The A DANCE WITH DRAGONS Spoiler Thread
- Thread starter Brendan Moody
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Maybe he's the Hurley of ASOIAF.
He was sneaking more than his fair share of the Watch's dwindling food supplies. That's the real reason Jon sent him away.
Or maybe it is Hurley, gone to parallel universe through some weird island hijinks. He always had shitty luck ... 
I'm not sure why would he lose a lot of weight. He didn't get a lot of physical exercise, the food is alright and he's not starving and after he said his vows, he got a desk job. I don't remember someone mentioning him losing weight both before the ranging beyond the Wall and after he got back, he probably gained most of what he lost during the ranging and his return to the Wall.
I'm not sure why would he lose a lot of weight. He didn't get a lot of physical exercise, the food is alright and he's not starving and after he said his vows, he got a desk job. I don't remember someone mentioning him losing weight both before the ranging beyond the Wall and after he got back, he probably gained most of what he lost during the ranging and his return to the Wall.
S
Stone_Cold_Sisko
Guest
I finished it last night and I have to say... I'm pretty disappointed.
I'm very unhappy with how purely plot-driven the series has become. Characters have to be invented, moved onto the POV stage, killed, moved off, all to service the plot. It's why GRRM can apparently just kill off characters like Jon... it doesn't seem to be about characters. Everyone talks about how this series breaks the fantasy mold but it really doesn't. Just like most every other fantasy series, the pace of the story has slowed to a crawl due to the author's indulgence, and it's primarily plot driven. Yes there's less magic and more medieval-lords-politics, and characters get killed off. Those aren't gigantic differences.
I don't know, I thought this series was something special after AGOT and ASOS... now it just feels so "ordinary."
First off... AEGON? wtf? We spent THREE BOOKS developing Dany, then all of a sudden, oh by the way, here's another Targarayan in secret, and now he's going to do the invasion, even though we as the reader have spent virtually no time with him. /facepalm. Seriously. I CAN'T BELIEVE THE TARGARAYAN INVASION DOESNT INVOLVE DANY AND IS A NEW CHARACTER THAT HE JUST INTRODUCED.
I guess he "defied expectations"
"What a twist!"
Tyrion... did anybody think GRRM could make his character arc so goddamn boring? It was fine until he met Penny. When I reached his last chapter, my overwhelming reaction was "THAT'S IT???"
If GRRM had written AGOT the way he wrote these last two books, Ned's journey from Winterfell to Kings Landing would be THE ENTIRE BOOK. I"M SO SICK OF TRAVELOGUES.
Jon and Dany were more interesting, yet most of their chapters felt like wheel spinning. Jon's chapters only exist to build up to the mutiny.
I pretty much figured either Dany or Jon was going to get killed, because once you realize how plot and shock-driven this series is, you simply go "what's the one thing you don't expect to happen?" and pick that. It's becoming like M. Night Shyamalan in it's predictibility ("WHAT A TWIST").
It doesn't even feel like the same series anymore.
Things I liked:
Reek/Theon - disturbing but incredibly well written. Theon and "Arya"'s escape were truly tense moments
Dany riding Drogon - I was like "YES FINALLY SOMETHING FUN HAPPENS WITH DANY" (then she disappears for the rest of the book, ugh)
Barristan the Bold - his POV chapters, especially the one where he goes after the king, were fantastic
That's really it. GRRM has lost control of his story. how about writing a book that's well paced and logical instead of filled with retarded "twists". Honestly, I can't believe it took TWO FULL BOOKS to get here from the end of ASOS (I really hope HBO is just ruthless in getting to the meat of these books, I feel like there's a LOT to cut out). Someone get this guy an actual editor. This reminds me of the stuff I write when I'm struggling and not enjoying writing it and I do so out of obligation, that's what it feels like. I think I'm probably done with this series. Though in 5 years time, I might be ready to give it another try.
I'm very unhappy with how purely plot-driven the series has become. Characters have to be invented, moved onto the POV stage, killed, moved off, all to service the plot. It's why GRRM can apparently just kill off characters like Jon... it doesn't seem to be about characters. Everyone talks about how this series breaks the fantasy mold but it really doesn't. Just like most every other fantasy series, the pace of the story has slowed to a crawl due to the author's indulgence, and it's primarily plot driven. Yes there's less magic and more medieval-lords-politics, and characters get killed off. Those aren't gigantic differences.
I don't know, I thought this series was something special after AGOT and ASOS... now it just feels so "ordinary."
First off... AEGON? wtf? We spent THREE BOOKS developing Dany, then all of a sudden, oh by the way, here's another Targarayan in secret, and now he's going to do the invasion, even though we as the reader have spent virtually no time with him. /facepalm. Seriously. I CAN'T BELIEVE THE TARGARAYAN INVASION DOESNT INVOLVE DANY AND IS A NEW CHARACTER THAT HE JUST INTRODUCED.
I guess he "defied expectations"
"What a twist!" Tyrion... did anybody think GRRM could make his character arc so goddamn boring? It was fine until he met Penny. When I reached his last chapter, my overwhelming reaction was "THAT'S IT???"
If GRRM had written AGOT the way he wrote these last two books, Ned's journey from Winterfell to Kings Landing would be THE ENTIRE BOOK. I"M SO SICK OF TRAVELOGUES.
Jon and Dany were more interesting, yet most of their chapters felt like wheel spinning. Jon's chapters only exist to build up to the mutiny.
I pretty much figured either Dany or Jon was going to get killed, because once you realize how plot and shock-driven this series is, you simply go "what's the one thing you don't expect to happen?" and pick that. It's becoming like M. Night Shyamalan in it's predictibility ("WHAT A TWIST").
It doesn't even feel like the same series anymore.
Things I liked:
Reek/Theon - disturbing but incredibly well written. Theon and "Arya"'s escape were truly tense moments
Dany riding Drogon - I was like "YES FINALLY SOMETHING FUN HAPPENS WITH DANY" (then she disappears for the rest of the book, ugh)
Barristan the Bold - his POV chapters, especially the one where he goes after the king, were fantastic
That's really it. GRRM has lost control of his story. how about writing a book that's well paced and logical instead of filled with retarded "twists". Honestly, I can't believe it took TWO FULL BOOKS to get here from the end of ASOS (I really hope HBO is just ruthless in getting to the meat of these books, I feel like there's a LOT to cut out). Someone get this guy an actual editor. This reminds me of the stuff I write when I'm struggling and not enjoying writing it and I do so out of obligation, that's what it feels like. I think I'm probably done with this series. Though in 5 years time, I might be ready to give it another try.
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And even after the last Jon chapter, the general consensus of the fandom is that he will not die, he will "get better". No one of importance dies in those books anymore. It's almost zombie apocalypse in Westeros, with all the resurrections ...
If Jon is really properly dead, then I'd be surprised. But then, there are no POVs on the wall except Melisandre and all the plot development of the Night's Watch and the supernatural beyond the wall is gone to the waste bit.
The problem arises from the fact that almost everything that happened in the last two books was supposed to be glossed over in a time jump. He basically had to make a bunch of filler so that he didn't have half a book of flashbacks dragging down the ongoing story of what would have been the fifth book. He could have definitely done better with it, but I for one was only particularly frustrated by Quentin's useless thread (which might still be important later on) and the fact that Martin never gave us a reason to care about Mereen. Westeros is a living breathing character of a setting. We understand it, we understand why people live the way they do, why they believe the things they do. In Slaver's bay we have an alien culture that just feels like a weird twisted combo of vaguely oriental and ancient Rome/Middle East. We aren't given a PoV from within the culture so we are left seeing that world through Dany's frustratingly teenage eyes, Quentin's oblivious single-minded eyes and Barristan's grumpy old homesick eyes.
Conversely, I wish it were more plot driven. It often feels like he's hanging out with some characters because he likes them, even if they're really up to absolutely nothing. It's like I said in another thread: Barristan leaves King's Landing, adopts a new name, falls in with Strong Belwas travels to the other end of the world - Qarth - and meets up with Daenerys.
Guess what we never saw nor needed to see? His bloody sea voyage.
By the same token, Theon disappears in A Clash of Kings and doesn't resurface until this novel. We didn't need to see his slow torturous transformation to Reek, his character arc is actually more interesting because we jumped ahead there. If someone isn't doing anything particularly interesting, I don't want ten chapters of them faffing about. Check in when something cool happens, okay? The books have been slipping on this point since A Clash of Kings, which is where Arya's chapters begin to feel fillerish, and it's become a bigger problem as it's gone by.
Yes.
Honestly, I thought Tyrion was done after A Storm of Swords. He'd lost all his political power - and Tyrion is fun because of the way he connives with his position - and he finally had his cathartic showdown with his father. If the character never appeared again in the novel series I actually would have been pretty content, and I love Tyrion. I expect that GRRM wouldn't find anything interesting for him to do in Essos, and he'd join Arya, Samwell and Brienne as a character whose chapters often involve little more than travelogue and internal monologue. The first Tyrion chapter promised to prove me wrong, the rest proved me right.
That might be an excuse if A Dance with Dragons wasn't longer than A Game of Thrones.
Not even that. It feels like warmed over Orientalism. The feminized unmasculine East, and all that rot.
And ironically, this is the first book to ever give us a perspective of a character not born in Westeros - Melisandre.
I didn't mind Barristan's chapters, but making Shavepate or some other heavily featured Meereenese character a POV would've probably worked just as good or even better.
I feel that we are in for at least another half a book of Meereenese stuff, so maybe GRRM will make someone from there a POV.
We all know he is won't to change his mind with much regularity, but he has said a few timmes he doesnmt expect or wannt to add any more povs heading into the last couple books. Selmy was a last minute addition mostly so he could show what was happening in mereen after Dany left.
I'm glad he added Barristan as a POV, because if not for that and the chapter where Dany rides Drogon out of the fighting pits, the entire Meereenese plot would have felt like a complete waste of time, rather than just being mostly a waste of time. I was hoping that ADWD would end with us finally being rid of Meereen and the plot-killing Essos, but no, now instead of having Dany dither around learning to be a queen in the wrong place, we'll get to watch her dither around with a bunch of random new Dothraki--probably for the entirety of The Winds of Winter. Yay.
And I hate to say it, but I actually would have been completely fine with Tyrion's story ending with ASOS, considering what we ended up getting here. I actually enjoyed Tyrion's early travelogue chapters, when he was with Griff and Young Griff, but once he got captured by Mormont and dragged off to Slaver's Bay to accomplish exactly nothing, I started wishing that Martin had just had Tyrion stay with Connington and Aegon and accompany them on their invasion of Westeros--seeing as it was his idea in the first place, and he still has scores there to settle.
I also could have done without the useless Quentyn Martell chapters and (blasphemy alert!) Victarion's chapters. I've never been a fan of the Ironborn, and outside of their role in Theon's development into a turncoat and then Reek, I don't really see any point to them. It just feels like they're there to give Martin another excuse to world-build instead of move the plot along.
And I hate to say it, but I actually would have been completely fine with Tyrion's story ending with ASOS, considering what we ended up getting here. I actually enjoyed Tyrion's early travelogue chapters, when he was with Griff and Young Griff, but once he got captured by Mormont and dragged off to Slaver's Bay to accomplish exactly nothing, I started wishing that Martin had just had Tyrion stay with Connington and Aegon and accompany them on their invasion of Westeros--seeing as it was his idea in the first place, and he still has scores there to settle.
I also could have done without the useless Quentyn Martell chapters and (blasphemy alert!) Victarion's chapters. I've never been a fan of the Ironborn, and outside of their role in Theon's development into a turncoat and then Reek, I don't really see any point to them. It just feels like they're there to give Martin another excuse to world-build instead of move the plot along.
Thinking about Tyrion's chapters, I feel like we could have had three in total. The first would have him already on the boat off to meet Daenerys (with the interminable monologues filling in how he got there), the second, same boat, revelation about Aegon... and the third could be the one after Daenerys is taken away by Drogon, which means we wouldn't know Tyrion was one of the two dueling dwarfs until after the fact.
I would have been happy with that. Actually, were it not for Tyrion exposing Aegon, I would have been happy if they just chucked all the Tyrion chapters except for one after Daenerys disappears.
Daenerys could probably be around five chapters overall. Introduce the Mereen setting, the problem with the dragons/Sons of the Harpy, Hizdahr's marriage proposal/peace offer, the acceptance of such, the pit incident, and a little later we meet her with the dragon.
Etc. The book is pretty ruthless in how much it pares down Bran's material - he gets what, two chapters, and a ton of plot advancement? - but it could have been helped with much less Tyrion and Daenerys.
Which as they're two of my favourite characters might sound odd, but eh.
Now I actually love the Ironborn. Aeron Damphair is hilariously crazy and easily one of my favourite minor characters, and the Kingsmoot arc in A Feast for Crows is one of the most fun things in that book.
The Greyjoys are also relevant to the plot in a way that's immediately obvious - as one of the great houses of Westeros and, like the Starks, claiming a pre-Targaryen kingdom, they're just another prong in the multifactional civil war that's been wrecking the country since the second novel. I have no idea how much the politics of Slaver's Bay will play into the game of thrones, but the importance of what the claimants for the Seastone Chair are doing is kind of obvious.
And also, fun.
Even so, Victarion is a bit bland and his presence in the book is largely a waste. Here we could have used one chapter. Moqorro, Moqorro explains how the horn works, aaaand we're done.
I understand a Sansa chapter was going to be in this book but was pushed back for The Winds of Winter instead, and I honestly would have preferred to have a Sansa chapter here.
I would have been happy with that. Actually, were it not for Tyrion exposing Aegon, I would have been happy if they just chucked all the Tyrion chapters except for one after Daenerys disappears.
Daenerys could probably be around five chapters overall. Introduce the Mereen setting, the problem with the dragons/Sons of the Harpy, Hizdahr's marriage proposal/peace offer, the acceptance of such, the pit incident, and a little later we meet her with the dragon.
Etc. The book is pretty ruthless in how much it pares down Bran's material - he gets what, two chapters, and a ton of plot advancement? - but it could have been helped with much less Tyrion and Daenerys.
Which as they're two of my favourite characters might sound odd, but eh.
I've never actually seen anyone online say they like Victarion's chapters (here or in A Feast for Crows). I forget who said it, but someone succinctly pointed out that when we left Victarion in A Feast for Crows he was en route to Mereen, and when we leave him in A Dance with Dragons... he is still en route to Mereen.
Now I actually love the Ironborn. Aeron Damphair is hilariously crazy and easily one of my favourite minor characters, and the Kingsmoot arc in A Feast for Crows is one of the most fun things in that book.
The Greyjoys are also relevant to the plot in a way that's immediately obvious - as one of the great houses of Westeros and, like the Starks, claiming a pre-Targaryen kingdom, they're just another prong in the multifactional civil war that's been wrecking the country since the second novel. I have no idea how much the politics of Slaver's Bay will play into the game of thrones, but the importance of what the claimants for the Seastone Chair are doing is kind of obvious.
And also, fun.
Even so, Victarion is a bit bland and his presence in the book is largely a waste. Here we could have used one chapter. Moqorro, Moqorro explains how the horn works, aaaand we're done.
I understand a Sansa chapter was going to be in this book but was pushed back for The Winds of Winter instead, and I honestly would have preferred to have a Sansa chapter here.
I get that they're yet another faction in the massive civil war, and that's my problem with them. Like I said, I was fine with them when they were the catalyst for Theon betraying the Starks and eventually descending into Reek, but then actually introducing several of them as POV characters in AFFC and ADWD only served to make these middle books even more bloated than they already were.
Bran gets three chapters in Dance, but, yeah, it's a very succinct story arc that Martin would have done well to emulate in the book as a whole.
Similar to sections in AFFC I could feel where Martin was trying to fix his original idea of going a few years forward. I think it's because of that we get the boring Mereen sections that go on and on. Because the other stuff? The other stuff rocked. The sections with Jon and Bran are the best Martin has ever done and the final hundred pages was up there with A Storm of Swords. The final image, of the children coming to stab Kevan, was exceptional in its disturbing quality.
The book could be frustrating at times but I loved it.
The book could be frustrating at times but I loved it.
Well I just finished it, but my experience was a little different in that I didn't have to wait for it but read all five books in the last few weeks. I'm having a hard time separating them for review purposes therefore, it's just one long sag to me so far.
I'll get to more analysis after I digest it a little more, but I agree that I liked Victarion's chapters and think he's the key to getting Dany back to Westeros in time to use the dragons to fight the white walkers when the real Horn brings down the Wall...
I'll get to more analysis after I digest it a little more, but I agree that I liked Victarion's chapters and think he's the key to getting Dany back to Westeros in time to use the dragons to fight the white walkers when the real Horn brings down the Wall...
Typo or Freudian slip?
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