell (with Maester Aemon and Gilly) on his way around Westeros to Oldtown, Cersei's shennanigans in King's Landing, Jaime trying to win a war without actually fighting one, Brienne (and Pod) looking everywhere for Sansa, Sansa in the Vale, characters in Dorne we've never met before, and the Greyjoys as they do whatever Greyjoys so (which seems to be raping and pillaging).  We don't hear from Jon, Daenerys, Tyrion, Stannis, Davos, &etc., which is worrying because there's a reference to Davos and it doesn't bode well at all.  Their stories will all be in the next book, due out in July, which will run concurrent and then a little past this one as far as chronology.  WTF.  I have to wait until after book five to see what happens to Sansa and Cersei (and I really hope Cersei gets it, too).

*Audiobook slightly disappointing - no Roy Dotrice (sad face).  The narrator was John Lee.  He did a credible job but I missed some of Dotrice's particular voices (although with no Tyrion I did not have to listen to a different Tyrion) but John Lee sounds exactly like Christopher Lee.  Seriously.  I have Wiki'd and Googled and IMDB'd Christopher Lee and he seems to have no sons, only one daughter.  I am strangely disappointed.

A Storm of Swords

I'll be referring to events that have happened in book 1, A Game of Thrones, and book 2, A Clash of Kings, so you might want to skip this post if you don't want to read any spoilers.



So, instead of opening A Storm of Swords with Jon (captured by wildings), Arya (just having escaped Harrenhal and that pack of homicidal nutters, the Bloody Mummers), Sansa (stuck in King's Landing), Catelyn (who just let Jaime escape Riverrun with Brienne the Beauty and some Lannister), Daenerys (sailing from Qarth after torching some freaky magicians/sorcerers), or even Bran (escaping the ruins of Winterfell with Rickon, Osha, and the kids from Deepwood Motte), we open on a Prologue narrated by a very, very put-upon Brother of the Night's Watch and then get our first real chapter narrated by...Jaime?  The arrogant sister-loving Kingslayer gets his own POV chapters now?  Odd....

This is helpful, actually.  Through Jaime we learn more about Aerys the Mad King and some of Jaime's true motivation behind his act of assassination.  We also learn a little more about why Lannisters act the way they do - which doesn't make him endearing, it just clears the air.  Jaime also develops a sudden weight-loss in the book which makes him a much more sympathetic character and he stops being a arrogant prick.  Some of the time.

Daenerys is, well, still the Mother of Dragons and off in Essos.  Her dragons are a little bigger but instead of heading for Westeros to take back the Iron Throne she somehow progresses to a one-woman abolishionist movement, crushing the cities of Astapor and Mereen (once she's bought and freed some many thousand Unsullied to fight for her - that was a clever trick).  A character we haven't seen since the beginning of ACoK pops back up and that gets pretty interesting.

Sansa really starts to develop in this book and you really feel sorry for her.  She has no one to trust and she's forced to marry Tyrion.  We know Tyrion isn't a bad guy (out of all the Lannisters, he's probably the most decent, well, except for Kevan but we don't get his POV), since we get to read his chapters, but Sansa sees him only as a Lannister.  Those times when she ought to confess the truth of what she's feeling to him all she sees is Lannister crimson and can't trust him.  But she goes on an adventure at the very end - I would love to have a POV chapter for Petyr Baelish.  That man is crafty. 

We catch back up with Davos (who I quite like), Arya's storyline seems unclear, and Sam gets his own POV chapters (poor guy but he has a good heart) but it's Catelyn's last chapter that really sets the tone for what I think will be the remainder of the series.  The Red Wedding sequence proves that no one in this epic has any integrity (except maybe Davos and Jon, we will see).

*Audio by Roy Dotrice, too - excellent, and we get to hear his Walder Frey voice again.

A Clash of Kings

I'll be referring to events that have happened in book 1, A Game of Thrones, so you might want to skip this post if you don't want to read any spoilers.

So, A Clash of Kings picks up with Jon heading north of the Wall with the Night's Watch (to rout the Others and/or wildings, both of which sound like a bad idea), Arya has been rescued by Yoren and is now disguised as a boy destined for the Wall (but will be dropped off at Winterfell on the way by), Catelyn and Robb are at Riverrun where they have Jaime held prisoner, Sansa is stuck in King's Landing with Cersei and her crazy-inbred son Joffrey, Tyrion has been dispatched to King's Landing to sort out the mess Joffrey caused by beheading Eddard Stark, and Daenerys, well, she's still wandering around Essos but now she has her own tribe and three dragons.

Dragons, holla.  But they are baby dragons and need protecting.  (Oh, and Bran and Rickon are still at Winterfell, boring.)

GRRM's world gets a little bigger and then a little bigger.  We meet ever more characters, learn complicated backstories.  It's impressive and ultimately very, very readable.  Once you have a favorite character (Tyrion, Jon, Sansa - who gets progressively more sympathetic because you have to remember she's only, what, eleven and currently caught in a metaphorical pit of vipers, and a new character, Davos) you have to read madly to find out just what happens to that person in the next chapter (flipping back to the table of contents to see when they might next appear).  The amazing Battle of the Blackwater sequence closes the King's Landing portion (echoed in Jon's fight with the wildings).  Since this is book two of a projected seven, and considering the character everyone thought would last through the end (Eddard) got the chop on the steps of Baelor's sept, it's hard to tell where GRRM is going.  Which is the mark of a master storyteller, in my opinion.

*I have since listend to the audio book, still narrated by Roy Dotrice, and IT IS AMAZING.  Again.

A Game of Thrones

In the fall of my senior year of high school I took a class called "Contemporary Literature" and it was the easiest class I've ever taken.  We had to read six books greater than 200 pages each published after 1981, write one character bio, one book report, draw one book cover, and do one other thing (that I can't remember anymore).  If we read a book over 600 pages it counted as two books...so guess who read three James Clavells and one Tom Clancy in about two months thus acquiring a permanent pass to the school library for the rest of the semester during the class period?  Me, and I started with the "A"s and read my way through the sci-fi/fantasy section of the library.  Fun, yes, but with the consequence that I binged on fantasy literature so much that I stopped reading the genre when I started college. 

Meaning I never read George RR Martin's A Game of Thrones when it was first released in 1996 (I started college in 1996 so giant, fat hardcovers that I was reading included my biology textbook and very few, if any, novels).  I continued to not read it even after I started working for a bookstore and about about every third week some sad-eyed fantasy fan would come ask if we had a release date for "A Song of Ice and Fire #5" or "George RR Martin's Dragon book" (which we didn't, this being 2007 or later).

However, HBO has got a miniseries up and running based on the series - Game of Thrones.  And it has Sean Bean.  And Lena Headey....and it looks good.  Really good.  So good, in fact, that I stalked the show's website looking at the videos posted there.  I decided that I really ought to at least read the first book in the series.  I don't get HBO (I refuse to pay the insane amount of money it would take for me to get the three channels I want to watch along with the 250 other channels I don't care about) so what do I have to lose?

Only my sanity.  I ordered up A Game of Thrones on my handy-dandy nook and spent all Friday evening, Friday night, and Saturday reading.  Reading, reading, reading.  I couldn't stop.  I couldn't have found a place to stop if I had to (and I didn't need to, so lucky me).

This is a fantasy book that is light on the obvious fantasy elements.  "The Others" live north of a giant Wall of ice that was apparently built by magic centuries ago.  The seasons are irregular, summers and winters last for years.  There is talk of dragons and mages but no one has seen a dragon for hundreds of years (there are dragon skulls in the secret passages of the castle in King's Landing).  The Stark children find direwolves - gigantic, prehistoric-ish wolves that supposedly don't ever live south of the Wall.

Martin structures the book very cleverly.  Each chapter is told through the viewpoint of one character so the narration passes around to the characters unevenly - Bran, Eddard, Jon, Catelyn, Sansa, Arya (all Starks so far), Tyrion (a Lannister), and Daenerys (an exiled Targaryen).  If you have a favorite character *cough* Tyrion *cough* you eagerly wait for the narration to get back to him/her.  The similarity of Westeros to Arthurian/Medieval tales was a big draw for me and I got into the extensive heraldry Martin uses.

Here's where I talk plot points and big cojones (if you haven't read the book and don't want it spoiled for you then quit reading now....ok, henceforth you are forewarned).  GRRM has a set of stones, let me tell you.  Very few authors would be ballsy enough to set up a major moral center for a story (Eddard Stark), give him a fatal flaw (honor), and then BEHEAD HIM in the climax to book one of your seriously epic series.  Seriously.  I started shouting, paging back in my nook, then forward, then back, repeating, "I can't believe...he did...HE DID HE KILLED OFF THE MAIN CHARACTER!!!"  Now who's the good guy?  Are then any good guys?  Also, everyone in this book is young, really young.  As in, Daenerys is thirteen when she gets married off to a horselord (think, nomadic hunter/gatherer tribe) and the gets pregnant and widowed all within about nine months.  And the boys are all supposed to be crazy-good knights by the age of fifteen or so....  I agree with the writing decision of the HBO producers to age everyone by two or three years.  The young ages of the kids works in the book but it is a little icky or improbable...and doubly so if on the television screen.

A Game of Thrones is a book that really reminds me of an old storyteller, sitting by the fire and telling the tallest tales imaginable.  You hang on every word.  So much so, I already bought books two through four and pre-ordered book five for my nook.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go see what happens to Sansa with Cersei's clutches and if Jon turns into ghost chow (haha, made a pun - only if you've read the books).

Addendum:  Have since acquired A Game of Thrones on audio read by the amazing Roy Dotrice.  The man got a Guiness World Record for the number of distinct character voices he creates for this audio book.  It. Is. Amazing.  Love his voices for Tyrion and Walder Frey - fantastic.