A Dance with Dragons Discussion

Winter is coming...

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MsMary
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Post by MsMary »

Interesting blog post about A Dance with Dragons (contains spoilers):

williamhenrymorris.com/2011/why-a-dance-with-dragons-works/
"The Cheat is GROUNDED! We had that lightswitch installed for you so you could turn the lights on and off, not so you could throw lightswitch raves!"
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- The Doctor: But we're very experienced irresponsible fools.



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Post by lucimay »

thanks msmary. that blogger person put it very well. :thumbsup:
you're more advanced than a cockroach,
have you ever tried explaining yourself
to one of them?
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where they get upset about the [size of my]
trailer, and i'm always like...take my trailer,
cause... i'm from Kentucky
and that's not what we brag about.
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Post by Sorus »

So I've been avoiding this forum because I've been a slacker and just finished ADwD. It's also clear to me that I need to read it again, and also need to reread AFfC because I've forgotten a lot. One thing I will say - I am tired of prophesy as a plot device. I spend waaay too much time trying to figure out what it means, and then they sweep it under the rug. Should have learned my lesson with BSG, but nooo. :P

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Post by Zarathustra »

I'm only 500 pages into this so far, but this book is a whole bunch of boring. Bran's big destiny was to be a tree??? Okay, that's not exactly accurate, but that was a massive letdown for a decade or so of build up through 4500 pages.

This is some pointless wheel spinning. Everyone seems pretty much where they were--character-wise--for several books now. The only reason it seems like there is a lot going on is because there are so many characters to keep flipping between. Reek is chained up. Davos is chained up. Tyrion is chained up. Tyrion rides a boat. Tyrion rides another boat. Jon Snow frets about food shortages. Asha fucks. Reek goes down on Jeyne. Daenerys fucks a sellsword. Damn, what a soap opera.

The most interesting, game-changing event so far was Stannis achieving a military victory, but that was entirely "off-screen" and told through letters and rumors. (I believe there is a thread about that, so I won't linger on it.)

The writing is not even interesting. It's just a bland description of what each character is doing. Nothing to make your stop and smile in wonder at the craft. No insights into human nature, no inspirational depictions of a wonder that can only exist in our collective imaginations.

Martin is coasting at this point. I read recently that he intended for this to be three books, and then stretched it to seven. It feels EXACTLY like that. The same thing is happening to Bakker. This is the death of a series. Stick to the original vision, stop adding unnecessary characters, stop spinning wheels, have your characters do something important, or DON'T BOTHER TELLING THEIR STORY! See? Easy.
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Post by Zarathustra »

I just finished. This book was a huge disappointment for me. After Feast, I was hoping that Martin had resumed the "main" stories with the same passion and creativity that I had come to expect from the first three books. But this is just treading water, as I said above. None of this seems to matter anymore. I don't give a damn about Meereen. It's just a pit stop in Dany's journey. I can't believe we spent 1000 pages dealing with political intrigue of some city that has absolutely no consequence to her ultimate goal. Did she grow? Did she learn anything from this experience? Not that I can tell. I thought her dragon scene was awesome, but it petered out with no visible significance. A moment we've been waiting to see since the end of AGOT, just to have her shitting brown water in the grass afterwards. Bleh.

Jon's command of the Wall could have been so much better. But the Wall has turned into yet another soap opera. I love the idea of joining the wildlings with the Night's Watch, and I thought it was very significant to point out that every dead wildling would turn into a wight, but that point was quickly dropped instead of emphasized. Jon could have reiterated that point in later arguments about rescuing the wildlings still stuck by the shore, but he didn't mention it as he allowed others to argue against his orders. Instead of convincing them and turning them to his side, he ordered them to do things they thought of as treason, so that Martin could have yet another Ned Stark moment of killing off a main character. This is becoming tiresome. You can't keep relying upon the same trick to shock readers. It's no longer shocking. It's just annoying.

There are too many threads. This story is too large. Having one chapter about Jaime in a book of this size was pathetic. Having an epilogue about yet another twist of political intrigue is pointless. Shooting yet another Lannister elder with a crossbow just robs the first one of its shock value. Having a character who's only point is to die at the hand of a dragon like filling a maze with dead-ends. I don't want to read a maze. I want a story.

I'm glad Cersei got what was coming to her. Her walk of shame was awesome.
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Post by Avatar »

Luckily I haven't spent a decade on these, having read them all in the last month or so. (Although by the looks of things, I might be spending one waiting...)

As a result, I didn't find it as disappointing as I might have otherwise. Given the number of resurrected characters, I didn't assume for a moment Jon was dead.

I do think that the whole Danys thing has been far too drawn out though.

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Post by MsMary »

lucimay wrote:ok i think i added you to the fb song of ice and fire group msmary. :D but if i didn't manage it, it's an open group, all you have to do is do a search on fb for A Song of Ice and Fire. :D
You know, I never did follow up on looking for that FB page, but you definitely didn't succeed in adding me to it. As far as finding it by searching: Do you know how many ASOAIF pages there are on FB? 8O :P

Couldn't even find it by looking at your page and seeing what groups you are on - are you still on it?

Nice cover photo btw. Makes me want to come out and visit you. ;)
"The Cheat is GROUNDED! We had that lightswitch installed for you so you could turn the lights on and off, not so you could throw lightswitch raves!"
***************************************
- I'm always all right.
- Is all right special Time Lord code for really not all right at all?

- You're all irresponsible fools!
- The Doctor: But we're very experienced irresponsible fools.



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Post by Holsety »

Just wanted to say I actually saw Dance w/ Dragons as a return to form from my POV, and the strongest entry in the series since A Game of Thrones. This is not particularly because of its merits compared to books 2-4, but simply because my interest in the books greatly decreased after Eddard Stark died. Or rather, what came after interested me less.

The chapter where Barristan, one of the characters I have some admiration for, decides, or thinks, to himself, that a life without honor is worse than an honorable death (as I remember it) during a moment that seemed critical to him. Well, that was all I needed to see Dance of Dragons, and, retroactively, the rest of the series (such as Ned's death) as I remembered it, in a way that left me much more willing to appreciate it, and feel much more "defined subtlety" in it (though, still, pretty goddamn bored by a lot of it).

Suddenly, the cynicism/pessimism seemed a great deal less shallow, and yet somehow, lessened a bit.

It might be proper to say this is something that isn't particular to game of thrones, and also that something Tyrion shouted on impulse earlier in the books is probably what really "caught my eye."

And the Griffs - regardless of what becomes of them and whoever falls under them - will likely continue to be a potent force for my reinvestment in the series.

EDIT-Compared to what happened prior, the result of the Dany stuff (particularly the island thing) actually seemed like a decent answer. It's more that I found the stuff that happened in the prior books a bit boring, but at least they supplied what seemed like a rationale for the pressures that resulted in this one. But it's pretty damned tedious all the same until Drogon (sp?) blasts through everything. I thought the events in Mereen post Dany, and the machinations of the various consolidating forces on the old continent focusing against her, were more interesting than what she was doing in Mereen prior.
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