A Dance with Dragons: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Five [Import] [ハードカバー]

So, to lighten the blow a little first, I will make it clear that I am a GRRM fan and a fan of the Song of Ice and Fire series. Like many others, I think the first three books were some of the best fantasy books ever written. They held my interest like few others, took directions many other writers would not dare to take and had me itching to read the next. I'm a fan who checked on the status of this book at least a couple dozen times through each year to see how the progress was coming and I'm a fan who also believes in a writer taking the time he or she needs to do it properly.

That said, Feast for Crows and now, Dance with Dragons (and I really hate to say this) bored me, and honestly, while I wouldn't mind reading how the story ends I really don't care that much if the series is finished or not at this point. I may just be a lowly customer, reader, and fan so what would I know about editing, story-building, etc., and GRRM may be the professional writer and it went through professional editors but for all the good narrative style and use of language and description, it seems they made a cardinal writing sin:

Not keeping the story moving.

I believe at this point in a book series' life, the story needs to be picking up faster and faster. You need downtimes of course, and a little exposition in each book to get everyone up to speed again is a good thing...but not through the majority of the book.

I really feel that Feast for Crows and Dance with Dragons are books that shouldn't have been written. I understand that the author originally planned a time skip by five years after Storm of Swords and honestly, I felt that would have been better. Between the two books, I just felt very little moved forward in terms of the actual story.

Of course, there will be many and probably the majority disagreeing with me and that is their full right to do so. We're all entitled to our opinions. If you loved Feast for Crows and Dance with Dragons or just love to soak up everything you can from the story's world, then that's awesome. I wish I could have enjoyed them as much as you. I really do.

But I didn't.

In "A Dance with Dragons," George R.R. Martin seems to have ripped out a page from his own self-written guide to writing a good story, and replaced it with a page from Robert Jordan's version - and in both cases, the change was very much for the worse.

The page he borrowed could charitably be called "Setup," or "Preparation," or even given some grandiose description about the "careful movement and positioning of critical pieces on a game board." In practical terms, though, it comes down to "Delay," "Pointless Stalling," and would be more accurately summed up as "an entire book about multiple characters wandering slowly across the world to approach - but never reach - a place in which something interesting has the potential to happen." For example, everyone's favourite dwarf has a simple goal: he wants to throw in his lot with the dragon queen, offering her whatever advice and wisdom he can. A noble goal, that, and one that would do a great deal to move the story along - his cynicism would open her eyes about some pretty important things. But does he make it to her? Not in this book! No, he's far too busy being packed into barrels like Bilbo the hobbit, swapping tales with cheese lords, being lost, found, sold, and bought, falling in with slaves and signing paper for sellswords, and even being saddled with a plucky lady-dwarf sidekick who continually tells him that he should stop causing trouble and just focus on making the big people laugh, because that's what dwarves are for. In Westeros during the previous four books, he was known and feared as Tyrion of House Lannister, Halfman to the wild mountain tribes, former Hand of the King, unsung hero of Blackwater Bay, the Imp, kinslayer and Kingslayer both; in Essos during this book, all he really manages to do is play a lot of Stratego, reminisce about a previously-unmentioned happy boyhood of gymnastics training in the art of dwarfish capering, and fall convincingly off a trained pig.

The same song is sung throughout the book: nobody actually *gets* anywhere. In Meereen, Daenerys mopes, sighs, tosses her braids, and moons over a pretty boy. On the Wall, Jon Snow hems, haws, asks everyone within earshot for advice on what to do, then completely ignores all of the advice to do something entirely different while complaining about how nobody supports him. Stannis grits his teeth, Melisandre misinterprets prophecies, Dolorous Edd makes comments about mules. A new character is introduced who represents either the most vibrantly crimson scarlet of red herrings, or George R.R. Martin on waterskis leaping majestically over a great white shark; the jury's still out on the kid, but it *is* safe to say that he spends half the book marching determinedly in one direction before abruptly turning around and charging off on completely the opposite course.

And then, there's the issue of the page missing from this book, the page that had elevated the first three books so high above the likes of Goodkind or Jordan. It's the page called "Caprice," or "Injustice," or maybe "Nobody is Safe." It's the page on which he knowingly and thoroughly subverted the standard fantasy tropes of good triumphing over evil, of all death being either deserved (if the deceased was a bad guy, like for instance an orc) or deeply meaningful (a sacrifice, like Boromir dying to protect the hobbits). The previous books used that page, and used it well. No character was sacred: anyone could die at any time, for any reason - or for no reason at all - because the world was a cruel and merciless and fickle place, and justice and honor and fair treatment were exceptions rather than rules.

In "A Dance with Dragons," though - and in "A Feast for Crows," to an extent - that page is notably absent. The Onion Knight, by this point, has gone through more lives than the average cat; while I have great fondness for the character, I almost wish Martin *would* kill him off just so the poor soul could rest. Whenever Arya gets a knife pressed against her throat, it turns out to be a well-meaning rescuer offering her a haircut. Mance dies then reappears good as new, Catelyn died and reappeared (somewhat the worse for wear, in her case), ghosts from the past pop up alive and well and living in the Westerosi equivalent of Paris. At this point, I'm more than half-expecting Khal Drogo to ride up on a skeletal horse and say "Hey Dany babe, I busted out of the nightlands, let's cross the poison water before my afterlife parole officer finds out I'm here." A Song of Ice and Fire has gone from "Nobody is Safe" to "Every Main Character is Totally Safe at this Point," and the suspense is just *gone*.

So, after all that, do I regret reading "A Dance with Dragons"? No. The sad truth is, even a mediocre George R.R. Martin book is better than most of the other offerings in the genre. My thoughtful boyfriend bought it for me on iBooks the very hour it was released, and I'm sincerely grateful that he did, and I'll buy and enjoy the next one just as promptly.

But even though this book was good enough, it can't help but suffer by comparison to the others. On its own merits, I rated "A Dance with Dragons" 3/5 stars; compared to the magnificence of the first three, though, it's more like a 1.5/5.

Warning, there are spoilers below.

I really wanted to enjoy dance, bad. As upset as i was with the 5 year wait to get the second half of a mediocre book...i was really willing to give it a chance. I bought it the second it came out, brought my kindle with me everywhere so i could read it in my down time - paid close attention and picked up on little subtle things others might have missed - all this, and i was still disappointed. (not in the Kindle tho, this thing is awesome, and no I'm not getting paid to say this. It's perfect for someone who travels a lot for work).

It really boils down to this - it doesn't feel like Martin enjoys writing about this world anymore. His behavior reinforces this feeling, too. It's like he's just bored of this world and has lost that energetic spark to create.

Reading the first three books, it was like a man excited about the world he was building, excited about the stories, the characters, excited about what he was going to DO with them and he wanted to get there as smoothly and quickly as possible. Remember when Catelyn left for King's Landing in one chapter, and then arrived there next chapter? It's because the journey was unimportant - that stuff was filler - what happened to her IN King's Landing was important.

Reading the last two, it was like he wasn't really sure what to do anymore, he couldn't figure out where he was going, he just had to fill up the pages with something, and he kept thinking back and forth on what to write. adding, deleting, adding, deleting - this is a worrisome sign when indecision, apathy, and indifference about a tale begin to rear their ugly head.

It's this energetic drive when you have a story you want to tell. But I didn't get that here from Martin, which is disappointing, because the man has genuine talent. He just doesn't seem to be inspired enough to use it. I never got the impression of a clear vision. I didn't get a sense of his excitement for these characters. It shows up in a lot of ways - the tired cliches, the empty characterizations of the main viewpoints - it feels like Dance was a homework assignment to him, a very unwelcome homework assignment. "This one was a three bitches and a bastard", indeed it was, and that feeling comes across in his writing style.

I really just feel he's bored and out of ideas. He's tired of Westeros, he isn't sure what to do anymore, and he's just stringing things along with random WTF moments thrown in to try and maintain our interest and fake excitement. It's similar to sudden loud sounds or 'GOTCHA' moments in bad scary movies; using cheap tricks to try and evoke a sense of fear when the plot itself can't.

There are only a few moments where I get a sense of the old Martin. Reading Theon's chapters were interesting. Theon actually had an arc, an evolution, and you got the sense that George enjoyed telling this story. Too bad he had to ruin it with yet another cliffhanger ending. In fact, this was one of the few true cliffhangers in the book, in my opinion. The other 'cliffhangers' were never set up properly and are more like 'dangling threads' that came out of nowhere.

We have Jon getting the Caesar treatment, Stannis marching on Winterfell, Theon and Jeyne escaping, Aegon landing in Westeros, the situation on the Wall, the Pink Letter... Too much buildup here with too little payoff!

And then one of the big cliffhanger moments from the first book - Brienne - gets barely a mention in this! We are left to deduce what she most likely said and her agreement to lead Jaime to UnCat in return for her life - yet another plotline that goes nowhere. At the end of the book, effectively, nothing big or major has happened that we can see the result of. Dany is basically back where she started, realizing she should have gone to Westeros. The entire sideshow in Meereen has effectively accomplished nothing. A lot of interesting things happen to the characters that are ultimately irrelevant. The Others are still persona non grata, mentioned only in shadows. Dragons still haven't returned. Stannis hasn't really conquered anything meaningful. Tommen is still king. Dorne is still 'progressing'. The Ironborn are still the same. Not enough major action has happened. I can accept one book of mostly filler, but two? A Dance with Dragons feels like it was written to meet a word count! What's next, he goes through and increases the font size on all the periods to add some more volume? He might as well, it'd be just as entertaining.

The problem is, Martin could have easily given us at least one big climax in this book. You could have given us a Meereen showdown with results, you could have given us Jon's "death" and obvious rebirth as Azhor Az'hai or whatever, you could have given us the Others finally attacking in force, you could have given us Victarion or Tyrion meeting Dany, you could have given us the battle of Winterfell and the results - there are so many things he could have done that we don't get to see. He could have given us the first use of Dragons in war, and that would have fit right in the with the title. I don't mind cliffhangers, but really we should have gotten SOMETHING resolved in this book so it doesn't feel like a giant tease.

The few redeeming moments for me - Selmy, Wyman's awesomeness ("So young" said Wyman Manderly. "Though mayhaps this was a blessing. Had he lived, he would have grown up to be a Frey."), "Would you like Freys with that", Theon - simply don't add enough to justify book for me.

If you enjoy reading detailed prose, and seeing a world being built by a very skilled author, you might enjoy this. If you're a huge fan of everything remotely to do with the world Martin has skillfully created, then you will find a lot here to fill in the blanks. Unfortunately, most of those blanks were blank for a reason - we just didn't care. I still don't.

If you're a fan of an engaging, interesting plot - the sort of plot that we saw in the first three books - I'd give it a pass.

PS: Martin may denounce us here at Amazon as trolls and sockpuppets, but I think that makes a mockery of the good rating system that has made Amazon so useful for people like me in the past. Mr. Martin, if you read this, please make note of the 'verified purchaser' next to this review. I'm a real person, with a real opinion.