Where are these awesome sand snakes in the books?

[JonCon's Red Beard]

It looks like, if GRRM had made Feast and Dance more "action filled" people would be complaining that the books were to rushed. I mean, that's the feel I get.

Thing is that, after the War of the Five Kings, we were meant to watch how those who are alive deal with the consequences. And not just those who we know, but new players (Doran and the Iron Islands, who are also part of the world Martin has created). But, having action in these book would mean

minor spoilers for twow below

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Jaime and Brienne met Stoneheart

Aegon and Jon take the Stormlands.

Arianne mets Aegon

Victarion arrives to Dany

Barristan starts the battle

Tyrion makes the Second Sons fight for Dany

..and guess what? That would have been left as a cliffhanger as well because then feast and dance would have needed to be twice as big to have some final resolution.

Feast and Dance meet the role of being just introductory. IMO, it was a better editorial decision to have two books just introducing characters and wait for the next one to have resolutions instead of have one long book dealing with new characters AND making them interact in rushed action situations only to leave, once more, another cliffhanger because there are still two more books to write. In Feast we're just seeing the characters buying axes, we're seeing them using them in WoW. Had Feast been different as many detractors wanted, then in Feast we would have see the characters buy the axes and using them... but then they would have stopped in the middle of the attack with the axe halted in the middle of the air.

[Lovely Lyanna]

It looks like, if GRRM had made Feast and Dance more "action filled" people would be complaining that the books were to rushed. I mean, that's the feel I get.

I have never felt that ASOIAF is what I would call action packed. I mean no one is racing around on some sort of ridiculous quest or taking part in senseless battles. I have always enjoyed the slower burn of the books.

Feast and Dance meet the role of being just introductory.

I just do not believe we need that many pages of introduction. I do understand what you are saying when you state that we needed a reset from the final events in ASOS, but I just feel that most of what is in these books was unnecessary. I certainly do not believe that everything was terrible in the last two books. Some of it does add to the story, but honestly a lot of it was just filler.

Since GRRM shared his original plans for the ending with D&D, I assume that they also viewed a lot of it as filler as well and went with the characters that they believe are part of the ending.

[Good Guy Garlan]

If GRRM had written the first three books like the last two:

"Ned screamed a word."

We would have to wait for aCoK to find out who won the Battle of the Camps and the Whispering Woods.

Jorah carries Dany to the tent when she's giving birth. The end.

ACoK ends with Tyrion marching out of the gates to fight Stannis. Wait till next time to see the Battle of Blackwater.

Qhorin says the wildlings are hunting them. Cut to black.

Jaqen agrees to help Arya with the Weasel Soup plan. Tune in next time to see how it turns out.

Robb and Cat enter the Twins for the wedding. To be continued.

The wildlings attack the Wall, Jon prepares to fight. Cut to black.

Tyrion is waiting for his trial by battle.

Jaime and Brienne are about to reach KL.

Tune in next time to see how Dany takes Meereen.

Etc, etc, etc, you get the gist.

The first books have cliffhangers as well, especially aCoK, my favorite in the series (Davos is left hanging, as is the thing with Cat and Jaime), but they also have a sense of resolution and closure, a sense that arcs are over and new arcs are starting and most importantly, that stuff happened.

A comparison: Sansa ends aCoK and aFfC in a similar manner, with her so-called protector telling her of a plan to get her home. But why does the Dontos thing work, and the LF is just infuriating? Because Sansa did stuff in aCoK. She had an entire book where stuff actually happened, so she had a clear, complete arc, and so the Dontos thing seems like her next arc. The LF cliffhanger cuts her story abruptly after three insipid chapters. It doesn't feel like she had a complete arc by then, it just feels interrupted.

That's my 2 cents, of course.

[Gogossos]

The first books have cliffhangers as well, especially aCoK, my favorite in the series (Davos is left hanging, as is the thing with Cat and Jaime), but they also have a sense of resolution and closure, a sense that arcs are over and new arcs are starting and most importantly, that stuff happened.

A comparison: Sansa ends aCoK and aFfC in a similar manner, with her so-called protector telling her of a plan to get her home. But why does the Dontos thing work, and the LF is just infuriating? Because Sansa did stuff in aCoK. She had an entire book where stuff actually happened, so she had a clear, complete arc, and so the Dontos thing seems like her next arc. The LF cliffhanger cuts her story abruptly after three insipid chapters. It doesn't feel like she had a complete arc by then, it just feels interrupted.

That's my 2 cents, of course.

Some of those were editorial decisions, you can make a book physically so big before it becomes impractical to publish and distribute it. If the next book were to be only in ebook format, then GRRM would finish it the way he wants. But we still have bookshops and libraries, so there's always going to be a limit to the page count.

I just do not believe we need that many pages of introduction. I do understand what you are saying when you state that we needed a reset from the final events in ASOS, but I just feel that most of what is in these books was unnecessary. I certainly do not believe that everything was terrible in the last two books. Some of it does add to the story, but honestly a lot of it was just filler.

In AFFC Brienne meets some sellsword who also happens to be looking for Sansa in order to collect Cersei's reward. In TWOW that sellsword appears but of course Sansa has no clue who he is. The reader probably will know, if either she/he has been paying attention or visited the westeros.org forums. Or else it might not matter to a reader who doesn't care about minute details, it would certainly count as filler. So these books can be read on two levels, by skimming through the surface and enjoying the plot for what it is and the show adaptation has taken this route. The other way is to dig deeper and read in between the lines, GRRM has placed many easter eggs for these types of readers: Frey pies, or where Rickon is (Skagos), Jaqen in Oldtown, etc. Some of it are mysteries meant to be unveiled someday, hopefully, like R+L=J or the Grand Northern Conspiracy (if true) or the Blackfyre comeback. Even deeper still you can find more interesting things if you're so inclined, like those Heresy and Sansa's Pawn to Player threads and various other prophecy, themes, foreshadowing and reread discussions that take place here year after year. For those people certainly nothing is filler.

I like Daniel Abraham, he's another fantasy author who hangs out with GRRM and I really like his current series The Dagger and The Coin. The guy is prolific, he started and finished a previous series (The Long Price Quartet) in the four years before Dagger and Coin. Concurrently with both series he also wrote a lovely novella series of urban fantasy called The Black Sun's Daughter. He's also co-writing the Expanse series. Except the Expanse books, I've read all of them. His books arrive with reassuring regularity. They are well written, stuff happens and they conclude. I am thankful for his existence and talent. And yet, I don't spend time on the interwebs discussing his books. And that's ok. GRRM caters for that aspect of nerdy-dom for me, he's good at it. And I get defensive when people dismiss his works.

[Good Guy Garlan]

Some of those were editorial decisions, you can make a book physically so big before it becomes impractical to publish and distribute it. If the next book were to be only in ebook format, then GRRM would finish it the way he wants. But we still have bookshops and libraries, so there's always going to be a limit to the page count.

That's why writers need editors to step up and say, "You wrote so much fluff for Brienne that you don't have room for the ending of her arc", for example, but GRRM's editors seem like a bunch of yes men who okayed every weird tangent and extraneous details.

[Gogossos]

His editors shipped Sansa to the next book; Arianne, Theon and Arya all had chapters at the ready. The Winterfell and Meereen battles were supposed to be the climax of ADWD. But they were all cut. That's what his editors did. You just don't agree with what they did. I have just explained why what you call "weird tangents" and "extraneous details" is actually quite useful to a chunk of the fandom. You just happen not to be part of it. It would help if you acknowledged that.

[Good Guy Garlan]

His editors shipped Sansa to the next book; Arianne, Theon and Arya all had chapters at the ready. The Winterfell and Meereen battles were supposed to be the climax of ADWD. But they were all cut. That's what his editors did. You just don't agree with what they did. I have just explained why what you call "weird tangents" and "extraneous details" is actually quite useful to a chunk of the fandom. You just happen not to be part of it. It would help if you acknowledged that.

Right, I'm going to include a random part in a chapter with, I don't know, different types of crabs just so some nerds on the internet can have a field day debating the symbolism of the crabs?

Gimme a break, that's not a good enough reason to beat around the bushes. People will talk if it's a good story, period.

And of course the editors told him that he had no room for Alayne or Arianne or whatever in aDwD, because he wrote dozens of chapters for Dany and Tyrion that could've been trimmed by half. Instead of saying, "Oh, well, we're gonna have to send Sansa to WoW in about ten years", the editors should've said, "Cut this Dany chapter so we can have room to squeeze Sansa in there."

[Gogossos]

Right, I'm going to include a random part in a chapter with, I don't know, different types of crabs just so some nerds on the internet can have a field day debating the symbolism of the crabs?

You do know that GRRM attends sci fi and fantasy and comic cons, and he has done so since the 70s? He's a nerd dude. And he knows his crowd. Just because comic book and fantasy based movies and tv shows have become mainstream doesn't mean those nerds have stopped existing.

[Good Guy Garlan]

You do know that GRRM attends sci fi and fantasy and comic cons, and he has done so since the 70s? He's a nerd dude. And he knows his crowd. Just because comic book and fantasy based movies and tv shows have become mainstream doesn't mean those nerds have stopped existing.

What are we even discussing anymore? I'm a huge nerd myself, but my point is that I don't think an author should go into weird tangents just to give the readers something to talk about in online forums. That makes zero sense. Of course there will always be fans who fixate on, I don't know, the Crabb family tree and how it'll will affect the story but that's not a good enough reason to write so much fluff. As a fan, I'd take a solid, well-structure story over the sizes of turtles in the Rhoyne any day.

[Gogossos]

But you don't represent all nerds do you? Some nerds on this very board like those weird tangents. The Heresy thread alone goes through an edition each week.

That's exactly my point: GRRM has been writing fantasy short and long form stories since the 60s, some 50 years ago. I repeat, 50 years. And somehow he still doesn't know what he's doing? Or maybe he's not familiar with his fandom? He's admitted he doesn't go into online forums (I bet it would screw with his writing) but he knows what his fans like. Just this week he's admitted that ASOIAF is "lengthy (extremely) and complex (exceedingly) novels, with their layers of plots and subplots, their twists and contradictions and unreliable narrators, viewpoint shifts and ambiguities, and a cast of characters in the hundreds." His words. Now if you don't like his output, given his experience, don't you think he's in a better position to judge his own stories?

You claim his editors didn't do a good job. But do you know the conversations he might have had with them? The justifications for his choices? Do you know how he defended those chapters you insist should've been nixed. If you didn't enjoy AFFC by all means but your opinion is not a fact, and it's simply insulting to editors that they didn't do their jobs (same editor, by the way, who went ballistic on Twitter recently regarding the changes the show has made).

[ummester]

He tried to include the five year gap for over a year but it didn't work for multiple reasons. If you want to know more about that, use google.

The geographical divide is exactly the difference between AFfC and ADwD... But ADwD goes past where AFfC ends, obviously. This is why arguing with you is so futile - you don't actually know anything about GRRM's writing process and you're insisting that you do, whereas myself and others here have spent years following his progress and reading his interviews. Cersei has chapters in AFfC and ADwD because ADwD passes the point of Cersei's arrest. Sansa does not have chapters in ADwD because the chapter GRRM wrote for her was better suited at the beginning of the next novel, so he pushed it back. Does that make more sense now?

I won't address the bullshit about GRRM not caring about his characters, because again it just shows your ignorance. Of course GRRM doesn't know all the locations in his world - he only knows the ones that are relevant to the story. That is not a sign of his lack of interest - it's a sign of just how much work goes into these huge novels. As for TWOIAF - you do realise that GRRM didn't really write most of it, right? Mostly everything in there is from his notes, yes, but Elio and Linda (the site's admins) condensed it and worked it into the right format, basically. The problem is that he wrote too much for TWOIAF and it had to be seriously condensed - that, again, is not a sign of someone who isn't interested in the story.

I don't really care if you don't think seasons 1-4 need changing - that wasn't my point. What I was saying was that they had years to prepare for the dissonance between ASoS and AFfC/ADwD, and that should have made them consider bridging the two together more effectively.

Again, you don't really know what you're talking about when it comes to cutting characters. All the characters I listed were technically only important to the first part of the series - the War of Five Kings. If Arianne and Young Griff can be cut, then so can they. The fact that you've argued why those other characters were necessary shows that you should probably wait and see where GRRM takes Arianne et. al. before dismissing them as unnecessary.

And it's certainly moronic to think GRRM should just forget about his magnum opus to focus on a television show. The quality of the show has already diminished, and there's no way it could possibly live up to the standards of the books - they've cut too many characters that are essential to the story he wants to tell. Now you can argue about how great the show is all you want - I really, really don't care. What matters is what GRRM thinks of his own story, and I think it should be obvious to anyone that he would prefer to write the story the way HE wants to write it, rather than scrap it in an attempt to salvage the TV show. Not to mention that D&D obviously want to be as involved in the show's endgame as possible, considering that it's going to be the defining moment in their (otherwise poor) careers.

You do realize that you post admits 'GRRM waffles'. He wrote too much here, he didn't know how to tidy up there - it basically means he is an undisciplined writer and world builder, who can't plan or organise his thoughts.

I never said he didn't care about his characters or story, so I don't know why you assume some ignorance on my part there. I said he obviously doesn't care about his world as much as his characters.

I can dismiss characters that have been cut from the show as unnecessary - because, whether you accept it or not, the show is heading to an ending that GRRM had planned at at least one stage, so any cut characters are likely not part of that ending. If GRRM wants to tell his story the way HE wants to tell it, he shouldn't have sold it - simple.

How do you know what characters are essential to the story he wants to tell, if he has either lost sight of the story he is trying to tell, or is organically gardening his story? You can't, so don't pretend you can. Either GRRM doesn't know what he is doing, or he is making it up as he goes along, in either case, you can't possibly suppose you know what is important or where it is going without you being deluded enough to think your interpretation is somehow more correct than anyone else.

[Good Guy Garlan]

But you don't represent all nerds do you? Some nerds on this very board like those weird tangents. The Heresy thread alone goes through an edition each week.

That's exactly my point: GRRM has been writing fantasy short and long form stories since the 60s, some 50 years ago. I repeat, 50 years. And somehow he still doesn't know what he's doing? Or maybe he's not familiar with his fandom? He's admitted he doesn't go into online forums (I bet it would screw with his writing) but he knows what his fans like. Just this week he's admitted that ASOIAF is "lengthy (extremely) and complex (exceedingly) novels, with their layers of plots and subplots, their twists and contradictions and unreliable narrators, viewpoint shifts and ambiguities, and a cast of characters in the hundreds." His words. Now if you don't like his output, given his experience, don't you think he's in a better position to judge his own stories?

You claim his editors didn't do a good job. But do you know the conversations he might have had with them? The justifications for his choices? Do you know how he defended those chapters you insist should've been nixed. If you didn't enjoy AFFC by all means but your opinion is not a fact, and it's simply insulting to editors that they didn't do their jobs (same editor, by the way, who went ballistic on Twitter recently regarding the changes the show has made).

I'm not insulting the editors or anything like that. All I'm saying is that when I look at Feast and Dance I see two books without an ending, I see plots that go nowhere (like Brienne and the Whispers), I see the same Dany chapter with the same beats told about eight times, I see endless travelogues, etc. I don't care about whatever discussions GRRM might've had with his editors, all I care about is the final product, and that, in my humble opinion, is lacking.

Also, what should be the basis of a good story is the plot and the characters. Everything else, the world-building, the endless details, all of that stuff that people overanalyze online for hours on end, all of that should be secondary.

[Gogossos]

Those endings are cliffhangers, they are not endings in and of themselves. They are supposed to feel like they stopped midway through two story beats. The only frustrating thing is that these particular cliffhangers require a 4 year (so far) wait. Otherwise there's nothing wrong with cliffhangers per se.

[Good Guy Garlan]

Those endings are cliffhangers, they are not endings in and of themselves. They are supposed to feel like they stopped midway through two story beats. The only frustrating thing is that these particular cliffhangers require a 4 year (so far) wait. Otherwise there's nothing wrong with cliffhangers per se.

There's nothing wrong with *some* cliffhangers, like in the first books. But in aFfC/aDwD every single storyline ends up in a cliffhanger, and they're not even elegant, decent cliffhangers. They're abrupt, clumsy "oopsies, I ran out of pages, tune in next time."

If I wanted to read the story in bits and pieces I'd travel back in time and catch some serialized Capote in the New Yorker or something, but silly me, I thought splitting the novels was so that we could get *ALL* the story for half of the characters. GRRM said so himself, and yet, here we are, two humongous tomes later and we only have half the story for all the characters.

[ummester]

I don't think cliff-hangers are inherently bad, or multiple cliff-hangers - they just feel bad when a plot goes from tight, to lose, to cliff-hanger.

It's the biggest differences between seasons 1-4 (books 1-3) and season 5 (books 4 & 5) - the plot changed from extremely organised, full and tight to lose, disconnected and meandering. It's not pace, it's not characters, it's not cliff-hangers - it's a lack of cohesive plot (lack of characters interacting with each other and their world to form an overall structured and pressing narrative).

The dense connectedness of books 1-3 and seasons 1-4 were what rose it above the pack, made the books more than other fantasy epics and the show more than something like Spartacus - without it, it's the same as everything else. And, as I mentioned, a 1 book breather after the war of the 5 kings was fine - but 2 books of meandering was too much.