I also liked Brienne, and I liked book 4. But in spite of liking Brienne and not disliking the Ironborn plots as such, it did feel like a lot of basically original/tangential storytelling.
I just finished rereading the first four. I loved the whole Tyrion vs the little council, battle for Kings Landing of the 2nd book. And the Arya wandering in the no mans land had yet to lose its charm. I agree the 3rd book is great… Just that I liked 2 better. As to 4… I found 4 to be very readable on a second run thru and very rewarding. I loved the first 3-400 pages of Dances. Now I am about 3/4s thru and the Meereen knot is kicking my ass. I am close to skipping Dany chapters entirely.
I’ve been working my way through a re-read via the audiobooks, and I reached 4 about a week before Dances was due to come out. I considered skipping it all together since I didn’t care for the narrator compared to Dotrice and I didn’t remember enjoying the book as much as the first three.
Strangely, it was this thread and the HBO spoiler thread that convinced me to slog through it – there were just so many little details that people kept mentioning that I had absolutely no recollection of (I think I read Feast the month it first came out). But now I am very glad that I did so. The FfC narrator (John Lee) is actually a lot better than my memory of him, and the last third of the book is frankly twice as good as I had recalled.
I especially liked the Cersei chapters; I forgot how much fun it was to listen to her first-person descent into madness and hear how every one of her decisions crumbles down around her ears in one chapter. The Brianne portions were still pretty tedious, but not as bad as I had convinced myself they were, and her last chapters were pretty damned cool too.
I still think the Iron Islander stuff was dull as seaweed though.
Anyway, tomorrow I start book 5 - huzzah!
3 > 2 > 1 > 4 = 5?
Anyway, see you in the spoiler thread!
Just read the prologue and first chapter, and I’m already down on 5. Martin still doesn’t have an editor. No wonder the new book is a million pages long, it’s an endless stream of the same repetitive boring irrelevant details that made 4 such a drag. I want to know how the story develops, not about Tyrion jerking off while briefly waking up from drunken stupor. I wish I was making that up.
bloo
1646
From the author in the above linked interview:
Personally, I tend to favor plot, but and well-executed text, but Martin’s try to describe every scene as if it were a movie, with all the production, set and costume design in it. Maybe that could be done more efficiently, especially with more editing. But I think all the fiction editors were killed by Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising. Ever since then, so many author’s works have ballooned once they make the NYT Best Sellers list.
His style was heavily descriptive and interested in period pomp long before he ever made the NYT best sellers.
bloo
1648
And he was winning awards from day one. I think he has a point about the immersive detail being an important part of his books.
I’m just saying that once you demonstrate sales, editing goes out the window.
I think part of the problem is writing these multi-volume fantasy epics. Usually the author want to surpass himself in every book and write with ever increasing detail and tell his tale with more and more characters and side plots and show his fantasy world more and more and… yep, editing goes out of the window.
Martin started out with short stories, and he was really quite good at them. He wasn’t especially long-winded and wordy for all his writing career, and IIRC not even in the first books of ASOIAF. This got notably worse in the last two books.
It’s funny how in Game of Thrones, when a character have to move from point A to B (say, from Winterfell to King’s Landing, or to The Wall, or from King’s Landing to Eyrie castle), they do it in one or two chapters, or even in zero chapters, it just happens “behind the curtains”.
But now, noo, George says the journey is important, the world is full of dangers and shit so people can’t appear in another place magically. So characters like Brienne and Arya wander for full books, and Tyrion in book 5 needs a dozen chaptes to make the journey to point B.
After stewing for a few days, I’d like to amend my earlier appraisal…
3 > 2 > 1 > 4 > 5
I really like the song of fire and ice.
I go back and forth. It’s definitely 3>1>2 for me, but it’s very close. I love ACoK, but it’s always lagged a bit due to having fewer “FUCK YEAH!” and “OH SHIT!” moments as 1 and 3. That said, on my recent reread I came to appreciate ACoK far, far more than I had previously. It’s a much better paced book than any other in the series and reads more breezily for it.
As for 4 and 5, for perhaps 90% of my read I would have said 5 over 4 without a doubt. I was frustrated with most of my read of 4 because it wasn’t what I wanted it to be, whereas I was happy with my read of 5 because I was seeing my favorite characters again. Looking back, though, I can find as many things to appreciate about 4 as I did about 5 and I find most of the plot resolutions presented in 4 to be more satisfying than the cavalcade of cliffhangers in 5. I liked 5 a lot more than 4 while reading, but days later I find 5 to be far, far more disappointing.
That said, I still liked it. I still liked AFFC, even though it was popular to call it a shitty poop fart. I like Martin’s writing and I think it’s way too soon to start comparing him to Lord Trebor Jordayne of the Tor just yet.
(Though there’s no way he’s not kicking it out to book 8 at this point. Hopefully the diversion of 4 and 5 can end and The Winds of Winter, A Dream of Spring and the reinstated A Time for Wolves can be an awesome trilogy that brings back the slam-bang quality of 1-3.)
There are some people working on it over at Westeros.org. I wouldn’t suggest it for anyone’s first time through, though. Not only would you get two chapters in a row containing the exact same conversation, but there are a couple of things in AFFC that are presented as mysteries that, since you’ve already read AFFC, are presented straightforward in ADWD.
Yeah… in book 3. And Dany, in books 1 and 2. I call shenanigans on this. I’d just as soon we didn’t have to go around comparing number of pages spent describing jellied eels or wandering around in the woods, but my subjective impression is that he’s been perfectly willing to take his time since aGoT. Even in his Dunk and Egg stories (and some of his sci-fi iirc) he doesn’t mind taking little pacing breaks.
ShivaX
1657
When they travelled from Winterfell to Kings Landing the world was a different place.
Now it IS full of dangers and shit, so travelling is a little more interesting.
Edit: That said, sometimes it can drag a little, but the characters are interesting enough that I could probably read about them sitting around the house talking and enjoy it.
I quite enjoyed the early part of Tyrion’s jaunt, after he’d been cooped up, morally and physically, in King’s Landing since book 2.
DWD appendix mild spoiler/speculation: okay, in earlier books Gerion Lannister is listed with brackets around his name, signifying death. Not so in DWD. The lost at sea explanation stays though. I was very surprised he didn’t pop up by the end, he got a billion mentions. Any possibilities he was under a different name, a sellsword leader or something? Either way, I don’t think he’s dead.
graller
1660
Tyrion from the barrel to his stop in the whorehouse was fantastic. He did not recover again till his shenanigans with the Second Sons
