Anticipating "A Feast For Crows" by George R. R. Martin (Nov. 9)

i'm just worried that my weed-addled brainz won't be able to keep up with martin's plots and i will sink into a sea of despair.

Yes! And YES!!!!!

so there!

my friend andrew likes it. me & laura were trying to convine him to read it for like a month, and he just started.

I'm so fucking excited about getting this book tonight. It is going to significantly improve my life.

That this series has turned out so well surprises me, considering what a C-lister GRR Martin was before (Wild Cards? ugh).

I'm a bit further ahead than you, Adam, and Laura is ahead of us both. But I am so into it.

I don't care that much about the Seastone Chair subplot (though I really like Asha), but I'm really enjoying the King's Landing and Eyrie stuff.

Ian, catch up with me! I want to talk to you about it.

why does laura read so fast.

YES

A Song of Fire and Ice is one of the best fantasy series currently going. Martin is a skilled writer and an expert crafter of cliffhangers, red herrings, and other plot twists (probably comes from having written for TV so long). If he's no Gene Wolfe, he's also no Robert Jordan.

What is this supposed to mean? I'm not familiar with either.

BTW, finished the first book last night.

detailed chapter by chapter summaries available here:
http://members.aol.com/vbkorik27/main.html

I was reading some on the train today. I'm nearing the end. I'm glad I didn't just blow through it in two days cuz otherwise I think I'd be really bored and disappointed with whatever else I'd be reading. I love the way Martin drops characters in and out of the story--case in point, two of Robert's bastards who haven't had terribly significant parts yet (especially Mya Stone.) Also awesome: Dornish subplotting.

Is Cersei delusional or was she really psychologically fucked over as a child (more than one would assume, what with her bonking her bro and all.)

SPOILERS MAY FOLLOW:::::::::::::::::::::

so we still have a lot of cliffhangers, some of which are continued over from the previous book.
-Where is Tyrion? I bet he's on Dragonstone, perhaps with Davos Seaworth. Maybe they're both dead.
-Where are the stark lads and jojen and whats'ername? Are they faring well?
-So what's Catelyn's deal now? She's 'alive' in a sense but doesn't seem to have ANY compassion left whatsoever. To be honest, I wouldn't expect her to. But do we think she's going to become a major player in the game? That would surprise me.
-Melisandre & Stannis? I wonder how they're dealing with Jon.

I think Arya is really blind, Laura said she'd taken it as a metaphor for something else. I think the concept of a blind Arya assassin is too much to resist.

Cersei's a terrible cunt, and I hope awful things happen to her in the following book. I don't care much about Margaery, really. If she's a casualty it won't be a significant one in my eyes. She was kinda bland.

What do you think is going to happen with Arianne/Myrcella/Dorne?

I like Jaime much more now. He just keeps getting more likable as the series progresses, which is a nice turnaround. His first appearances make him seem like such a bastard.

I think in the end Jaime is actually going to be the one to kill Cersei. Maggy predicted she'd be killed by a valonquar (sp?) which means younger brother. She always suspected Tyrion, but given the current situation, I'm going with Jaime. He was born after her, after all, and she is the biggest liability ever. Also, she cheated on him something ridiculous while he was busy getting his hand hacked off. If Tommen doesn't survive (I think he's too guileless for longevity) maybe Jaime can marry Margaery.

I don't (want to) think Brienne is really dead.

If Arya really is blind, I think it will be compensated for by some other kind of power... interesting parallels with Bran, perhaps. I still think he could become a major player. I'd like to see her meet up with Jon again, but it's not going to happen until after Dragons at least since they run parallel in the same time frame.

Sansa is well-positioned to be a major player. Will the Stark girls ever reunite with their zombie mother? Only time will tell.

i found that his character development was especially strong; the long build-up to us REALLY meeting jamie lannister was terrific, as was the way he cleverly manipulates reader sympathy in regards to pretty much all of the lannisters.

dude's a little obsessed with rape, though.

i wonder if i avoided the ennui by just buying books 2/3/4 at one time and jumping rite into book 3 after book two. its a lil easier to stomach treading water if youve got actual plot coming up right away--i feel like in retrospect book 4 will seem less annoying when paired w/ dance into dragons

*knocks wood* *crosses fingers*

mordy somewhat otm, i dunno. it may help you to learn that in the original plan for the series (when it was a 2,400 page fuckin' trilogy) the first novel covered all of book one and half of book two, which goes a long way towards explaining why the plotting and pacing starts to go increasingly awry -- i feel like a lot of all the other books has the terrible feeling of "i have major unresolved structural issues preventing me from getting to the next bullet point, but i guess i can spin out another 200 pages on the mud vikings or the spainishmen or whatever"

i feel like everything we 'learn' about how the 'world' of westeros 'works' is fairly arbitrary -- it's my contention that he decided his medieval england analogue was actually the size of south america somewhere between books one and two --

martin is certainly not a historian or political science guy but he has, broadly, a good sense of politics "works" in a world like westeros. (this is open to debate, obviously, but let's just say this is true relative to tolkien.) the war of the 5 kings is interesting not because the 5 kings themselves have boss powers or interesting backstories but because it feels kind of... "real." messy and political and cruel and sad

see this is kind of a weird thing because tolkien is so emphatically not concerned with how politics works? i don't know. but there is basically a sign posted outside lotr saying THIS WAY FAIRYLAND, SUSPEND DISBELIEF ABOUT LOGISTICS PLEASE; a lot of fantasy fiction works this way; & yeah to anyone who says tolkien is bad because the politics don't work i reserve the right to go "YOU'RE JUST READING THEM WRONG" myself, not that i even like tolkien

anyway i think the reason it all feels totally arbitrary to me is that the war-of-the-roses stuff feels messy and real &c. until i stop and think about how this is meant to be an entire continent it's happening on -- like, you can't just scale up and expect it to work! medieval england was already nowhere near as monocultural as martin makes westeros. this is why i'm harping on the food thing upthread -- like he's just slapped on a 'spanish' texture pack.

also just .. the war of the roses is the least interesting period of history anywhere in the world ever

im not saying tolkein is bad because of politics!!

im anticipating criticisms (like yours) that grrm doesnt _actually_ get politics (which i think is true) by saying that were talking in a relative way here

and anyway youre obviously right martin isnt nearly the historian/sociologist/political scientist he or his most fervent fans would like him to be. i tend to be a little more annoyed at his insistence that history is shaped by the decisive actions of a handful of nobles and that dynasties are won and lost in a single instant than by his cruddy geo-cultural sense

yeah i think that would probably annoy me more too, except i have an incredibly pedantic mindset

i might stop complaining about the olives and start complaining about the ravens instead

i've read about 3.75 books and it is pretty clear to me that GRRM is not my kind of nerd? in that what gets GRRM off is court intrigue and genealogy and the word "ser" (see it's not england it has an E) whereas i am more of a grain prices guy. that aside though he writes good !!!!! moments (book 3 has The Big One) and if his characters aren't "complex" in the shakespearian sense they do refuse to be placed firmly in a column. or at least they die unexpectedly. and in a few cases (most of them girls, actually -- dany, sansa -- but also samwell and maybe littlefinger) i really dig the arcs, partly because of how slow and painful they are, and how many times they refuse to satisfy traditional fantasy-epic expectations; i love for example how samwell goes on a big globetrotting adventure without actually Finding His Courage.

the prose is bad but it's pulp fantasy. much worse exists. for what it's worth mordy i do remember 2 being the boring one.

i guess what i mean re: "refuse to satisfy" is that all the characters start as cliches (weary noble warrior! restless tomboy! bratty minor princess! fat coward! bitch!) but the books make a point of frustrating their ideas of themselves.

yeah, i think that's probably the series biggest strength. Obviously grrm hasn't performed a full "deconstruction" of the genre (whatever that would entail) but he subverts it in ways that make the series 1m times more enjoyable.

so i'm enjoying the third book much more than the second. no complaints really about any of the major arcs/storylines except -- holy shit the Arya stuff is boring. i never thought her plot would become my least favorite but it definitely drags the most (well, Bran too). i don't know why there's all this focus on the super boring tedious Stark kids (Robb is okay, and Jon, and Sansa is a cipher but in interesting locations/interacting with interesting characters but the little ones...)

arya rules fuiud.

who are you

yeah arya chapters in that book best stuff among all four. the names list, etc

I'm just boggling that someone could be more interested in Sansa than either Arya or Bran

Bran is the most boring throughout, let's be fair. Nothing happens to him except for his emoing.

that's not really true...?

The Bran parts of book II are esp. great. Admit that his parts in the book III are not my favorites however.

HEY I GOT ALL MY BOOKS BACK, PREPARING FOR MASSIVE RE-READ OF 3/4!

i think grrm's biggest f-u moment is the bran/jon passing each other in the north bit

i just finished rereading 3 today, and i'm gonna try to read 4 by tuesday

i think grrm's biggest f-u moment is the bran/jon passing each other in the north bit

YES

Arya is probably my favorite character in the whole series.

HODOR is mine

#teampodrick

Tyrion 4 Life

Started a thread for the new book: Anticipating GRRM's A Dance With Dragons

maybe Arya gets better but so far it's just been "arya trying to escape / arya gets captured" beat played over and over again.

have you been keeping a "wench" tally

Finished Feast of Crows!

Really came to hate the Cersei chapters, partly for GRRM's less than sterling prose, partly for how thinly he fleshes out her character. Agree w/ Princess TamTam (Dornish?) upthread about her deal being paranoia instead of outright stupidity, but the way that he writes marked direct speech (i.e. what I allude to here) gets incredibly tiresome in Cersei's chapters -- mostly because GRRM seems more invested in having us look down on her all inna "lol @ her smug butt" way rather than focus on giving her more dimensionality (she's been WAY more interesting in the tv show). That said, very very happy where she ends up in the book, so clearly GRRM is doing something right.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARYA~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ;_; I am so ready to have her become a blind assassin though, which I no doubt will be able to read about in 2017.

I have to say some of the TWISTS, even in book 3, are telegraphed, even the Red Wedding, which for narrative-structural reasons (the way the chapters were set up) and plot reasons (why would Frey marry off what's her name to you know who especially when HE'S in a better bargaining position?) I saw coming. But then heheh I was all o_OO_o in the epilogue.

Also, a minor I've been wondering about the second book: why do Tyrion's mountain men hang with him in such an obedient way? These guys were on the verge of chopping off his manhood and feeding it to the goats in book 1, then in book 2 they're his unquestioning bodyguards. Were the splendors of King's Landing so, uh, splendid that they awed them into submission?

Finally: 3 > 1 > 2 > 4.

PS I figured that by the time I was going to finish book 4 that book 5 would be out in paperback, but clearly I'm going to have to splurge on the hardcover now.

yeah the way that for a few hundred pages people are going "hey remember the LAWS of HOSPITALITY which are REAL IMPORTANT which no one EVER EVER breaks" is kind of ..... nnnghh

like i'm not sure if this is inept foreshadowing or even more inept dramatic irony

oh well, see you on the book five thread

Yes, it's slogging. About 60% of the way through now, and so much Ironmen padding grrr. Though people who've read everything out assure me that by the time the 6th book comes out he'll have set everything up for something huge. Anyway, LOLed heartily at Lancel's description of treason. Liking Cersei & the Dornish settings a lot.

I'm glad to see the storyline with the sparrows because it hopefully means there's going to be something big with the faith militant/the red woman's religion and it's not just a buildup to nothing.

Now to read the comments upthread...

You'll appreciate aFfC more in retrospect.

I finished this! Saggy midsection but flew through it in the last third of the book. Could have lived without description of Sam's "fat pink mast".

I understand why people moaned about it as it can be quite slow going and at times you wonder why the fuck there's so much Iron Islands stuff, for example, but looking back at it all, you can see things shifting into place.

Starting ADWD now. I really hope he can deliver on this big climax.

the iron islands stuff were the only parts of affc i really hated.