A Clash of Kings (1998) (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2) by George R.R. Martin

More than a decade ago when I first read these books, Martin's A Clash of Kings was among my least favorite of the lot.

The first novel of this series, A Game of Thrones, ends rather explosively. And so the beginning of Clash has to spend some time picking up the scattered pieces, and replacing those broken in the last book on the board. We're immediately introduced to a new set of characters: Davos, Stannis, Melisandre. I have the specific recollection of a feeling of frustration the first time I read these chapters. I didn't care for these new people—I was far more concerned with what had happened to the characters I'd just left as I completed Thrones.

On re-reading the series, though, I've got the distinct feeling that I'm revisiting old friends from times past. Stannis and Davos are two of my favorite characters in the series, and it was a joy to crack open some of these chapters once again. My perspective was thus vastly different opening this book to re-read it than it was to read it for the first time. A Clash of Kings is relatively unfettered from the shackles that bind A Game of Thrones; that is, the responsibility of teaching new readers all about this world. Thrones suffers a bit from a roughness of style and pacing due to this, but Clash is refreshingly free of it, for the most part.

Despite that freer feeling, the beginning of this book does dial back the tension a bit in order to introduce its new characters. I think, in general, Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series suffers greatly from this sort of "dial-it-back-and-reset-the-board" feeling that you get with books such as Clash, A Feast for Crows, and A Dance With Dragons. These are such massive, unwieldy novels which include so many different characters and locales that it must be absurdly difficult for Martin to keep the train propelled on the tracks. Thus we're struck with these jagged sorts of starts and stops as he introduces new players (sometimes over hundreds of pages) to continue forcing the plot along, in addition to bringing in new locales to keep things fresh.

And it certainly remains fresh. This is the third time I've read this book, and I must confess I enjoyed it more this time than either of the first two times I read it. Martin's prose can get awfully schlocky at times (something seemingly all fantasy falls victim to with varying regularity) but somehow this campiness manages to work for me—someone for whom campiness falls flat and alienates, 9 times out of 10.

The pale pink light of dawn sparkled on branch and leaf and stone. Every blade of grass was carved from emerald, every drip of water turned to diamond. Flowers and mushrooms alike wore coats of glass. Even the mud puddles had a bright brown sheen. Through the shimmering greenery, the black tents of his brothers were encased in a fine glaze of ice.

So there is magic beyond the Wall after all.

Outside of its context, Jon's rumination on a late Autumn morning in the far north reads more than a tad purple and overwrought. But once you've taken this journey with Jon and shared his nerves, his camaraderie, the absence of his siblings... Well, it seems just the right time to hit the reader with a cloud of purple prose as Jon takes a moment and appreciates his surroundings, setting aside his tension, fear, and the realization of the danger he's in. Martin's not regularly given to this sort of attempt at profundity, so when it does happen, it's refreshing. It never feels like he's trying too hard.

With this book, as with others in the series, the characters bear the brunt of the load and carry my enjoyment. Tyrion Lannister's wit is told to us as much as it's shown to us in the first book, but when placed in a position of political power in Clash, it's readily displayed in each chapter. The dialogue between him and the other political figures in this book (Cersei, Varys, Littlefinger, Lancel, Janos, etc.) is superbly enjoyable. Martin paints political maneuvering with a deep enough stroke that it feels more realistic than most fantasy (which is given to an absurdly shallow and limited view of politics and governance that drives me batty), but never does it become so labyrinthine that it fails to still be fun. Martin's penchant for snappy, cinematic dialogue also helps it along greatly:

“Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less.”
“So power is a mummer’s trick?”
“A shadow on the wall,” Varys murmured, “yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow.”
Tyrion smiled. “Lord Varys, I am growing strangely fond of you. I may kill you yet, but I think I’d feel sad about it.”
“I will take that as high praise.”

Much of the book includes this kind of politicking, although it's interspersed with various fantastical meanderings that pepper Martin's series and make the books enjoyable to experience from an imaginative standpoint. Jon's rambles north of the wall into the wild lands and Daenerys' experiences in the House of the Undying Ones tickle my mind's eye. But the real star of the book, for me, is undoubtedly the political plays of characters such as Tyrion, along with the military maneuvering and staging of generals Stannis Baratheon and Robb Stark, and how expertly these events tick the tension upwards to the book's (literally) explosive climax.

The closing chapters of the book abandon this character interplay for outright action, and it all feels earned. The tension bursts in such an enjoyable way, and one of the major conflicts of the books is resolved in a way which doesn't feel too clean, nor does any of the culling feel like it's made for shock value alone. Martin's third-person limited structure provides three viewpoint characters for this climactic event, and all feel as if they have a unique voice and perspective of the climactic events. None tread on the others and all keep the action flowing at a perfect pace. I blew through the last 200 pages or so with unexpected alacrity.

Although I'm not a huge fan of fantasy, nor genre fiction in general, I can't help but love this series. It does feature some of the hallmarks of those subgenres, but it's so strongly themed, its characters are so well-realized, its imagery is so compelling, and its dialogue is such a pleasure to read that I can't seem to get enough of them. I'll probably read and re-read these books continuously until I die, and even if the series is never finished, I'll still be nothing but thankful for Martin's work and the hours of enjoyment these books have brought to my life.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

A Game of Thrones (1996) (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1) by George R.R. Martin

WARNING: Lots of spoilers in this review! Turn back now if you haven't read A Game of Thrones yet!

Some random morning, 2010: I wake up on a couch with a splitting headache after about 5 hours of sleep. My mind instantly reverts to my default plan of attack in such situations: 'You are to commence immediately in dumping an obscene amount of coffee down our gullet and finding a bagel by any means necessary'. Aye-aye, brain.

I recall now that my friends and I had hit it hard the night prior and I had been too drunk to drive home. The sun blares with gusto through the front window of their apartment. It's summer-time, or maybe late spring? I don't remember. It doesn't matter.

I drag my feet over to the kitchen to prep the coffee maker when one of my buddies exits his bedroom and shuffles off to the bathroom, looking as shitty as I feel. I hear the toilet flush and he exits a moment later. I spare a longing thought for my own toothbrush, miles away at my own place. My friend's eyes are glued to his phone the whole way over (presumably to a text message—we had very few fancy apps ten years back). He reaches blindly for an upside-down mug. Finally he looks up at me and speaks the first words of the day:

"Hey, have you ever heard of Game of Thrones?" He asks.

"Wharrght!" I barely caught what he said. My brain's going to take a few minutes to warm up, and several hours to get back to functioning at peak capacity. I'm experienced in dealing with this situation and I know not to push the organ too hard, too early.

"New fantasy series HBO is doing. It's in development. My brother is really excited for it, he's obsessed with the books. He keeps texting me news about casting and all this other crap. He won't shut up about it."

I would go on to buy A Game of Thrones shortly after this conversation occurred to see what all the fuss was about. Amazon was already a thing, after all, even back then.

—

I was fortunate enough to read A Game of Thrones prior to the release of its television adaptation. I was able to explore it with no prior notions of what kind of a writer George R.R. Martin was. I didn't expect anybody to die terribly. All I knew was that it was fantasy, and hey, I liked the Lord of the Rings movies, right? So why not give this a shot since it comes so highly recommended?

I think this way of falling into A Song of Ice and Fire is exceedingly rare to the folks approaching this series now since it's discussed in pretty much every avenue of pop culture, be it nightly talk shows or water cooler discussions in the office.

I mean, it really is everywhere. A few years ago I was in Spain, walking along the beach after dinner, and I saw Jon Snow's moody face staring at me (below). 

A random Jon Snow sighting in southern Spain

I pity that so many people will lack the unreal experience of having their expectations completely shattered by this book. It's almost impossible to come into it blind unless you've been living under a rock for the past 8 years.

It's hard to discuss A Game of Thrones in a vacuum without considering how much of a pop culture icon it is. But in strict terms of its craft, I think what's perhaps most impressive about this book is how expertly Martin drip-feeds us his worldbuilding and characters. Not once did I feel that I was overwhelmed with too much information, though this did happen to me in the beginning of A Clash of Kings, which I felt dragged terribly as it introduces new characters and picks up the pieces of the devastating conclusion of A Game of Thrones. But its predecessor suffers nothing like that, which is an astounding feat considering just how much exposition is thrown at us in similar first novels of fantasy series. The world slowly reveals itself to you, becoming more and more enticing along the way. And you grow to like most of these characters immediately, because they feel like real people.

The only archetypes that really exist here are those Martin puts in place specifically to tear down. Sometimes it seems like this book exists as a challenge to the most popular sorts of fantasy that has existed, and, indeed, still exists, like stuff written by Brandon Sanderson, for example. It's as if Martin has taken existing characters from other fantasy stories and placed them in a realistic feudal society. We see at the conclusion of this novel what happens when the upright, uncompromisingly moralistic, ne'er-do-poor Eddard Stark comes face to face with the political machinations of real world feudalism, where absolute power is free to be had by whomever is most adept at grasping for it. I have the distinct memory of reading the scene in which Eddard is executed and simply refusing to believe it actually happened. "No way, no how. Arya didn't actually see him die, right? It had to have been a double or something." I was in such disbelief that he was actually executed. Surely Martin expected his readers to have this reaction, because he dangles right in front of your freaking eyes exactly what would have happened in other books: Cersei states that Eddard will be allowed to take the black and join his bastard son Jon at the wall, presumably to redeem himself at sometime later in the story and set things right again. "What a nice story development! I see where this is going!" But nope, he gets killed. Right there, suddenly, on the whim of one sporadic decision by Joffrey. It's such a wonderfully realistic twist in the story, yet it's devastating and impossible to anticipate.

As a former history undergrad, the plot of ASOIAF reminds me perhaps most of reading actual history, with all its convolutedness, rather than any other fictional genre—even fantasy, the one to which it technically belongs. Eddard's execution created such regret of what could have been, and the later novels in ASOIAF are filled with stuff exactly like it. It's what could have happened after Augustus' death if Germanicus had not died and instead survived to heroically take the purple. It's the knowledge that could have been preserved had the Library of Alexandria not burned to the ground. It's the glory of golden age Baghdad—the height of medicine and education around the globe in the 13th century—had the Mongols not sacked the city, salted its earth, and filled in its irrigation canals. These are the kinds of grand tragedies that exist in history; tragedies that you feel in your gut, tragedies that make you sick to think about, and ASOIAF was the first time I've ever come close to experiencing this kind of visceral regret while reading fiction. It's able to accomplish this mainly with its worldbuilding (which makes the world actually feel like it's thousands of years old) and its phenomenal character writing.

I graduated college in 2007. I did so much reading—mostly of incredibly dry and boring histories—that I spent nearly three years without picking up more than a book or two. I was almost completely burned out on the act of reading itself and preferred to spend my free time playing video games or watching television. Reading A Game of Thrones was thus a bridge to me; a bridge which led me from history to fiction, and, in a more metaphorical sense, the first of many such bridges which led me to inhabiting the person I am today. It made reading "history" fun again, and opened up the entirely new world of fiction to me, which has immutably changed me for the better. Martin reminded me of what is so fantastic about reading fiction by writing characters that feel like real people and subverting the tropes of an entire genre.

I read maybe 3 books in 2009. I read 62 in 2019. I carry either a book or my e-reader everywhere with me. I listen to audiobooks when I drive, shower, or do the dishes. I spend nearly all of my free "me-time" reading. It's become my chief hobby, something I never thought possible after finishing college.

That's what George R.R. Martin did for me, and why this series is so important to me. George R.R. Martin made me a reader again.

—

The apartment my three friends occupied nearly ten years ago is long gone. The building is still there, but that place is no more. Sometimes I still drive past it on my way elsewhere and remember that morning.

Now we're all in our thirties and fondly remember our wild-and-woolly nights out in our early twenties. Two of my friends are married. One has a child. One now lives across the country from us, in Texas. Sometimes a song or a smell hits me with a blast of nostalgia for that time in my life, and sometimes I see Martin's book series on my shelf and get hit with a similar feeling.

We may have gone our separate ways, but it's impossible not to think about them and that time when I reread this series and recall where I first heard of it and how it has changed the way I live on a daily basis. I can only hope future books I read will have some semblance of the impact that this one has had on my life.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Mystery Knight (2010) (The Tales of Dunk and Egg, #3) by George R.R. Martin

The Mystery Knight is pretty important to Martin's worldbuilding, but it feels a bit scattered compared the other novellas. We're introduced to a number of hedge knights, proper knights, and lords right away and it becomes difficult to keep the lot of them straight. There are a few with differentiating characteristics—Ser Glendon Ball sticks out right away—but in general, I found myself struggling to recall who was who.

Dunk's experience in the lists is as riveting as ever, though. These novellas include some of the best action sequences Martin has written—even including the mainline A Song of Ice and Fire series—and The Mystery Knight is another fine example of that quality. But I couldn't help feeling that, while this entry is important to Martin's worldbuilding, it doesn't work nearly as well as a novella as The Hedge Knight and The Sworn Sword do. It lacks the focus and the tight narrative of the prior episodes, instead choosing to depict a conspiracy that deserves far more sprawl and page count than it gets here. I chalk this up to Martin's desire to fully flesh out his world's history, and not having the format to do so prior to the conception of his world books, The World of Ice and Fire and Fire and Blood. I believe that both The Mystery Knight and A Dance With Dragons are markedly weaker entries due to the fact that they're jam-packed with worldbuilding that Martin feels is important, but does not always make the stories in those two works better themselves.

The Mystery Knight is generally well-regarded by ASOIAF fans, but I found it clearly the weakest novella of the three that have been released thus far. It's still worth a read for its likable protagonists and its viscerally affecting depiction of jousting, but both The Hedge Knight and The Sworn Sword are more cohesive and more consistently readable.

⭐⭐⭐

The Sworn Sword (2003) (The Tales of Dunk and Egg, #2) by George R.R. Martin

Martin does so enjoy parading the reality of feudalism in front of us. Feudalism-inspired fantasy has so classically been stilted towards the romantic that it can be shocking to see it depicted as it actually was. We're dosed with a close-up view of the peasantry in The Sworn Sword, and it isn't pretty. As a child raised on Disney films, it's easy for me to forget that the peasantry weren't actually the noble, lowly heroes with good hearts that we so often see depicted in media, but instead a class of people so intellectually stunted they read more like they're mentally challenged to us. We are so used to dealing with other educated human beings each day that it can be difficult to imagine someone wholly uneducated, but Martin does a staggeringly good job in depicting a peasantry that feels so real it shocks and saddens.

It's not a miserable read, though. The characters in The Sworn Sword are markedly deeper and given more screen time than those in the most previous novella, The Hedge Knight. Rohanne Webber is one of my favorite characters that Martin has ever written. She's intelligent, interesting, and motivated by a situation that feels real to us. She provides an interesting encounter for Dunk, and Martin's dialogue and the body language he creates between the two make for a compelling dance. Some of the minor characters, such as Septon Sefton and Ser Bennis, are equally compelling, and the presence of so many enjoyable characters makes this such a satiating read for being only just over a hundred pages.

The Sworn Sword also features a riveting climax to rival the one I liked so much in The Hedge Knight. Martin pours the action on heavy, and at one point I found myself literally holding my breath. It's quite good, and the ending is perfect—It hits such a satisfying, bittersweet conclusion that I couldn't wait to move on to Martin's next novella.

There's not much wrong with this one. It's Martin at his swiftest and his best. Highly recommended.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Hedge Knight (1998) (The Tales of Dunk and Egg, #1) by George R.R. Martin

I've written both ostentatiously and at length about my love for Martin's Ice and Fire world. While The Hedge Knight digs into some of Martin's preferred themes regarding honor and character, his novellas generally have a far different tone than the main series.

Dunk is a more genuine, naive, and straightforward character than Martin typically writes. He's blessed with prodigious size and strength, making his earnest, do-gooder character something that he can get away with (just barely) in the story. That he does gives the story a far more whimsical, light-hearted tone (again—generally) when compared to some of the occurrences in both A Song of Ice and Fire and Fire & Blood, though it can still be quite gritty in its depiction of cruelty and violence.

One of Martin's favorite themes—and undeniably a core theme to ASOIAF—is the use of legally and socially permissible violence by those in power, against those without power. It shows up constantly in the main series and it's the main plot-mover in The Hedge Knight. Dunk endears himself to us not by being intelligent or particularly skilled, and not even by trying to do the right thing—but simply by doing it, without thinking. That it's not a conscious decision is both what makes it endearing and what makes it interesting. Dunk does not choose to be protect the weak after considering the potentially drastic consequences of doing so, he just does, because that's the kind of person he is.

As to be expected by its short length and 'novella' moniker, this is very much narrow-scope Martin. There's no real worldbuilding, and though his characterization is as enticing as ever, it takes more of a backseat to the two leads—Neither of whom serve more than a perfunctory role in moving things forward. The real meat of this lean serving is the conflict it follows, and the strength of the action writing at its conclusion. I don't typically think of Martin as a great writer of action sequences or thrilling narratives (at least, not any longer, since I've read A Feast for Crows and A Dance With Dragons), but The Hedge Knight's brevity and action makes it a great treat for those with an interesting in the setting, and features enough depth to place it alongside the main series' more weighty and literary offerings. Highly recommended novella.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Fire & Blood (2018) (A Song of Ice and Fire) by George R.R. Martin

I so badly wanted to hate this book.

I was so angry when GRRM announced its publishing. Like many other ASOIAF fans, I viewed it as the reason that the eagerly anticipated The Winds of Winter had been pushed so far back from its expected publishing date of 2015-2016. I vowed not to purchase Fire & Blood, instead wishing to wait for Winds in order to 'punish' Martin for his insolence in choosing to finish the first leg of this offshoot in lieu of completing the next chapter of his magnum opus. So I didn't purchase this on its release date—the first time I've done this with an ASOIAF book since I began reading the series nearly a decade ago.

The moment of truth came in Budapest's Franz List International Airport just last month. I had been sick for nearly two weeks with that pervasive, annoying traveler's cold that seems to make you just sick enough that you can't enjoy anything, but not so sick that you're confined to your bed. So you stay ill for weeks at a time, never resting enough to get better, and feeling like garbage the entire time. I still had a number of hours until my flight left, but I had finished the book I brought on the trip with me and had no other means of killing time aside from browsing social media on my phone like some sort of a plebeian. So I wandered over to one of the stores near my gate and perused their selection of books, which—luckily enough for me, being the monoglot American that I am—were all in English. And, staring me right in the face, right in front of the stack, was an English language version of Martin's Fire & Blood, Volume 1. At the time my head felt as if it might detach and float away, and my faculties were dulled by a persistent sore throat. So my steadfast commitment to boycotting this Targaryen tome weakened, and I purchased it and decided to see if it was worth the time.

As I read my opinion of it went from, "this is all just shit from The World of Ice and Fire, what the hell?", to "okay, this is a pretty inspired portrait of a (fictional) enlightened despot", to being brought nearly to tears by the so-called Death of the Dragons.

God damn it, George. You got me again. I wish you'd just go away. And by that, I mean, please defy all the odds and keep writing these books for another 30+ years.

Perhaps it's best to first discuss what the book is not. Gone is the limited third person narrative that Martin uses to such great effect in the mainline ASOIAF series. Fire & Blood feels like George had all of these ideas for storytelling in his head, continuously building over the years. He'd sprinkle them here and there throughout the mainline ASOIAF series, of course—but eventually, his mind reached critical mass, and he just had to unload them. First to Elio Garcia and Linda Antonsson (the authors of the previous world book, The World of Ice and Fire), and then onto the page himself with this book.

So these are very much summarized versions of various events Martin has dreamt up, though he does allow for a flourish of style or dialogue here and there. And that might put some folks off. But it also allows Martin to forget about some of the shackles the limited third person perspective places upon him; he can now jump from cherry-to-cherry, neglecting the rest of the sundae, and give us the best bits. While the book loses the atmospheric quality of the mainline series, it gains the punch of a quickly paced, impactful narrative and loses the weakness that is the glacial pacing of both A Feast For Crows and A Dance With Dragons.

Fire & Blood starts off with its weakest portion—the conquest of Aegon and his sisters—but grows more and more enticing from there. The characters and reign of Jaehaerys and Alysanne, and, perhaps most affecting, the civil war in the dance of the dragons, are superbly affecting and quite entertaining to read. Martin proves his storytelling is as strong as ever, despite the criticisms he has received for his most recent entries in A Song of Ice and Fire and the flak he's caught by publishing this book prior to The Winds of Winter.

The dance of the dragons, in particular, is one of the most singularly affecting events of the entire series. Martin spends little time focused on the great dragons of the Targaryen dynasty, preferring to tell us mostly of the Targaryens themselves. Despite this, the dragons come to occupy a place as treasured pets, or beasts of war, rather than the unreal, magical monsters that they are. They are viewed more as 'parts of the family' rather than simply tools of war; children are raised alongside them, occupying the same cradle as the eggs, and love them as they would a family dog that has been assigned to be their companion for most of their lives.

I'm an animal lover, and viewing the dragons in this light created an attachment I hadn't realized had developed until I read through the dance of the dragons—or, as Martin tells us in the text, what some historians prefer to refer to as "the dying of the dragons". The dance of the dragons wasn't just a massive blow to Targaryen power within Westeros, but a massive blow to Westerosi civilization itself, the catastrophic loss of such total war is put into terms that we thus feel personally and emotionally with passages such as this one:

Silverwing had taken to the sky as the carnage began, circling the battlefield for hours, soaring on the hot winds rising from the fires below. Only after dark did she descend, to land beside her slain cousins. Later, singers would tell of how she thrice lifted Vermithor's wing with her nose, as if to make him fly again.

Martin's strong anti-war and anti-feudalist themes from the main series continue to occupy the backbone of his storytelling. If you're looking for something smart, rather than just something fantastical, you can find that here, too. It's convenient that the chapters involving the reign of Jaehaerys and Alysanne—the quintessential enlightened monarchs, who rule (mostly) successfully, and justly—are followed by those whose incompetence eventually led to the devastating civil war that destroyed most of the dynasty's power. As we're reminded of, time and time again, near-absolute power is a fickle thing, as capable of creating boom as it is bust. And the war which follows is, like nearly all wars fought within Martin's fiction, a net negative. Little is gained from the conflict, but much prosperity is lost, as is often the case with war in the real world.

So I suppose the real question is whether or not you'll view this change in storytelling style as a real hurdle. It's far less easy to lose yourself in this book when compared to the reading experience of the main series. It's basically a summarized version of an entire book series that Martin rightly realized he'd never be able to write. To me, it's no less worthwhile even considering the change of format—But I'm a massive fan of this world, this series, and Martin's storytelling and themes. So if you feel similarly about A Song of Ice and Fire, and you don't feel too put off by the fact that Fire & Blood reads like a summarized series, then you should definitely give it a shot. I cracked into it expecting another dry tome involving some excellent worldbuilding, but found it packed full of intriguing characters and storytelling, despite its format falling a bit short of that of the main series.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

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.”

A Storm of Swords (2000) (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3) by George R.R. Martin

I've heard so many stories described as 'rollercoaster rides'. The term gets thrown around all the time. And very few are actually worthy of that descriptor. Most books have some great scenes and action sequences, but very few writers really destroy their characters in ways that allow the possibility of a genuine 'rollercoaster ride' arc.

Martin does, though. He's now famous (infamous?) for it since this series has been adapted to television and thus garnered a wider audience. And it's a reputation that's well earned. I've never read anybody who treats their characters as cruelly as Martin does. You'd think the man was a sadistic bastard who enjoys torturing his masochistic readers if you listened solely to media memes and nothing else. But he's not, and reading Martin is not an exclusively miserable experience. He just has a deep understanding of what makes a good character arc that rends your soul into a million pieces and melts it down afterwards into something altogether newer and grander.

Martin is, more than anything, a superb character writer. And I mean that within the context of all literature, not just genre fiction. Now, I haven't read everything under the sun. I've read comparatively little to many of you. But Martin is one of the best character writers I've ever read. He has his weaknesses (awful love scenes, cheesy dialogue), but he writes characters better than almost anybody. He understands that for a character arc to really punch your heart into paralysis you've got to completely destroy them and let them glue themselves back together while we watch like a parent witnessing their child tumble down the slide headfirst on the playground. You desperately want them to succeed; to climb back up to the top of the slide and do it right this time. But unlike the parent, we're hopelessly separated from these characters by universal barriers and we can't do a damn thing but sit back and bite our nails, watching and hoping. No book in the series does this better than A Storm of Swords. The only other arc that comes to close to the several arcs we have going in this book is Theon's arc in A Dance With Dragons.

A Storm of Swords is really long, but it's also packed in pretty good with action. The Count of Monte Cristo, for example, is nearly the same length as this book, and despite what people praise to the heavens about Count, there are parts of it that really, really drag. I can't think of anything as slowly paced and uneventful in Storm as when the Count first makes it to Paris and spends 500 fucking pages going to the opera and buying a Summer home in Auteuil.

A Storm of Swords is the culmination of what Martin has been building with the first two books. Primarily it utilizes all of the pieces he set up in the comparably drab A Clash of Kings. Storm drops some of its characters down the deepest depths possible, only to raise them up again for a triumphant conclusion. And that's something that people who only scratch the surface of Martin don't seem to understand. Yes, he's cruel to his characters. But none of it is needless, wanton cruelty; it's all done in order to properly frame what's to come. In many ways, A Storm of Swords is the conclusion of the 'first trilogy' of A Song of Ice and Fire, if you will. Many of the arcs we've been following over the previous ~2,000 pages come to a head here, and many are concluded in cathartic fashion. (Martin is currently heading towards what should be the conclusion of the 'second trilogy' within this series with The Winds of Winter, but that's a discussion for another day.)

This book contains both my favorite moment of any book I've ever read, and my least favorite moment of any book I've ever read. It contains my top two or three favorite characters I've ever read, and my top two or three most hated characters I've ever read. At times it diverts from the main narrative to extremely compelling side stories that easily could have filled their own ~300-page novel (Beric Dondarrion and the Brotherhood Without Banners sticks out in my mind). It's these vastly different peaks and valleys that make this book worthy of the 'rollercoaster' moniker that so many other books aspire to.

And that's why people almost universally love this book:

I don't particularly like fantasy (I've read quite a bit of it), yet this is one of my top-5 favorite books, accompanying titles like Notes from the Underground, The Old Man and the Sea, and The Dead. I've already read it twice. I'll probably read it again. And there are no other 1,000+ page epics that I can say that about.

Definitely not The Count of Monte Cristo, at least.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

A Feast for Crows (2005) (A Song of Ice and Fire, #4) by George R.R. Martin

I recently completed a re-read of this book and came away with such a hugely differing opinion from my first time through that I thought it important to encapsulate my thoughts here before they fade away with time.

On my first read I was struck with a similar feeling to those critical of the book; namely that I didn't care about these new (or previously secondary) characters, and that the plot moved too slowly and "nothing happens". Clearly, my expectations coming into the book during both of my reads served to enhance my reaction. The first time through I had just finished A Storm Of Swords, in which nearly 1,300 pages flash by in an instant thanks to the plot moving at the speed of light. So much happens in that book. And AFFC is its polar opposite in terms of pacing and what it's focused on. ASOS is hurtling you through the climax of the War of the Five Kings, the instability of the Night's Watch and the Battle at the Wall, and Daenerys's aggressive escapades in the East. Even the more slowly paced chapters, such as the Arya chapters, are highlighted with some great, pulse-pounding moments, such as Sandor Clegane's trial in Hollow Hill. The book is full of climactic moments; I almost consider it to be the conclusion of A Song Of Ice And Fire's first arc. It's fantastic.

A Feast For Crows, then, is not so much Martin beginning to pick up the pieces the first three novels have tossed around and establishing the beginning of the plot arcs for coming books (though he is certainly doing that), but Martin giving us a middle chapter in which we take a breath, look around, and survey all the chaos that has been wrought by the characters we've been following up until this point. Up until now, the focus has remained very deep and detailed; we're watching these characters' actions from the inside of their heads, primarily concerned with how they're going to attempt to accomplish their goals. AFFC sharply changes that.

More than half of this book takes place in the eyes of Brienne (8/46 chapters), Cersei (10/46 chapters), and Jaime (7/46 chapters). Instead of each chapter taking place with characters across the globe from one another, we're now centered in Westeros' very core, with Cersei ruling King's Landing, Jaime spending time in King's Landing and the neighboring Riverlands, and Brienne wandering the Crownlands and the Riverlands. These areas have been hard hit by the war. The common people of the Westerlands, the Riverlands, and the Crownlands bore the brunt of the war, as you might expect. Entire villages are gone, burned lumps of ash sacked and looted, their people executed and raped for no real reason other than a Lannister, Stark, Frey, or whomever patrol had come through. But it's been bad for the "haves" of this society as well. Landed knights, minor lords, and even some great and storied Westerosi noble houses have had their holdings burned around them and their granaries cleaned out by passing armies leaving them to starve in the coming winter. Entire great houses that have been around for thousands of years are extinguished. One of the major points of this novel is that things are bad amongst everyone in Westeros, even the victors. Well, except maybe the crows. Hence the title.

The plot does progress, albeit far more slowly than in any of the previous novels. The war is winding down, the climactic moments have occurred, and the victors are cleaning up what little resistance remains. So why did I enjoy this book so much? What fills the hole that all of these awesome, climactic moments have left?

A Feast For Crows is the most atmospheric of all the novels in the series up to this point. Martin's writing has clearly improved from the initial novel in the series, and he lets it shine here. This series features some of best character and dialogue writing in all genre fiction, and it's on full display in this book. There are several instances in this book in which the dialogue was so excellent, I had to set it down and remark aloud:

• Aemon Targaryen, 102-years old and dying, waking from a fitful sleep to address his long-dead brother; "Egg? I dreamed I was old."

• Septon Meribald's "broken man" speech putting into perspective how hellish the prospect of war actually is for Westeros' serf class.

• Thoros of Myr lamenting upon what war has done to the brotherhood; "We were king’s men, knights, and heroes... but some knights are dark and full of terror, my lady. War makes monsters of us all."

• Mya Stone describing her memories of Robert Baratheon's love for her prior to his abandonment, and how she was raised by the mountains of the Eyrie after he left.

This book is Martin's rumination upon why war is so terrible, why it's a net-negative for all of those involved. Nobody has come out of the War of the Five Kings in a better place than when they've started. The losers, obviously not. But even the victors. Their granaries are empty. Family members have died in the war or are marrying people they hate to bury the hatchet with previously rival houses. Vast swaths of lands and holdings have been destroyed. And while all of this death and destruction could have made a book like this a bleak slog of a read, Martin's consistently excellent mise en scène alleviates that problem, as does his inclusion of many minor characters who serve to heighten the story past what it could have been. The moments of beauty and hopefulness present in this novel contrast more sharply given their context.

I understand that Martin's decision to split the narrative between this and A Dance With Dragons was a difficult one, but I really enjoy that A Feast For Crows stands on its own as his treatise on why war is such a terrible thing. It's a well-written, atmospheric treat for anyone who's a fan of this world, and coming into this novel a second time while knowing what to expect allowed me to enjoy it far more than I did the first time. The more I read, the more I found myself melting into its world, passively experiencing its characters and its setting, and becoming wholly immersed in what Martin has created. I didn't need the bombastic foolishness of the HBO series, or the climactic battles of the previous novel, or pulse-quickening episodes of single combat. I was too busy being enveloped in the pine trees gently rustling in the wind as Brienne, Pod, and Dick Crabb slowly meandered their way through the woods of Crackclaw Point. I was skipping alongside Arya as she explored the quiet canals of Braavos at night under a full moon. Or with Jaime and his pensiveness in Castle Darry as a fire crackles in the corner and the Autumn wind howls against the shutters. Reading A Feast For Crows is like watching one of those 10-hour long YouTube ambiance videos and sipping on hot wine while thinking about something as profound and serious as what total war says about humanity as a whole and does to humans as individuals, and I love that about it. What it lacks in explosiveness, it makes up for in subtlety and its impeccable craft. If that sounds boring to you, then you probably won't like this. But if you love Westeros as much as I do, you'll probably enjoy this book for what it is.

⭐⭐⭐⭐