A Feast for Crows: George R. R. Martin: I loved the first three books in the Song of Ice and Fire series, but this one is by far my least favorite. By far. Characters that we have come to expect to hear from are not present -- no Tyrion Lannister, no Dany, no Jon Snow. Martin says he felt he had to divide this book from A Dance With Dragons because the story was just getting too unwieldy. I feel that if he had had proper editing, the relevant chapters from this book and the relevant ones from DWD could have been combined into one book about the length of A Dance With Dragons without losing anything essential from the story (having read DWD, I know there's far too much pointless meandering in that book.) As it is, we follow Brienne, the Maid of Tarth, as she wanders here and wanders there looking for Sansa Stark. We get much too much of a peek into Cersei's mind as she descends into paranoia and makes stupider and stupider decisions. What's done with Sam Tarly in this book is nowhere near as interesting as it could have been and there was far too much of this uninteresting story -- I'm tired of hearing Sam call himself a craven when it's clear he's anything but. A lot of this was just useless. And Arya -- I just don't care about her story in this book -- she seems more of an "eye on Braavos" character than anything else. I now know all about Braavos but less and less about Arya, and what's worse is that I just don't really care. She's always been one of my favorite characters, so to be bored by her was disappointing, to say the least. I'm not sure how I feel about the chapters set in Dorne -- interesting enough but too much of them. The only thing that I really loved about A Feast for Crows was the development of Jaime Lannister's character; he becomes much more interesting and unpredictable in his behavior. And he's surprisingly likable -- sort of. I'm just thankful that I came to the series only because I saw HBO's Game of Thrones; if I'd had to wait and wait for the latest book and then got this, I would have been very unhappy. As it is, I was just mostly bored.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
A Feast for Crows
A Feast for Crows: George R. R. Martin: I loved the first three books in the Song of Ice and Fire series, but this one is by far my least favorite. By far. Characters that we have come to expect to hear from are not present -- no Tyrion Lannister, no Dany, no Jon Snow. Martin says he felt he had to divide this book from A Dance With Dragons because the story was just getting too unwieldy. I feel that if he had had proper editing, the relevant chapters from this book and the relevant ones from DWD could have been combined into one book about the length of A Dance With Dragons without losing anything essential from the story (having read DWD, I know there's far too much pointless meandering in that book.) As it is, we follow Brienne, the Maid of Tarth, as she wanders here and wanders there looking for Sansa Stark. We get much too much of a peek into Cersei's mind as she descends into paranoia and makes stupider and stupider decisions. What's done with Sam Tarly in this book is nowhere near as interesting as it could have been and there was far too much of this uninteresting story -- I'm tired of hearing Sam call himself a craven when it's clear he's anything but. A lot of this was just useless. And Arya -- I just don't care about her story in this book -- she seems more of an "eye on Braavos" character than anything else. I now know all about Braavos but less and less about Arya, and what's worse is that I just don't really care. She's always been one of my favorite characters, so to be bored by her was disappointing, to say the least. I'm not sure how I feel about the chapters set in Dorne -- interesting enough but too much of them. The only thing that I really loved about A Feast for Crows was the development of Jaime Lannister's character; he becomes much more interesting and unpredictable in his behavior. And he's surprisingly likable -- sort of. I'm just thankful that I came to the series only because I saw HBO's Game of Thrones; if I'd had to wait and wait for the latest book and then got this, I would have been very unhappy. As it is, I was just mostly bored.
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Email me at lscher@neb.rr.com. I couldn't find an email contact in your profile.
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