For a book entitled a Dance with Dragons...

[lightofdaye]

There was very little dancing and the dragons didn't appear much.



So yeah. I'd already spoiled myself on Jon's death but... Damn it was still a shock and a blow to the gut. I mean It was just so sudden one page, i'm trying to figure out what happened with the giant and how Jon will keep a lid on things and then bam, knives in the gut and the back and... :-(

I really don't know how I feel about the novel, there are bits and characters that are genuinely interesting and It was well written I can tell because it one of those books I read and think 'I must put it down and go to sleep at the end of this chapte' and then end up reading another couple of chapters before I actually managed to tear me away from it.

The real weakness of the book in my opinion is that there's no damn ending. Nothing feels like the natural end of an arc just a quick and nasty cliffhanger so he can end the book. In fact I think its weaker than Feast For Crows on that account. For Feast lots of people's arc seem to come to a natural climax, Cersei being hoisted on her own petard, Jaime taking Riverrun, Arriane's confrontation with her father. The Results of the Kingsmoot for Asha, Victarion being sent to Mereen etc.

But most of the characters in this seem to be treading water. Especially Jon and Tyrion. Character I usually enjoy but suddenly seem to be much more boring in this book.  It's not helped by the fact Jon immediately decides to sent every interesting and fun night's watch character as far away from him as possible.

Despite making it to Mereen Tyrion never gets to meet Dany which I think is the greatest injustice in the book.

As with Feast, GRRM introduces a lot of new characters view points but Damn is he getting bored with just using their names or what? Like Feast there are lot of new faces and new viewpoints that are only used very briefly.

And these Aegon son of Rheagar thing seems really out of left field, technically there had been some foreshadowing with Daenerys in Quarth but its still weird to introduce such a big character this late. I'm wondering if he really is the prince that was promised like Rhaegar said or if Aemon was right about it being Dany.

I think the strongest chapters were surprisingly enough Theon's. He wasn't that great in Clash but he has a really strong redemption arc coming off here. And I note that despite all the things that have been cut off. He still has enough fingers at least to use his signature weapon. Epic redemption arc here we come?

I also enjoyed Asha's chapters with Stannis and Jaime's which is one of the most pointless since all that was really significant was the last few paragraphs with Brienne that could have fit at the end of Feast with little alteration.  Still seeing Jaime treating honourably with Blackwood and handling both Blackwood and his allies of Bracken was really good and its strange how Jaime always seems to end up likely respecting his opponents more than his allies but when he's got allies like Bracken and Frey its not surprising.


Now to watch the Game Of Thrones episode Baelor, this ain't going to be traumatic at all...

Comments

[luna-plath.livejournal.com]

I feel like you're totally right about Dance not having arch completion. I think the story just got too unwieldy for Martin to finish in one novel so he chose to throw in some cliffhangers to finish it up in TWOW. It's really noticeable with characters like Jon and Tyrion. Dany's arch kind of feels like it gets somewhere at the very end, but the Mereen chapters were very slow, in my opinion.

I loved Theon's chapters as well. I think he was my favorite viewpoint character in Dance, mainly because his storyline actually went somewhere.

There's a lot of speculation that Aegon isn't really Rhaegar and Elia's son. Illyrio mentions having a wife that died when she was young, and there are theories that "Aegon" is Illyrio's son and a Blackfyre descendant from the female line. Some people also think that Varys is not a Targaryen supporter, but a Blackfyre supporter, which is why Dany was married to a Khal and sent away while "Aegon" was being trained/prepared to rule Westeros. But none of those theories are founded in proof, they're just speculation.

I was kind of annoyed when we first met Aegon. I didn't want to believe that he was real from the beginning, because I can't make myself root for a character that appears in book five when there's so many other characters we've gotten to know better. It would be an unsatisfying ending.

[lightofdaye]

Yeah I'm hoping it's a fake out but I guess we won't know for about a decade at GRRM's pace. Though two Targaryens might make sense considering the title of the book. 'The Dance Of Dragons' in-universe refers to a civil war between Targaryens.

Amusingly the end of Dany's arc was her hallucinating in the grasslands about how pointless the entire 'staying in Mereen' plot was. Still she had Drogon now. Looks like she's going back to Mereen with a full sized Khalazar behind her.

[luna-plath.livejournal.com]

"I guess we won't know for about a decade at GRRM's pace" LOL. Sad but a real possibility. I'm hoping that future novels won't take 5+ years to complete; grrm's under more pressure now because of the TV show. A part of me is skeptical about how long HBO will keep it going, so maybe it won't matter.

The title doesn't make much sense to me now, but after the rest of the series maybe it will. My best guess is that (like the original Dance with Dragons) there will be a major conflict between Jon and Dany in the last book(s). Both Jon and Dany were the main character-driven arcs of the novel, both are (knowingly or unconsciously) dragons/targaryens....so that's where my idea comes from that they are the dragons in the title. I prefer this idea to Aegon being the other dragon, but I have no idea if any of it will prove true.

I'm thinking there will be a battle in Mereen at the beginning of Winds, with Dany and the khalassar, the iron fleet, and the many confusing branches of sellswords that I could never keep straight. Did you ever get the impression that the Green Grace was the Harpy? That was my suspicion while reading, but I don't know what most readers think about that idea.

[lightofdaye]

Which one was the green grace again? I've forgotten. OH she's the little old lady who's really nice to Dany but helps push the Reznak marriage on her? Sounds like a definite possibility.

I'm really bad about figuring twists out ahead of time. Unless its really obvious.

I was reading your Dance Review on your journal the other day and something popped out at me: by the end of the book I'd forgotten Bran had actually made an appearance in the book at all...

Also is anyone really annoyed Victarion didn't make it to Mereen already? I guess he's going to save the day in the battle of something. And that Tyrion never met Dany? The only real reason I was excited about the Tyrion in the east plotline. Because I don't think he's ever going to find the other woman he's looking for.

[luna-plath.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I can spot things, but other times I totally mis stuff. At first I didn't notice that Abel was Mance and the washerwomen were the spearwives. It took me quite a while to figure that out, lol.

Martin hardly includes Bran anymore. I guess he's learning so much magic-type stuff that we can't have his POV all the time because it would reveal too much, which is why I think we'll never get a Varys or Petyr Baelish POV either, because they know everything. I miss Bran though. His adventure with the Reeds has been really interesting.

I was frustrated with the eastern plotline as well. I wanted Tyrion and Dany to meet, because he's one of the few characters that could actually fill her in on what Westeros is like. Barristen and Jorah gloss over the truth so Dany has this unrealistic idea of what happened when her father was the king. Tyrion would actually tell her the truth.