A Dance With Dragons (2011) (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5) by George R.R. Martin

WARNING: Lots of spoilers in this review! Turn back now if you haven't read any A Song of Ice and Fire novels yet!

Re-reading both this and A Feast For Crows has been a far different experience than my first time through.

The first time I read A Dance With Dragons was back after its release in 2011. As someone who first read the series in 2010, this is the first A Song of Ice and Fire novel I had the pleasure of reading upon release. I had pretty much the same reaction as everybody else back then; a muffled "meh". Dance introduced some really interesting characters that will strongly impact the books to come, and it has some excellent subplots that it starts up and resolves in just this book, but it doesn't do a whole lot to actually move the plot forward. Rather, it's setting the stage for the coming books and the supposed climax that we may or may not ever read penned from Martin's hand. 

Martin's clearly grown as a writer since 1996, so it goes as no surprise that A Dance With Dragons is probably his best written book if you're strictly looking at his prose. The voice of these characters is as strong as ever, too. But it does have some huge weakness. Its pace as a novel sucks; it meanders a lot. If you love Martin's world as much I do, then that's not much of a problem, because for me learning more about this world is, in itself, entertaining. But I've heard plenty of criticism of its languid plot and I can definitely understand them. However I think Martin's damned if he does, damned if he doesn't at this point, because these middle two books chew on a ton of really important material that is probably going to be necessary to introduce the audience to before the closing books drop, and losing this stuff would make for simpler—and probably poorer—resolutions in later novels.

I've begun to look at A Song of Ice and Fire (hereafter referred to by its popular acronym "ASOIAF") not so much as a series of novels, but as one grand epic that has to be clumsily split into novels to allow it to be printed. A Dance With Dragons, in its currently published form, is basically an unfinished novel by Martin's own admission:

My original intent was to end DANCE with the two big battles, yes… intercutting between the two of them, each told through several different points of view. And both battles were partially written. But NOT COMPLETE, which became the issue. Also, maybe even more to the point, not yet good enough in my estimation. Battles are bloody hard, and I wanted these to be great.

The book had already been scheduled for publication, I had blown through several previous deadlines, and we simply ran out of time. Initially I decided to push one battle back to WINDS to focus on the other, but that did not work either, and neither of the sequences came together the way I wanted them to, so ultimately the choice came down to moving both of the battles to WINDS or cancelling the planned publication and pushing back DANCE. And given how far ahead publishers schedule their releases, the pushback would not have been a few days or a few weeks, but at least half a year, and maybe longer.

Also, DANCE was already very long, and the battles would have made it substantially longer. That could also have affected the pricing.

Did we make the right decision? I don’t know, even to this day. I understand your frustration, and some days I do feel the same way. But back then I had the fans howling after DANCE the same way they are howling after WINDS now, and my publishers really really did not want to push back again. And DANCE, even without the battles, was extremely well received — yes, there were dissenters, I know that, readers who did not like the book as well as the earlier volumes, but out in the wider world, DANCE had extremely strong sales, rode the bestseller lists for a long long time. It was a Hugo finalist, won the Locus Award for best fantasy of the year, and was named by TIME magazine as the book of the year. So even without the battles, it worked pretty well… but part of me still wonders if we made the right choice.

These things are not easy. Those who think they are have obviously never written anything, or had to deal with the realities of publishing.

So we see that he did not originally want to publish Dance as-is, because it lacks a climax, but his hand was forced by both its length and his publishers. I believe this series has outgrown the novel format, which is interesting considering that ASOIAF brought Martin from screenwriting back to bookwriting because it was too vast to put on screen. Now it's grown even too vast for hardcover. I've heard it suggested in the past that an episodic format might work better for ASOIAF, too, but I reject this due to the nature of how Martin writes these books. Since he doesn't outline and writes off the top of his noggin, he's often rewriting material he's already finished to allow for a specific plot point he thinks of later in the process of constructing a novel. Once a chapter in an episodic serial is published, the ship has sailed—it's no longer rewritable. And I think part of what makes ASOIAF so dense and fruitful to read and reread is that Martin does spend so much time rewriting and refining his ideas in this manner. And part of what helps his characters to feel so much like real people is that the plot is driven by them rather than the other way around. Martin doesn't come up with character motivations to suit his outline, he crafts his narrative around what his characters—real, fully formed people in his mind—would do when presented with a certain situation. This is also why he has so much trouble getting them where they need to be in order to move the narrative forward—something that is clearly an issue in Dance since we have a dozen different characters all heading to Meereen, and Martin clearly struggles with keeping the logistics realistic (something the television adaptation Game of Thrones chucked completely out the window since it proved too taxing for their writers to manage) and the sequencing of the characters' arrivals in line with what he wanted to occur in the plot.

So this book was clearly born of difficult labor. Martin has stated as much and you can tell just by reading it. Aside from complaints about its pace and the total lack of a climax, though, Martin's character writing and the themes he explores are as strong as they have ever been. The themes Martin explores and the tone in which he does it is mostly why I'm infatuated with these novels. That interest and my taste for slower, more contemplative media also reflects why I don't care much for the show—which is far more campy, more casual with its violence, more anachronistic with its dialogue, and more bombastic with its action sequences. (I've been regularly accused of snobbery due to this, but I view it simply as a matter of taste: I've always preferred political dramas and over action flicks, wordy cRPGs over platformers, or le Carre over Fleming. This is because I'm a boring sweatpants-wearing nerd, not because I'm an intelligent, superior academic.)

Both Feast and Dance suffer greatly from middle-book-syndrome; they don't really go anywhere since they're busy picking up the pieces of the first books and building steam for the next books, but each contains a lot of smaller, self-contained stories that are extremely worthwhile. In Feast, Brienne's journeys lead her to deal with the common people of Westeros, the minor lords, and the dirt poor, drunken hedge knights—classes of people who are often never mentioned in epic fantasy unless they tie specifically to the protagonist's origins, or they are the protagonist. Spending time in these settings doesn't really further the plot, but it lets Martin examine the effect of war on the lives of the little people and make some important statements about it. This, again, differs from epic fantasy: The War of the Five Kings wasn't a glorious cause hellbent on avenging the fallen hero Ned Stark, it was a collapse of political discourse that led to a chaotic conflict which has now killed and ruined the lives of thousands. It was a net negative, a horrible thing that should have been prevented at all costs but was allowed to continue by the misuse of power to the detriment of all. Another fruitful detour featured in Feast was Jaime's dirty work in wrapping up the war, in which we get to see the uncelebrated after-actions of military clean-up against small pockets of continuing resistance that generally gets left out of epic fantasy as well. War is a messy thing, and GRRM doesn't spare us from its realities in order to make it more glorious and sterile like nearly all other epic fantasy did before he began writing these novels.

Dance spends a lot of time with these meandering subplots, too. Feast and the first two-thirds of Dance are very similar books in this regard, but I find Feast to be more atmospheric and immersive; a book with a more relaxed pace that lets you more passively take in the sights and sounds. Dance, on the other hand, is more sprawling. It lacks the tight focus of Feast—a book wholly concerned with the devastation of war in Westeros and the political mobilization of those remaining who still have strength—instead bringing us from the Bolton-ruled North, through the sea, through Essos, and to the Eastern city of Meereen, which is ruled by Daenerys, herself the target of several characters who seek to prop her up as a political bastion behind which to stand against the chaos present in Westeros—of which we saw plenty in Feast. If Dance's weakness is its languid plot that spends too much time examining the difficulty of ruling, its strength, then, is that it has much more rewarding and emotionally resonant subplots than Feast does.



Final Warning! Heavy spoilers involving several plot arcs with Dance follow:

Quentyn Martell and the deconstruction of the grand adventure

Quentyn Martell's story is entirely contained within A Dance With Dragons. We know his father and sister already, but for the first time we meet him and his friends. His arc is begun and resolved entirely within Dance, and initially it seemed quite pointless to me. But there's a poignant, subversive story within this arc that I find incredibly important to what Martin's trying to say with this entire series. What happens when the likable hero's journey goes wrong? What happens when his friends die, and he fails? How does he deal with this? Can a hero still be heroic through abject failure? Quentyn gains nothing in this quest—he goes east, his friends all die, he dies, and nothing changes. Are bravery and strength of spirit in the absence of anything else still worthwhile? You've already subconsciously posited your answer to this by how worthwhile you think reading Quentyn's arc was: If you find his story pointless, then things like honor and kindness are completely meaningless in and of themselves and only matter when they lead to success and accomplishment. But Quentyn is so earnest, likable, and naive, that it's impossible for me not to root for him. Reading through a second time and knowing all along where this was headed was sad and depressing, and it's supposed to be. Quentyn dreads his task all along, but has long since resolved that he will either succeed or die. And he does. It's poetic and brilliant and it's a microcosm of the statement Martin has been making all along: The weak, the powerless, and the guileless do not succeed except by exceedingly rare dumb luck or, more commonly, as tools in the vast machinations of their betters. And that this is even true when they're kind and well-meaning.

Jon Connington provides a nice foil for Tyrion

At this point Tyrion's a far different character than the Tyrion of the television series. He's been beaten down and his previously cynical-but-good persona has been warped by the events of past novels. He's lost everything; he's murdered his own father and his lover and he's unforgivably estranged from his brother. He sinks completely into alcoholism and he no longer seems to care about positively affecting the world around him. He rapes a prostitute in one of the most difficult chapters to read in the entire novel. Tyrion has always flirted with the role of Byronic anti-hero, but he finally slips fully into it in Dance. It's painful to read about for the first half of the book, as the lovable, capable underdog has been beaten into cruelty, and most people don't like it for that reason. But this is a common turn for somebody who has seen what he's seen. How else would he react to the events of the previous books? He's been competent and seen success in his given tasks, he's protected innocents, he was exceptionally noble to Sansa when he had complete power over her. In his mind, he's done everything right and he should be a hero, yet still nobody trusts him and the common people view him as an outright villain. The system has failed him, his family has failed him, so he finally breaks and gives in, because why not? Nothing he does will ever change peoples' minds. He may as well become the villain they see him as. So he slips fully into his cynicism.

Theon Greyjoy and the ultimate redemption arc

Theon's arc dives deeper into some of Martin's core themes; namely the misuse of power and violence, and the increasing chaos caused by Westeros' recent political instability. It's also, surprisingly, one of the few heroic arcs in Dance. When I first read this book I never thought we'd see Theon again. When I realized Reek was Theon, I never thought that a redemption arc was what Martin had planned for him. I should have known after how deftly Martin has written Jaime that no matter how detestable their previous actions, no character is beyond redemption. I found myself rooting hard for the broken, insane Theon before the end of the book. His arc is probably my favorite in Dance. Jeyne Poole, occupying the role of faux-Arya, is perhaps the only character who has it worse than Theon in this book. Theon is presumably the only one aside from Roose who knows her true identity, yet his risks something worse than his own death to save her. Martin shows us here that honor and goodness can come from the most unlikely sources; once an arrogant, cruel member of the nobility, Theon now gives up everything to save this one meaningless girl who doesn't matter whatsoever, at the risk of severe suffering, simply because it's the right thing to do.

One of Dance's new themes that a lot of readers seem to have slept on is religion and its impact on society and government in times of crisis. Most folks don't recall this now but one of the harshest general criticisms of ASOIAF pre-Dance was that Martin tended to shove religion—a huge, central portion of many peoples' lives in the medieval period, and a core aspect of the type of feudalistic society that Martin is putting under a microscope—to the rear so he could explore more modern themes such as honor, gender politics, the use of violence, and political power. And when he did deal with religion, it always seemed to feel plastic and lacked the studious examination that he dedicated to other aspects of life within feudalism. He remedies this weakness in Dance with a core portion of the King's Landing plot line dealing with religious fervor that feels genuine and will surely have a huge impact in later books.

It's been eight years since the publication of A Dance With Dragons. Waiting for The Winds of Winter has become an infamous meme; book readers' version of gamers' collective wait for Half-Life 3 (it's never coming out, guys; give it up). Half of ASOIAF's previously hardcore fanbase lies dormant, ready to read but no longer really caring about the series like they did in 2011, when internet message boards were awash with new discussions and new theories seemingly by the day. Yet here I still am, reading and rereading these books every few years.

I'm more positive than most, and I do strongly believe that Winds will eventually release, and that it will be the best book in the series since A Storm of Swords . But if Martin should pass away tomorrow, should we never see another book in this series, it would still be my single favorite piece of media ever. The world, the themes Martin chooses to explore, the tone in which he does it, and the amazing characters that drive it all are all untouched by any other piece of media. It's so enjoyable to me, it aligns so perfectly with my interests and with my own personal worldview, that I can't help but to love every bit of it. I'm nothing but thankful that it exists in its current form, and even if we never see another novel by Martin, I'm content to have read what's been published.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

NOTABLE HIGHLIGHTS

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.”

“I rose too high, loved too hard, dared too much. I tried to grasp a star, overreached, and fell.”

“Foes and false friends are all around me, Lord Davos. They infest my city like roaches, and at night I feel them crawling over me.” The fat man’s fingers coiled into a fist, and all his chins trembled. “My son Wendel came to the Twins a guest. He ate Lord Walder’s bread and salt, and hung his sword upon the wall to feast with his friends. And they murdered him. Murdered, I say, and may the Freys choke upon their fables. I drink with Jared, jape with Symond, promise Rhaegar the hand of my own beloved granddaughter…but never think that means I have forgotten. The north remembers, Lord Davos. The north remembers, and the mummer’s farce is almost done. My son is home.”

“Men live their lives trapped in an eternal present, between the mists of memory and the sea of shadow that is all we know of the days to come.”

“Men's lives have meaning, not their deaths.”

“So young," said Wyman Manderly, "Though mayhaps this was a blessing. Had he lived he would've grown up to be a Frey.”

“Give me priests who are fat and corrupt and cynical,(...) the sort who like to sit on soft satin cushions, nibble sweetmeats, and diddle little boys. It's the ones who believe in gods who make the trouble. (Tyrion)”

“A fair bargain leaves both sides unhappy.”

“When treating with liars, even an honest man must lie.”

“The most insidious thing about bondage was how easy it was to grow accustomed to it.”

“Proud men might shout that they would sooner die free than live as slaves, but pride was cheap. When the steel struck the flint, such men were rare as dragon's teeth; elsewise the world would not have been so full of slaves. There has never been a slave who did not choose to be a slave, the dwarf reflected. Their choice may be between bondage and death, but the choice is always there.”

“There was an agelessness about him, a stillness; on Roose Bolton's face, rage and joy looked much the same.”

“Every battle is a gamble, Snow. The man who does nothing also takes a risk.”

“Men live their lives trapped in an eternal present, between the mists of memory and the sea of shadow that is all we know of the days to come. Certain moths live their whole lives in a day, yet to them that little span of time must seem as long as years and decades do to us. An oak may live three hundred years, a redwood tree three thousand. A weirwood will live forever if left undisturbed. To them seasons pass in the flutter of a moth's wing, and past, present, and future are one.”

“Up in the hills we say that autumn kisses you, but winter fucks you hard.”

“Many good men have been bad kings, Maester Aemon used to say, and some bad men have been good kings.”