A Dance With Dragons

A Dance with Dragons

George R.R. Martin’s current last book to the Ice and Fire series is A Dance With Dragons.  The majority of this book takes place during the same time of the prior book, A Feast for Crows.  Eventually some characters from the last book make

After reading A Feast For Crows, I had a hard time even picking up A Dance With Dragons.  A Feast For Crows was long, repetitive, and mostly followed characters that annoyed me more than entertained.  I was pretty much ready to quit George R.R. Martin’s books, and say that the first book was a fluke and the rest were just a downward spiral.

A Dance With Dragons, for the most part, reversed that thinking.  The book follows more entertaining characters, there is more action, and it goes back to plots within plots within plots.  And while the other books had those plots, they didn’t feel guessable.  Such as, Tywin plotting the Red Wedding with the Frey’s and Bolton’s.  There was hintings the Frey’s were angry, but the expanse of it was never fully hinted.  Those type of plots within plots just feel like a child writing “oh yeah, well I’m actually secretly a double agent!”  And A Feast For Crows was just a bunch of idiocy all around where people were seeing plots where there weren’t any.

A Dance With Dragons gets back to getting to see those plots.  I’m going to start spoiling shit here, so if you haven’t read it, stop reading now.  Just because you think you read it, doesn’t mean you actually did! So, make sure you read it.  Done?  Alright...

Tyrion.  Yeah, his name alones means “Plots within Plots.”  While reading through him, we get to feel like we are unravelling plots, or creating new ones.  While finding out another Targaryen survived was kind of lame to me (until now there was never a doubt of that), his discovering that felt like a puzzle that needed to be solved.  Tyrion runs into a lot of bad luck this book, but still we see him constantly plotting, and we’re a part of it.  We get to see all the strings that need to be tugged to make the puppet dance.  We also see his character changing, to care more for others.  Its an interesting, and good change.  His treatment of Bronn (YAY! Bronn is back!) and Penny, while perhaps not the nice way to handle things, is definitely him watching out for them.

Daenarys is actually the most annoying character in the book.  This is because of my most frequent complaint about George R.R. Martin: Repetitive chapters.  For Daenarys, its constantly deciding how to bring peace to a shitty city, and forgetting about her dragons.  Now, when I complain about this... I’m not saying it should be just one chapter, and she makes a decision in that chapter.  Prolonging and showing what’s going on and how the Harpy’s are getting worse is important.  But there are quite a few chapters of this.  For Cersei in A Feast For Crows, it was nearly the entire book.  What made it worse was that there was no pay-off for Cersei’s story-line.  It doesn’t have an ending, but a “To be continued.”  The entire book had mainly one storyline, and he couldn’t even finish it!  But, A Dance With Dragons does complete its storyline.  So while there are a few too many chapters of Daenarys thinking “oh I want Daario, who is an absolutely scumbag, I want to do right by marrying an absolute scumbag all the while forgetting my beautiful dragons!”  But, she does get married.  And, the plots within plots that have been hinted at throughout the book, play through and we get to see new plots form.  The book completes its storyline with Daenarys, and adds a denouement that adds two more cliff hangers!  Each individual book should have its own storyline, and that storyline needs to be completed.  Feel free to end it with a prologue or whatnot that starts the next one.  He did that for this book, but not all of the prior.

It was interesting to see Theon’s role, I mean...Reek (it rhymes with bleak).  I almost felt sorry for Theon in a few moments, but what was great about it is that the entire time it is shoved into our face why we hated him.  Most of his story takes place in Winterfell, the place he helped dismantle and destroy.  So, while we get to hear about how horrible his constant torture is from the Bolton’s, we also get the constant reminder that HE FUCKING DESERVES IT.  Only when he takes an action to help another is it finally okay to possibly forgive him.  But the entire Winterfell story ended in confusion for me.  Why did Ramsay write the letter to Jon Snow, and not Roose?  Because of that, I’m having a hard time believing that Stannis is actually defeated.  Also, what happened to The Onion Knight and his deal with the city (Lord Manderly)?  The fact that we don’t see what has happened makes me openly question what did happen.

And of course, there is Jon Snow.  The entire book we knew that Cersei had a plot to overthrow him.  We constantly see him make the right decision, but the decision no-one, on either side, fully enjoys.  Melisandre also keeps prophesizing his end, and for the first time I want someone to actually believe her.  Every chapter I read was “Oh God, is this the chapter it’s going to happen?”  And of course, it was the final chapter.  And unfortunately, George R.R. Martin is not reliable with his killings, so I’m not even sure if he’s dead.  The problem though is...Jon Snow is a good guy.  So he most likely is dead.  Likable characters don’t live and come back as undead...they stay dead.  Still, I hope with Wunwun, or Melisandre and the Queen’s men, were able to save him.  Still, I enjoyed Jon’s story of the man who is doing the right thing, but that no-one likes.  The man compromising for both sides.

And of course...the secret murder.  I had a constant question of where the Spider was.  He was mentioned from time to time in this book, always making me ask “where did he go?”  And then he shows up...and all of a sudden I forgive a lot.  Through the books, its mentioned repeatedly that he was one of Targaryen’s advisers.  It’s mentioned over and over that it was odd he was kept on under Robert Baratheon.  While Bronn was his spy, it was also Bronn that protected Daenarys.  This idea that the Spider has been sowing discord through all the books resonates as not only possible, but something that was probably obvious.   I am able to forgive Cersei surviving just because I know she’s been put there to destroy the Lannisters rule.  This move was genius.  This chapter alone restored most of my faith in the writing.

To sum it up...this book resurrected my interest in the series.  I was basically ready to call Martin a hack.  Now, there’s still some things that upset me about his writing, and I’m still not convinced everything is planned out... but this was a move in the right direction.  This book had multiple complete, and gripping stories, throughout, that each had a complete ending, and then added a little more to whet my appetite for the next book.  Yes, I am again looking forward to the next book, and I do not see how he’s going to to wind everything together in one book, especially considering his previous meandering books.