A Feast for Crows - Spoiler topic

[I'm Murrin]

It's either him or a corpse (of which there are quite a few to choose from).

[Warmark]

It's either him or a corpse (of which there are quite a few to choose from).

Ah yes thats what i thought, i doubt we'll get a Un Cat POV or a Magically returned from the dead Ned POV. So yea i'll go for Theon.

[I'm Murrin]

Here's a thought: With Dragonstone fallen, what is going to happen at the Wall? Stannis was supposed to supply them with obsidian from under Dragonstone to fight the Others.

[Caer Bombadil]

...

Spoiler

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Or perhaps a Combination on Jaime and the Hound, will take him on. Perhaps due to the dream Bran had early in AGOT, where he saw a Hound and a Golden man, fighting a gaint in stone armour.

[/spoiler]

Good one! However, I finally found that passage, &

Spoiler

it just indicated that in Bran's vision these 3 "shadows" simply "surrounded" his father & sisters down in King's Landing. I don't get the sense they actually were fighting with each other at all. The man in golden armor, and the snarling hound-man could have been Jaime and Sandor as they were at the time.

The giant, however, was clearly a prophetic foreshadowing IMCO of the reanimated corpse-warrior that Qyburn later presumably makes of Gregor's corpse. Furthermore, that business about nothing being visible in the helm behind the visor except "darkness and thick black blood" indicates to me that Qyburn found the head to be superfluous and surplus. He evidently could spare it to send down to Dorne to pacify Doran's clan.

BTAIM, I rather like the idea the Hound gets rehabbed and Jaime regains his ability to fight. If Frankengregor ends up being Cersei's champion, then I suppose Jaime might indeed help doom her.

I wonder if, in the process of reanimating Gregor's corpse, Qyburn might be partaking of some of that dark malevolent northern winter power the Others serve, & in so doing will invoke an onset of a severe winter & an invasion of Others that threatens all life in the world, maybe even to the warm subtropical countries like Dorne and the Summer Isles?

[Zarathustra]

I just realized I'm only about 10 pages from the end. . . and with that realization I'm very disappointed. Not taking into account the pages comprising the appendix, I thought there might still be room from something spectacular to happen. Now I know this book will will have none of that.

This is one long, unnecessary book. Complete filler. I thought there was going to be some resolution for these characters, but none of them have any resolution whatsoever. Arya is in limbo, with nothing resolved. Brienne might be dead (but probably isn't), but I certainly wouldn't call that a resolution to her story. Jaime is just doing the same stuff he did last book: getting further from his past self. Cersei is finally seeing a turn, but her fate still hangs undecided. Hardly resolved.

When I think about what actually happened in this book (relatively nothing), I am astounded it took Martin 1000 pages to say it. Like I said, this stuff was complete filler. The Dorne chapters were a complete waste, nothing but a flimsy set-up for things to come. The only chapters where chracters actually achieved anything were the Greyjoy chapters. They got off their butts and did something. Yet, that story too is unresolved.

This book should have been a few chapters of a book, that's it--a few chapters of a book that actually included the other characters we care about. He could have done everything he did here with 100-200 pages tops. For pete's sake, Brienne actually doubled back during her quest to spots she went to before! We really did not need her meandering, pointless quest, though I was hoping for good things from it.

Waste of time. Very disappointing, Mr. Martin. You're just treading water now.

[Farm Ur-Ted]

I warned you! After reading your post, I remember how I felt when I finished it. I like Samwell, but damn, it's crazy that it takes him the entire book to sail to Oldtown (or whatever it's called). There were way too many chapters with him on the boat; it gets suffocating after a while (never mind, boring). The trip should've taken two chapters, or three at the most. By the time I got to the end, and the characters from the prologue re-appeared, I was like "Oh, those guys. Who are they? Should I read the prologue again? Nah."

As I recall, practically all of the characters are trapped one way or another at the end of the book (Cersei in prison; Arya blinded; Samwell kidnapped or something (?); Brienne probably not dead, but seriously screwed; that one Dorne chick I could care less about locked in a tower still, I believe). So like you said, there's no resolution, just cliff-hangers, then you get to the annoying little author's note at the end and find out the cliffhangers won't be resolved in the next book, but in the one after that, which could be 10 years from now! That's annoying as crap if you ask me. It sounds like things may have changed, though and ADwD will have everyone's PoV in it at some point.

Well, like I said in the other thread, if I were to do a 4-book re-read, I might enjoy AFfC a little better, but it's still a heavily flawed book. I'm hoping that it just turns out to be the hurdle Martin had to get over with in order to finish the series properly. I can see how the middle book could be a total bitch. He's cast out so many lines, that sooner or later he has to address all of the stories, and all of plot-lines are going to have to coalesce sooner or later. So maybe when he gets himself pointed towards the end-game, the writing and story-telling will get back on track (I used way too many crappy metaphors there; hope you get my gist).

[Zarathustra]

Ted, I should have responded sooner, but I didn't want to just keep echoing the chorus of negativity here. You made an excellent post and I agree 100%. I'll just leave it there (rather than complaining about Martin further).

You make a good point that this is a classic "middle book" problem. It does seem like he's going to need as much room ahead as he's taken in the past to finish this thing. So I suppose we're near the middle. And granted, that's a difficult task to pull off. It's just that if he hadn't done it so well in the first 2 books, I wouldn't have had such high expectations. The guy did it to himself, by being such a badass writer at the beginning.

[I'm Murrin]

On to the last part of my series re-read, my second read of Feast.

First thing noticed: The "alchemist" in the prologue is Jaqen H'ghar. Hook nose, scarred cheek, tight black curls - that's the face Arya saw him take on the night he left Harrenhal.

[I'm Murrin]

The thing with this book is that it feels long. It's similar to the feeling I got in aSoS after Joffrey's wedding, but this time through the whole book.

There's also the fact that in Feast Martin starts using a few little words and phrases to add flavour that he hasn't used before and uses too often in this book. Several times now people have said they'd do something "for half a groat", he overuses "morrows" in a couple of Cersei chapters, and for some reason half the young boys in Westeros are now called Pate.

On the other hand the scene where Brienne kills Rorge is superb, and Sansa as Alayne is pretty excellently done.

I dread to think how Brienne will be received now that she has a broken nose and half her face chewed off.

[caamora]

I'm enjoying your posting, Murrin.

[I'm Murrin]

Another thing I didn't pick up on in my original read of this one - Littlefinger doesn't just prescribe Sweetsleep as a slightly reckless solution to help Robert Arryn's seizures, but because he's actively trying to kill the boy. Maester Colemon knows the poison will build up in Robert's system, but is too weak willed to say no to Petyr (and Alayne, who only thinks it's helping).

Speaking of poisons, there are three that the "waif" shows Arya - Sweetsleep, which is killing Robert Arryn, the Tears of Lys, that killed Jon Arryn, and a third, a poison that drives people into an uncontrollable violent rage. I wonder when we'll see that in action, or if we have already.

[I'm Murrin]

The discrepancy in Jaime's description of Jeyne Westerling compared to Catelyn's is maddening. There's not enough to establish if it is another girl, and Sybil Spicer really doesn't seem like the type to go along with any such ruse. It could just be author error, which seems highly likely as the evidence that Sybil really did all that Tywin wanted is much higher.

But, things to be noted that I'd forgotten - Rymand Westerling, the queen's brother and a friend of Robb, escaped from the Twins by jumping in the river, probably alive. Brynden Tully has swum away from Riverrun. Both of them will turn up again.

[Farm Ur-Ted]

Well, like I said in the other thread, if I were to do a 4-book re-read, I might enjoy AFfC a little better, but it's still a heavily flawed book. I'm hoping that it just turns out to be the hurdle Martin had to get over with in order to finish the series properly. I can see how the middle book could be a total bitch. He's cast out so many lines, that sooner or later he has to address all of the stories, and all of plot-lines are going to have to coalesce sooner or later. So maybe when he gets himself pointed towards the end-game, the writing and story-telling will get back on track (I used way too many crappy metaphors there; hope you get my gist).

Funny, I'm getting near the end of my re-read, to prepare for ADWD, and I do like AFFC better than the first time. Part of the reason I like it better is probably because I didn't pay that much attention the first time through (unlike when I was reading the first 3 books), and so I've forgotten lots of the plot points. But the Cersei chapters aren't as bad as they were for me the first time through, just because it's fun to watch everything spin completely out of control. Jeez, that woman is a complete psychopath, but you get to see some of the crap that happened to her (like being married to Robert, who was a major tool for the most part as a husband), and you can sort of understand a little of her craziness. But wow, she makes one bad decision after another, and keeps slapping band-aids over her problems, which makes everything worse and worse. And she is like an after-school special about the dangers of surrounding yourself with the wrong people. I mean, you really want to hang with Qyburn? It's pretty funny.

I really like Jaime in this book. His chapters are my favorite. And I also like the Brienne/Podric pairing. One of the things that GRRM does really well in his books is pair together unlikely couples. Some of them are just great. Off the top of my head, I'd list Jaime/Brienne, the Tyrion/Sansa, and The Hound/Arya as some of the great ones (all from ASOS). But I really like Brienne and Podrick.

The story is still really disjointed, though.