Arriving In Westeros; or, I Just Started the Song of Ice And Fire Novels

[Odjn]

Originally Posted by Magus

I enjoyed the book but Martin's inability to have even a partial conclusion to things has chafed ever since the end of A Clash of Kings which while clearly a book in need of five more sequels has a clear climax. This book's climax appears to be set for the beginning of the next book ( the battle for Meereen with Daenarys leading Khal Jhoqo's Dothraki down on the Yunkai'i rear, with some Tyrion maneuvering to get the Second Sons on her side), which is kind of silly...Martin probably would have needed a mere 150 pages to bring this to a great conclusion, and if it couldn't be had by adding more to it due to length, vast swathes could have been cut from it. It is padded as hell (especially in regards to Theon. We get it Theon, Ramsay cut your dick off. We don't need to hear you talk about your state of affairs for entire chapters at a time).

THAT BEING SAID, I enjoyed it and it has certainly whet my appetite for the concluding volumes.

It's really that he does his best to not divulge any info about what we want to know about, i.e. Jon's parentage, the Others, the shit that happened at Summerhall, Mad Aerys' reign... even when other characters who know perfectly well what happened talk to other characters who want to know, like Jon asking Tormund about the wights or Barri offerring to tell Daeny all about her crazy ass dad, we get a shit excuse not to hear it. The most we learn out of this book is 1. Aegon isn't dead, 2. Some (but not a lot) about greenseers and the children, 3. Ashara's bastard by Neddie miscarried so it wasn't Jon, 4. Wylla was a ship captain's daughter who got Ned safely home from the Vale, 5. Giants are cool but they're going to die out just like unicorns and all the other cool stuff north of the Wall."

He seems to not have realized it's perfectly ok to answer some major question even partially if it's not the penultimate book or final book.

Oh well, maybe in five years.