@Kits:
! Yeah, I figured that's what you mean.
! You should read all the ironborn chapters in order. Over and over. And over and over.. and over again. Till you begin to bleed from the eyes and retch your entrails.
Game of Thrones (tv show thread)
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! Only Asha. But fuck you. glares at Aeron
! Every night when I dream, I kill him all over again.[[Follow me on Twitch!]](http://twitch.tv/kitsuneinferno/)
[[Concerto di Ali: The Battle of Solocima]](showthread.php?t=33896 "Arlong Park Forums - Thread 33896") - [[Spirit Wolf]](showthread.php?t=33362 "Arlong Park Forums - Thread 33362")
[[D.U.R.I.A.N.]](showthread.php?t=32416 "Arlong Park Forums - Thread 32416") - [[Short and Sweet Writing]](showthread.php?t=30536 "Arlong Park Forums - Thread 30536")
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@Kits:
! Ahahhaa. Asha IS the only non-miserable Ironborn, isn't she? The way she's described.. she's like my perfect woman. I love her original introduction through Theon's POV, too. Sooo good, hahah.
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Can somebody give me his opinion on "A feast for crows". I started it today and the first 50 pages were really slow. Furthermore I skipped through to see who gets POV and saw that
! a lot of the POV Characters are missing or are shortened and instead we get Cersei(ugh), The Iron Born(don’t like them either) and the Dorne People(don’t know a lot about).
When does it pick up and how interesting do the characters get and where would people rank this book in matter of importance and joy to read between the 5 books now available
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Can somebody give me his opinion on "A feast for crows". I started it today and the first 50 pages were really slow. Furthermore I skipped through to see who gets POV and saw that
! a lot of the POV Characters are missing or are shortened and instead we get Cersei(ugh), The Iron Born(don’t like them either) and the Dorne People(don’t know a lot about).
When does it pick up and how interesting do the characters get and where would people rank this book in matter of importance and joy to read between the 5 books now available
Hate to say it but it doesn't get too much better. The PoVs that are missing come back in book 5 but they are abscent, for the most part, in this one. Compared to your average fantasy book Feast is still a great read but it does drag and while not awful it's probably the worst of the series. Also give the Cersei chapters some time, her's and Jaimie's PoVs get to be the best part of the book.
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yea cersei was fine reading cause it seemed like she was slowly and slowly getting f'ed over and i'm all for that
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Feast of Crows (especially the ironborn chapters) were really hard for me to get through at times. As time went on I got more use to the POV's that were in the book, though. After reading a Damphair chapter I was ecstatic to see a Sansa chapter. And the last couple hundreds pages of the book are pretty satisfying. But yeah, the beginning of FoC especially is a struggle for most. All I can say is that you'll get use to it- and by lowering your threshold, Dance w/ Dragons will kick your ass.
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About halfway through Dance with Dragons. Soon I will be able to actually risk checking this thread again.
Soon…
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I'm still about 150 pages away from finishing. Why am I so slow?
Oh right.VICTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
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So Oona Chaplin is going to play Jane Westerling. You could've done better Rob.
!
Hannah Murry will play Gilly and she's a pretty good fit for the part. I wasn't a huge fan of her character in Skins but I like her all the same, she'll do a great job.
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Robert Pugh will be playing Craster and he seems to fit the part well.
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Nonso Anozie will be playing Xaro Xhoan. He was good in RocknRolla, can't wait to see him cry.
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Gwendoline Christie will be playing Brienne. Not one of my favorite PoVs but she certainly large enough for the role.
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I think all they're missing is Mance and they've got the important characters down.
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I think the problem with the Cersei chapters is that he just makes her too much of a caricature. Normally (as seen with Jaime's POV) placing the reader inside the head of a villain helps to round out and humanize the character, make their motivations understandable (if not fully relatable) and so on. I don't know if George was afraid of making the most hateable character in the series less of a lightning rod or what, but instead of humanizing her, she goes from being an evil arrogant brotherfucker to an evil arrogant clownishly stupid brotherfucker. Like, the whole time I was thinking…THIS is the cunning mastermind who was making life hell for all the likeable characters?
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@Stephen:
[hide]I get what you're saying, and it was kind of jarring, but I think why Cersei's thing was a swing-and-mess was because Martin probably knew she was like that but didn't want to give it away. Probably what I would've done. Plus, Cersei's position of power changed dramatically in the last two books, you know?[/hide] -
@Cuddles:
@Stephen:
[hide]I get what you're saying, and it was kind of jarring, but I think why Cersei's thing was a swing-and-mess was because Martin probably knew she was like that but didn't want to give it away. Probably what I would've done. Plus, Cersei's position of power changed dramatically in the last two books, you know?[/hide]! I agree with this.
! Part of the reason Cersei didn't seem to be making such hugely idiotic mistakes was because throughout the first novels she always had someone who knew she could only cause trouble on her own, and was working hard to check her at every step. Tywin and Tyrion and Kevan being around did wonders towards preventing her from doing whatever she liked. Plus, she really sort of lost it after Joffrey was killed. Her paranoia was put into high gear once she realized she wasn't as safe as she thought she was (not having Jaime at her side shook her badly). And the addition of the Tyrells to Court certainly did nothing to help this.
! I mean, just from looking at how Tyrion and her uncle spoke of her, and seeing all the evidence of her poor judgement in Joffrey, I knew that Cersei left to her own devices would only make the worst possible decisions at every available opportunity. But I think that all of us underestimated just how bad it would get.
! Now we know.
! It WAS hard to read, though. -
I just finished „A feast for crows“and read the note from Martin. Can somebody tell me what happened? How can it go from “I have written so much that I split the book in two and will publish it next year” to a waiting period of over six years?
My opinion on AFOC for anyone who is interested:
! At least 3/4 of this book felt unnecessary.
! Everything from Brienne could have been dropped without losing anything. The important bits of information could have been told easily from someone else.
Is she now dead or not?
! Everything from Dorne could have been told easily in half the space.
! Same goes for “Sansa” ,“Arya” and Sam’s POV
! Even though I don’t like the Ironborn I felt their POV was important for the later story.
! The character I liked the most is Jaime. Therefore all his POV were entertaining even though his could have been cut also in half easily.
! The POV I enjoyed the most was from Cersei. I really loved how she kept digging her own grave. I really hope she dies a really horrible death soon. I really thought the whole time that the woman who was with here the whole time was a double spy but it seems I was wrong or was I?
! Overall an OK read but if I had waited for the book after “A storm of swords” I would have raged. -
! The big reason for ADWD's delay was infamously known as the "Meereenese Knot", which deals largely with events in the city of Meereen, which is a little messy.
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So far on A Clash of Kings, as of p. 355, I find myself enjoying the Arya and Sansa chapters the most. Tyrion chapters after that I guess, though he is just kind of there. He's everybody's favorite character and he's hard to hate, but I don't know. He's kind of a character designed to be The Best Dude, where even his flaws just make him more likable. I'll feel less nitpicky about him when his chapters are doing things again, since it's just been a lot of behind the scenes buildup where the reader is left in the dark. I assume whatever is being built up will be great, but yeah. Tyrion can feel a bit manufactured sometimes for me.
I'm kind of hoping he gets back into being stuck in awful situations, since that was when he was at his best.
As for par of the last book, the character of Jon Snow is my least favorite PoV. Yes, I find Sansa more interesting than the snoregoat of blandness that is Jon Snow. They're both not exactly interesting, but Sansa's situation is and she herself has grown as a character to actually be likable, if not just as naive (but in a different way.)
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@ Holy: Yeah, Jon's chapters were pretty boring in ACoK, at least up until the end. They get pretty good around then, I'd say. As a whole, Clash was pretty bland, at least for me, up until the last 2 or 300 pages. The exceptions are Arya and Theon, and I'm pleasantly surprised to see another person who actually thinks Sansa's likable. But yeah, why too much buildup in the beginning, honestly.
![😕](https://forums.arlongpark.net/assets/plugins/nodebb-plugin-emoji/emoji/android/1f615.png?v=lldvs3gslt0 ":\")
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Just finished ASOS and holy shit, was that book awesome. Definitely the best one so far. I think I'm taking a break for now (I kinda need one after all the shit that went down and I don't want to wait 5 years without being able to read anything new). I'm gonna continue after Season 2 of the tv show. Speaking of which, this made me pretty excited (even though it's not anything special):
I still hope they're going to name it "Game of Thrones: A Clash of Kings".
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should have taken a break after CoK.. taking a break and coming back into it with FoC might be a little hard. FoC is by far the most tedious of all the books thusfar.. glad you're having fun with them, though!
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rofl it was just a matter of time.
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50% through SoS and Bran's chapters are probably the worst PoV currently because Jojen is the first time I'm really not buying a character in any way whatsoever. Still really great so far though, I prefer the first half of this over ACoK's first half, most definitely.
Sansa is still my favorite PoV, then Davos. Jon Snow is bearable. He usually wins the award for "get me the fuck out of this chapter" but he's finally involved in more interesting things.
I have so very little things to really comment on, since the fun factor of rushing to threads and going OH GOD GUYS ___ JUST HAPPENED HOLY SHIT wore off by the time I finished A Game of Thrones. I think I'll only really be interested in talking about the series again once I catch up with ADwD.
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FINALLY got through Dance with Dragons. I forced myself through the last 400 or so pages over the last three days. But man, I was just STUCK on pages 400-600 for like a month.
Beware the spoiler tags. I started by trying to be vague, but there's not getting around it. Im going to be blunt and talk actual spoilers here.
! Daenarys has always been my least favorite POV character, (She just bores me, in spite of interesting stuff and characters going on around her) and having fully half the book focus on her and the people around her… was rough. Especially since by the end of the book she's just... lost everything. All that scheming, all that marriage planning, the multiple suitors. They're all dead/traitors, the dragons are loose, and Dany isn't at the throne anymore, or holding power. I suppose mostly the problem I've always had is that her story is so seperate from all the other goings on. If she was just the star of her own seperate book series, I'd probably be a lot more interested. But here... she's always just sort of been the 1 character out of 8 that has nothing to do with the bigger story.
! Even now, five books later with people flocking to her and starting to worry about her, she's still isolated and not interacting with the rest of the cast... not even Tyrion who spent the entire book going to her. She's mentioned in whisper and rumor in the other plotlines... and that serves the purpose well enough. She's important, and might well be THE main character and queen by the end of this... but thus far she's just been isolated.
! -I didn't really care about "Reek", (sorry Theon). He's supposed to be sympathetic, I guess... but its just.... impossible to do. Breaking him and making him a crazy tortured man doesn't make him more sympathetic, just... harder to follow.
! -Jon's story was abysmally boring this time around... Jon has been one of my favorites in the past, but... it was all talk and negotiation this time around. Didn't help that his interesting supporting cast was dead or scattered to the wind (Like Sam), that he wasn't in the interesting role of double agent this time around, not in a pained love story, or that I knew where it was all leading.
! His "death" at the end is the big huge huge spoiler that was ruined for me right after the book came out that I was pissed about 2 months ago. I didn't know the hows or whys, so there was some surprise, but man... knowing that he was somehow going to die by the end really took the pressure out of reading his story, rather than augmenting it, made it all seem even more pointless. And even then... at the end... I'm not entirely sure he's dead. Stabbed four times, sure, but the scene cuts away before anything official. He might be alive and wounded next book, but i'm not convinced he's dead.
! -Davos, while interesting, just feels really unimportant in the grand scheme. The fact that he only had a couple chapters probably proves the point.
! -Stannis. Well, he's interesting. But that his plot largely boiled down to being caught in a snowstorm... kind of dissapointing. Hard to tell if he's actually dead or not.
! The first half of the book just... really lacked for characters I could follow.
! -Tyrion was fun, as usual, but his overall situations didn't do much for me, and almost entirely seemed to be set up for introducing other characters. He travelled, met up with the new opposing army, became a clown, and then joined up with a new band. Its a lot of book to do very little.
! Then in the second half suddenly we're getting Jaimie and Cersei and Arya again...
! -Arya only gets two chapters... which mostly seemed to be "Yeah, that cliffhanger ending from five years ago? Totally a non-thing. These two chapters could have easily been in the previous book. Nice to see, but those ~30 pages should have been in Feast for Crows, they really should have been.
! -Cersei is broken and looks to be taken care of. Good. Is that a zombie version of The Mountain she's got as one of the kingsguard now?
! -Jaimie is still interesting, but... he's only here for like, A chapter? What's the point really? Brienne is alive? Really? Well, I'm cool with that, she was one of my favorites and one of the storylines I liked best. Wonder what the single word she yelled while being hanged was and why she was spared? I guess book 6 is going to have her and Jaimie back together with her betraying him, so that should be interesting... But its a bastard move to kill the character, bring her back five years later for a sentence, and then not explain any of it.
! Overall it wasn't bad. It was well written... I just didn't care about most of the POV's. Also doesn't help that its been five years since I read the last book, so I'd forgotten a lot of the minor characters and lost all momentum... and for such a lengthy book... not a whole lot really happened. I also wasn't a huge fan of how many of the chapter titles had descriptions of the characters instead of their actual names... made it a lot harder to follow.
! Its easy to see why this section gave Martin years of trouble... and why he had originally planned to mostly just timeskip over the bulk of books 4 and 5. Not a whole lot actually happens, its mostly setup... but theres enough important bits and pieces if he'd just flat out skipped it there would be a TON of flashbacks and exposition and that would be a problem too. It may be 1500 pages of very little happening... but its still 1500 pages of it.Well, hopefully with all the pieces in place book 6 can get back on track, since his master plan should flow smoother now. Hopefully only 2 years till the next one?
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should have taken a break after CoK.. taking a break and coming back into it with FoC might be a little hard. FoC is by far the most tedious of all the books thusfar.. glad you're having fun with them, though!
Yeah, I heard it was pretty dull in comparison to the others. Maybe that's a good thing though. After everything that happens in ASOS it may have been even worse in comparison. This way I have some time to get excited about reading anything ASOIAF related again and it might make the book more interesting.
@RobbyBevard:
Well, hopefully with all the pieces in place book 6 can get back on track, since his master plan should flow smoother now. Hopefully only 2 years till the next one?
I wouldn't bet on any date before 2014. I read that he won't even start until next year.
Mild book/season 2 spoilers (nothing big, mostly just names):
! Ygritte has been cast now. Here's an overview over all the new Season 2 castings: http://tv.ign.com/articles/118/1189387p1.html
They are all so spot on, it's kinda scary (especially with Roose Bolton and Davos). Now the only important characters that haven't been cast yet are Meera, Jojen and Ramsay Snow. -
Damn, that Brienne is PERFECT. And Margaery is… damn hot. Ygritte is looking like an appropriate casting job, while I'm REALLLYY not sure about Asha or "Yara" and they've changed it. You'd think they would have changed Osha's instead of Asha's name, but oh well.
Oh, and I'm digging the Aerys and Gilly, too. Both are basically what I pictured while reading.
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I'm reading FoC, and so far it hasn't been too bad. Although knowing that alot of characters aren't in it, and knowing that most it takes place in places that seemingly that have too much to do with the story, going into it helped. If I didn't know what I was getting into before reading this, it may have been harder to read. Still though, the characters are so well written, that it makes even the mundane even a little exciting.
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You'd think they would have changed Osha's instead of Asha's name, but oh well.
Yeah it's not an ideal situation but my assumption is that in the generally insane process of putting together a show as complicated as this one, they just took things one at a time and it didn't even occur to them that the name similarity might be a problem until they started game-planning the second season, and when you've already got the one character set in stone and the other one hasn't been introduced yet, well, you basically have to alter the latter one, even if she is much more important storywise.
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Yeah it's not an ideal situation but my assumption is that in the generally insane process of putting together a show as complicated as this one, they just took things one at a time and it didn't even occur to them that the name similarity might be a problem until they started game-planning the second season, and when you've already got the one character set in stone and the other one hasn't been introduced yet, well, you basically have to alter the latter one, even if she is much more important storywise.
But if anyone would do any sort of a think-ahead-naming-convention type of move, it would be these guys. Nothing was guaranteed they'd even get a second season, so of course I can't blame them for doing what they had correct and doing as you said later.
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Her name being changed isn't really a big deal at all, imo.
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I'm not bothered with the name change at all. I didn't even notice that Robert got changed to Robin at first, so I probably wouldn't even notice this change if I didn't read it here first.
It's still kinda dumb that they even change names at all. Asha and Osha doesn't sound completely the same.
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I'm not bothered with the name change at all. I didn't even notice that Robert got changed to Robin at first, so I probably wouldn't even notice this change if I didn't read it here first.
It's still kinda dumb that they even change names at all. Asha and Osha doesn't sound completely the same.
Robert got changed to Robin? Robert Baratheon you are talking about?
Wow I never noticed, I thought they were saying Robert the whole time. Or who are you talking about?
And who cares about Osha, Asha. To me I would just consider as the way it was supposed to be pronounced. Like it looks like Asha, but should have an O sounding beginning.
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Robert got changed to Robin? Robert Baratheon you are talking about?
No he means Robert Aryyn. The little sick tits sucking boy who is the lord of the vale. His name was changed to Robin.
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It's still kinda dumb that they even change names at all. Asha and Osha doesn't sound completely the same.
You're already dealing with a cast of hundreds on a tv show. The books might have the space and leeway to do that but… The less potential confusion the better.
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No he means Robert Aryyn. The little sick tits sucking boy who is the lord of the vale. His name was changed to Robin.
Yeah, I meant him. They probably changed it to avoid confusion with Rob Baratheon, which I can understand.
@RobbyBevard:
You're already dealing with a cast of hundreds on a tv show. The books might have the space and leeway to do that but… The less potential confusion the better.
True, I guess. I suppose it really benefits the people who haven't previously read the books.
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This might potentially be dangerous, but so far I've only been spoiled of one thing in this thread and I didn't mind that revelation at all… so here goes.
I recently finished the first book of the series and will watch the final episode of the first season tonight. I have reserved the next book from the library and constantly keep checking my email to see if it has arrived already. I am obviously extremely hooked and can't wait to gobble up some more of this fantastic series~ It brings me joy to see that there are other fans here, since everyone else I know have never even heard about Martin's work. Then again I'm not one to blame them, since I'm a very fresh fan myself and only picked this up because of the fuss about the TV series. It was one of those "I have a feeling I'm seriously missing out on something if I don't check this out" moments. ^^
So yeah, looking forward to further reading!!
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Cool!
We're very careful about spoilers in here, don't worry - it's one of those series that a lot of fans have had in their hands for a long time, so be careful to avoid getting spoiled as you're going through the books.
Tell us what you think as you start to get through 'em!
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Always good to bring another fan in.~ It only gets better from here, LaCa, so enjoy the ride!
To add some substance, I picked up the first issue of the GoT comic book this weekend. It only goes up to Dany meeting Drogo, but it's nicely drawn. I can't wait for Arya and Sansa and Tyrion to all show up.
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I'm on a Feast for Crows and I am determined to enjoy it in spite of nobody else enjoying it. But I'm on the second chapter so I'm not in a huge position to understand yet. But I like it a lot so far.
! So far it's great because I think the ironborn are awesome and Aeron is already a significantly cooler fuck than even some Point of Views in ASoS, but since it sounds like Cersei is one of the most, if not the most, central figures in the book, it may take a quality leap.
! But it already has the strongest opener of any of the books to me. Also the book won't have any Bran, which is great. But he and a few of the other snoozey point of views will probably get equally boring counterparts in A Feast for Crows so we'll see. -
I really liked Feast of Crows myself, but then, I enjoyed most of the POVs, (Especially Jaimie, Brienne, and Arya, and I thought Cersei was fascinating in a "he's really going to do this from HER perspective?" sort of way) and it was completely Daenerys free.
Book 5 was the off-one for me being… largely Daenerys and Jon Snow.
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I didn't even realize most of those characters were in this. Arya, Jaime and Sansa were probably my favorite PoVs last book, so them being in this, alongside some of the characters I really like having PoVs (like Brienne and Aeron) make this a pretty promising book, aside from Cersei.
I too don't care much for Jon Snow, or Daenerys, though I did really enjoy some chapters from their PoVs last book. So I dunno. Jon Snow used to be the shittiest character for me and to be fair, his chapters only really got better circumstantially and thanks to a supporting cast. Bran has no such luck. May he burn in hell.
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Jon Snow is really a pretty boring character. It's the situation he's in that's interesting. Unfortunately, that means how interesting his chapters are is wholly dependant on what's going on around him.
Bran is pretty boring too… and he was also a main book 5 POV.
Yeah I dunno. Book 4 had all the characters I really liked (save Tyrion) and Book 5 has most of the ones I don't. Awkward split, that.
I don't even dislike Daenerys all that much, since EVENTUALLY she'll be crucial to the plot, and maybe even the winner at the end, but so far her POV is the 1 of 15 that has nothing to do with anything else.
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Really, I don't know where I stand on this, because ADWD has Reek, Asha, Bran, Davos, and Arya, but AFFC had Jaime, Arya, Brienne, and Sansa. I enjoyed ADWD more, but in the end AFFC isn't that bad.
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ADWD didn't have Arya. It had 30 pages to tie off the horrendous cliffhanger she got in the previous book 5 years earlier.
! And it actually really pissed me off, because the entire point of her first chapter was basically, nonchalantly going "Yeah, remember that horrible unexplained cliffhanger where she goes blind? Its not a big deal, its gone a few days later. Sorry to make you think for 5 years that was a huge permanent change for the character, really its nothing.
! Where her second chapter ended was a much more appropriate ending place.Her two chapters 100% should have been in the 4th book, there was NO reason to split her story where it did.
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That's true, but both AFFC and ADWD are basically using cheap soapopera cliffhangers over actual closure in the book, so that's true for everybody really.
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It wouldn't be so pronounced if it wasn't for the 5 year gaps, I suppose.
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I would feel better about the last two books if they completed more story arcs than they started. They feel incomplete because it it - especially AFFC.
I'm kinda where KI is at. Though those 5 year gaps do hurt something awful. I'm glad this Mereenese Knot business is done with so Martin can get onto writing a freer narrative.
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Its easy to see why Martin originally wanted to just timeskip past the events of books 4 and 5… and also easy to see why he really couldn't.
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Imagine if AGoT had AFfC/ADwD's cliffhangers.
! Catelyn watched in horror as the Greatjon drew his sword and pointed it at her son.
! –-
! And then Daenerys Targaryen walked into the fire. The wicked screams continued all night.
! TO BE CONTINUED~.... -
The worst cliffhangers are the ones where he is blatantly cheating. Where he's going
! "And when she awoke, she was blind."
"And she said one last word as she was hanged."
"And everyone betrayed him and stabbed him repeatedly…"
! basically the ones where he goes "they are DEAD now/irrevocably changed, that's their last POV ever."
! With Arya... her blindness was a complete non-thing and undone within 10 pages... Brienne is apparently still alive, but no idea what that one word is or WHY she's alive (I'm fine with that, I really liked Brienne)... and I'm confident Jon Snow isn't really dead either... mostly because there was no follow up POV with someone else reacting to it.
! Its one thing to have a hook for next time. Its another to do horrendous tease/cheat that's wrapped up into a much more satisfying conclusion with another 10 or 20 pages.Just really hope book 6 comes sooner than later, now that the 10 year knot is done with.
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This sounds vaguely familiar….
Plot threads remain unresolved and continually generate new ones
Increasing number of side characters that eventually have whole chapters devoted to them
Incredibly large gaps between booksGood lord, I've been caught in another Wheel of Time like series! Hope Mr Martin is making notes, he may not live to finish his series.
