August 28, 2011
A Dance With Dragons
This review will contain no spoilers.
The simplest review for this book would be: This is book five of a seven-part series. (At least, this year it's still only seven. But the smart money is not on restraint when it comes to Mr. Martin.) If you've read the first four, you are a junkie, and you will read -- you need to read -- number five, no matter what critics think about it. So, go, read it. It satisfies all the requirements of a junkie: it gives a quick fix and leaves you needing more yet again.
I would never have started this series if I knew it wasn't finished yet. My friend Jack tricked me into it with a birthday present, and only at book three did I realize that I was reading only the first half of a continually-expanding series: the liner notes in book one strongly implied that it was a trilogy.
Even if you haven't read any of the books, it won't spoil anything to say that the first three are a consistent series, with small climaxes and a gradually increasing intensity. Each book resolves a few mysteries and tensions, and then leaves you with a new cliffhanger, or usually, a set of cliffhangers. The stories are told from various points of view, known as "POV" to fans, with each chapter rotating through the cast of characters. A chapter from Lord Stark's point of view will be titled simply "Eddard", and might be followed by one called "Tyrion". In this way, several interleaving stories can be told while still leaving room for surprises and twists that would be less immersive with an omniscent narrator.
Book four, however, took a left turn into new territory. It's as if he got tired of writing about all the same people, introduced a lot of new characters, and wrote about them instead. Entire new lands are described, along with its people, culture, and (of course) intrigue. In the meantime, other beloved characters were mentioned only briefly or not at all. Apparently Mr. Martin got so excited by these new developments that he couldn't actually fit all the stories he wanted to tell into one book, so he shipped half of it as book four, and left the other half for book five.
Now, nearly a decade later, we have the second half.
It's hard to fairly judge a book or album that you've been anticipating for months or years, because the anticipation covers a lot more time than the media itself. But I really enjoyed reading this book, even so. You can tell because I finished it in a little over a month, which (at 1100 pages) means I was reading an average of 25 pages a day. That's an incredible rate for a slow reader. The settings are vivid, the stories are engaging, and of course a lot of terrible things happen. If you still believe this series will fit into seven books, then this one at least moves several of the chess pieces toward a goal.
The POV chapter titles are now occasionally a source of deceit, so you can't tell who's in the book based on the table of contents anymore. A chapter might be called "The man with the funny hat", which leaves you guessing about who you're reading about for the first page or two. Sometimes the chapter ends up being about a character I suspected the author had forgotten about, so it ends up feeling like he's toying with the reader.
Even at 1100 pages, though, Mr. Martin can no longer fit an interesting slice of every character he wants to write for. One of my favorite characters doesn't even show up until two thirds of the way through, and squeezes in maybe 50 pages of narrative. It's just not possible to tell an interesting story involving over a dozen POVs; he's fallen in love with so many of the characters that they fight each other for page space. Another character that I was excited about seems to spend most of the book on the equivalent of a long train ride, describing what he sees looking out the window. And yes, there are several new POV added to the mix, too. The only hope for relief here is the author's notorious delight in killing off characters. Here's hoping the herd is thinned out enough to make the next book a bit more managable.