Help Me Out with Feast

[Good Guy Garlan]

12 hours ago, StarkofWinterfell said:

I liken the people who like the previous 3 books over AFFC to be those that would rather watch a Michael Bay Transformers film over something more meaningful and deep.

AFFC is by far the best book in the series and really shows GRRMs mastery of English and places him at the upper echelons of literary geniuses.

That's cute. I liken the people who like AFFC over the previous 3 books to those who like those Terrence Malick films that pretend they're so deep and have so much to say about the human condition but in reality they're pretty much devoid of meaning and are just style over substance. 

No, hold on, that's not right. At least those movies by Terrence Malick usually have really pretty cinematography whereas the writing in AFFC is anything but. 

That bloated mess of a book doesn't even deserve to be called a book, because last time I checked books tend to have a little something called an ending. AFFC really is, at best, a case study of an author who lost all control over his story and all motivation to finish it and an editor who enables this outstanding display of self-indulgence. At worst, it is a blatant cash grab chock-full of filler to inflate the page count, designed to trick fanboys into thinking its total plot stagnation and terrible new characters somehow equate to a deeper literary experience, as if a meandering plot and incomplete storylines are the trademark of great literature. 

Really, the one saving grace of this collection of literary B-sides hastily cobbled together into something distantly resembling a story in order to make a profit, are Jaime's chapters, which do feature a great deal of well-done character development, even though they lack, as do most if not all of the storylines here, a sense of resolution. 

(I also liked Dog, I guess).

 

[Renly's Banana]

13 hours ago, StarkofWinterfell said:

I liken the people who like the previous 3 books over AFFC to be those that would rather watch a Michael Bay Transformers film over something more meaningful and deep.

AFFC is by far the best book in the series and really shows GRRMs mastery of English and places him at the upper echelons of literary geniuses.

16 minutes ago, Good Guy Garlan said:

That's cute. I liken the people who like AFFC over the previous 3 books to those who like those Terrence Malick films that pretend they're so deep and have so much to say about the human condition but in reality they're pretty much devoid of meaning and are just style over substance. 

That bloated mess of a book doesn't even deserve to be called a book, because last time I checked books tend to have a little something called an ending. AFFC really is, at best, a case study of an author who lost all control over his story and all motivation to finish it and an editor who enables this outstanding display of self-indulgence. At worst, it is a blatant cash grab chock-full of filler to inflate the page count, designed to trick fanboys into thinking its total plot stagnation and terrible new characters somehow equate to a deeper literary experience, as if a meandering plot and incomplete storylines are the trademark of great literature. 

 

Both sides of this argument are extremely unfair. Comparing the first three books to "a Michael Bay movie" -- by which I assume you mean brainless and action-packed(?) -- is so flagrantly wrong I got a headache reading that sentence. Some of the absolute deepest and most memorable moments in the entirety of this series take place in those first three books. Nobody's gonna compare Lord Commander Snow counting onions and checking his food storage to Tyrion's trial. Or Victarion spending an entire book complaining about his brother and monkey shit to the Red Wedding. Absolutely nobody, I assure you. A lack of "brainless action" does not equal depth or intelligence. 

That being said, Feast is nowhere near as bad you make it out to be, and it's far from filler. Bloated, yes; it definitely could have benefited from harder editing, but not filler or a "case study of an author losing control." GRRM is still very much in charge of his narrative, and at no point in this book do we get a hint that he has. Just because something is slow and takes its time setting up future plot lines and characters does not mean it's bad. Feast is, essentially, the beginning of the second arc in this story (GoT, CoK, SoS -- Feast/Dance, WoW, DoS).  You just have to wait and see if it pays off in the end.

Honestly I think his biggest mistake was separating a lot of the main characters into two different books. There was no real reason to do that, and only served to annoy people and slow down the narrative. If the fourth book had been made with that Feast for Dancing Dragons custom reading order somebody posted earlier, it would be a shit ton more palatable to everyone. 

[Good Guy Garlan]

47 minutes ago, Renly's Banana said:

That being said, Feast is nowhere near as bad you make it out to be, and it's far from filler. Bloated, yes; it definitely could have benefited from harder editing, but not filler or a "case study of an author losing control." GRRM is still very much in charge of his narrative, and at no point in this book do we get a hint that he has. Just because something is slow and takes its time setting up future plot lines and characters does not mean it's bad. Feast is, essentially, the beginning of the second arc in this story (GoT, CoK, SoS -- Feast/Dance, WoW, DoS).  You just have to wait and see if it pays off in the end.

Well, I respectfully disagree. I honestly think most of Feast is filler in the sense that the novel ends right when most storylines are about to take off. Like, we know Sam's storyline really lies at Oldtown, not at some random Summer Islands ship. So why did it take us an entire book to get there? That's particularly jarring when you remember it took Cat an offpage chapter to get from Winterfell to KL back in AGOT. You could cut all 3 of Sansa's chapters from Feast and literally nothing of value would be lost. You could start with her Winds chapter, which is clearly where her storyline's at, and you'd hit the ground running. Same with Jaime, same with Brienne. I mean, jesus, we know the true important part of Brienne's plot lies with Stoneheart, not with Nimble Dick. That detour to the Whispers has got to be the most clumsy and obvious filler since Naruto. A lot of Feast was just GRRM stalling and spinning his wheels because he still couldn't get all his characters where he wanted them too, so instead of like trying to advance the plot, he entertained himself with the ASOIAF equivalent of side quests. I suppose writing from the POV of Damphair or whatever was fun for him and helped him take his mind off the Meereenese Knot for a while, but it wasn't fun for me. Feast is, at its core, a book of avoidance: is GRRM avoiding the difficulties of the main plot and focusing instead on a handful of half-baked characters. It was a way for him to stall and buy himself a few more years to continue the story. If that's not losing control of your story, I don't know what is. 

1 hour ago, Renly's Banana said:

Honestly I think his biggest mistake was separating a lot of the main characters into two different books. There was no real reason to do that, and only served to annoy people and slow down the narrative. If the fourth book had been made with that Feast for Dancing Dragons custom reading order somebody posted earlier, it would be a shit ton more palatable to everyone. 

I do agree with this, though. It's super funny to me to read GRRM's reasoning for splitting up the characters because he wanted to tell the complete story of half the characters instead of half the story for all the characters. 

Well, George, pray tell, which character's storyline is complete in Feast? Jaime ends on a cliffhanger, Brienne ends on a cliffhanger, Arya ends on a cliffhanger, Cersei ends on a cliffhanger, Sam ends on a cliffhanger, Sansa ends on a cliffhanger. The way Feast ends is just incredibly arbitrary, like GRRM said "Done, I think we have enough pages now, print this."

[Traverys]

It's the Brienne chapters that really drag along for me when I read it, which sucks because Brienne is such an interesting character all around.  Not only is she mostly just walking around a desolated land, but we all know that her quest was doomed to fail. We know where Arya and Sansa are and she's definitely nowhere near them, so there's no suspense at all. The priest that gives the speech about broken men is probably one of my top five scenes in the entire series, though. And I am grateful for the peek she gives us into Lord Tarly's character since we all know about the terrible things he did to Sam. Other than that...

[Renly's Banana]

@Good Guy Garlan
I mean... you're not wrong, it's still a deeply flawed book, and I'm not gonna say it isn't the weakest of the 5, I just try to see it through a different lens, I guess. I try to be more optimistic with Feast and where the series is headed as a whole. A lot of people complain that it introduced too many new characters and the plot plummets back down to zero, but I think (hope) that he has big stuff planned for these characters and that, ultimately, it all pays off. Aeron and Arianne are good examples of this; their futures look promising when not too long ago people thought they were duds. And I see the slow pacing (filler, if you want to call it) as world-building and exposition for these characters. Do I think Brienne and Sam needed all these super dragged-out journeys everywhere? Not really. Again, this book could have used a LOT of hard editing. But I did enjoy reading them nonetheless because it expanded these characters and gave them more depth than they had before. 

Overall the whole thing is just incredibly frustrating. Because this series had the potential to be near-flawless, and over the years some of the, uh.. decisions GRRM has decided to make have tarnished it. 

[shadows and dust]

14 hours ago, Renly's Banana said:

Honestly I think his biggest mistake was separating a lot of the main characters into two different books. There was no real reason to do that, and only served to annoy people and slow down the narrative. If the fourth book had been made with that Feast for Dancing Dragons custom reading order somebody posted earlier, it would be a shit ton more palatable to everyone. 

Yup. End the first with The Reaver. Start the second book with Melisandre I (ADWD) and no one's really complaining.

[John Suburbs]

I like Feast because it fills in a lot of backstory: Duskendale, the Lothstones and Harrenhall, Jaime's reading of the White Book, the FM and the Doom, (anyone for squishers?). It also takes us to places that otherwise would be hidden, like Braavos, Oldtown, Sunspear...

So, yeah, it's a plot departure, but since GRRM has played fast and loose with conventional plotting all along, it shouldn't be too burdensome on the reader.

And I have a feeling that by the end of the series, a lot of what happened and was revealed in Feast will prove significant.

 

[Clegane'sPup]

5 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

And I have a feeling that by the end of the series, a lot of what happened and was revealed in Feast will prove significant.

Although I think FfC was a bloated mess hopefully Martin will reveal its importance in WoW and DoS.

[John Suburbs]

On Invalid Date at 5:05 PM, Clegane'sPup said:

Although I think FfC was a bloated mess hopefully Martin will reveal its importance in WoW and DoS.

One thing that stood out for me was Alleras' skill at hitting a falling apple with an arrow. Might come in handy if he/she ever has to take a dragon through the eye.

 

[Amris]

I have to say I had a huge problem with Feast myself when I first tried reading it.

However it does have its strong sides. I will especially suggest two of them to you here:

- I find Cersei's chapters quite compelling. (Once I got over my initial internal 'why do I have to read so many Cersei POV's instead of my fav chars' POVs? screaming).

Cersei is an excellent character and villain IMO and those KL happenings centered on her are quite hilariously cool AND central to the story.

- I love - and that should be in capitals - the Sansa snow-castle scene at the Eyrie in Feast. It is simply amazing IMO. And so telling. How Sansa changes once inside the walls of Winterfell. Look at how she behaves before - how she subconsciously starts building the castle - and how she suddenly is a much tougher character once inside Winterfell's walls. It reminds me a lot of Dany's Vision Quest chapter in Dance where she walks and dreams in the Dothraki Sea and seems to change. (The film series makers seem to not really have gotten the chapter. The film version is weak compared to the book so don't think of the film when re-reading the chapter.)

 

 

 

[Traverys]

On 5/8/2017 at 10:33 PM, Good Guy Garlan said:

Well, I respectfully disagree. I honestly think most of Feast is filler in the sense that the novel ends right when most storylines are about to take off. Like, we know Sam's storyline really lies at Oldtown, not at some random Summer Islands ship. So why did it take us an entire book to get there? That's particularly jarring when you remember it took Cat an offpage chapter to get from Winterfell to KL back in AGOT. You could cut all 3 of Sansa's chapters from Feast and literally nothing of value would be lost. You could start with her Winds chapter, which is clearly where her storyline's at, and you'd hit the ground running. Same with Jaime, same with Brienne. I mean, jesus, we know the true important part of Brienne's plot lies with Stoneheart, not with Nimble Dick. That detour to the Whispers has got to be the most clumsy and obvious filler since Naruto. A lot of Feast was just GRRM stalling and spinning his wheels because he still couldn't get all his characters where he wanted them too, so instead of like trying to advance the plot, he entertained himself with the ASOIAF equivalent of side quests. I suppose writing from the POV of Damphair or whatever was fun for him and helped him take his mind off the Meereenese Knot for a while, but it wasn't fun for me. Feast is, at its core, a book of avoidance: is GRRM avoiding the difficulties of the main plot and focusing instead on a handful of half-baked characters. It was a way for him to stall and buy himself a few more years to continue the story. If that's not losing control of your story, I don't know what is. 

I do agree with this, though. It's super funny to me to read GRRM's reasoning for splitting up the characters because he wanted to tell the complete story of half the characters instead of half the story for all the characters. 

Well, George, pray tell, which character's storyline is complete in Feast? Jaime ends on a cliffhanger, Brienne ends on a cliffhanger, Arya ends on a cliffhanger, Cersei ends on a cliffhanger, Sam ends on a cliffhanger, Sansa ends on a cliffhanger. The way Feast ends is just incredibly arbitrary, like GRRM said "Done, I think we have enough pages now, print this."

You are fierce. I was nodding my head throughout your post.

Tee-hee at Naruto filler. I never recommend Naruto to people (though I soak it up) because of all the pre- and post-shippuden filler episodes.

I think GRRM saw the problems with doing a 5-year time skip and "solved" his problem with clumsy narrative. Not saying I'd be any better, but it's one of those instances where you have to choose between staying true to your narrative or compromising everything for ideas you aren't willing to cut. We obviously see which route he went...

[winter daughter]

2 hours ago, Amris said:

- I love - and that should be in capitals - the Sansa snow-castle scene at the Eyrie in Feast. It is simply amazing IMO.

Snow- castle scene belongs to her last chapter in ASOS. but I agree that it's amazing. probably one of the best written chapters in the series. 

"A godswood without gods, as empty as me"

"She could feel the snow on her lashes, taste it on her lips. It was the taste of Winterfell. The taste of innocence. The taste of dreams."

"I am stronger within the walls of Winterfell."

[Amris]

5 minutes ago, winter daughter said:

Snow- castle scene belongs to her last chapter in ASOS. but I agree that it's amazing. probably one of the best written chapters in the series. 

"A godswood without gods, as empty as me"

"She could feel the snow on her lashes, taste it on her lips. It was the taste of Winterfell. The taste of innocence. The taste of dreams."

"I am stronger within the walls of Winterfell."

Heh, thank you.

So my fav scene from Feast is in SoS. I suppose that's telling.

[winter daughter]

2 minutes ago, Amris said:

So my fav scene from Feast is in SoS. I suppose that's telling.

 

[Clegane'sPup]

20 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

One thing that stood out for me was Alleras' skill at hitting a falling apple with an arrow. Might come in handy if he/she ever has to take a dragon through the eye.

 

It has been suggested that the dragon weakness is the eye.

Quote

 

A Dance with Dragons - Tyrion XI    If anyone had thought to ask him, Tyrion could have told them not to bother. Unless one of those long iron scorpion bolts chanced to find an eye, the queen's pet monster was not like to be brought down by such toys. Dragons are not so easy to kill as that. Tickle him with these and you'll only make him angry.

The eyes were where a dragon was most vulnerable. The eyes, and the brain behind them. Not the underbelly, as certain old tales would have it. The scales there were just as tough as those along a dragon's back and flanks. And not down the gullet either. That was madness.

 

 

[John Suburbs]

4 hours ago, Clegane'sPup said:

It has been suggested that the dragon weakness is the eye.

 

Yes, and since it was the Dornish who figured that out with Meraxes, Alleras would most certainly know that little known fact, being the daughter of Oberyn Martell. Her mother is a Summer Islander, a people renowned for their skill at archery.

[Prof. Cecily]

Alleras might have read that 

Quote

 huge tome about dragons that somehow made them about as interesting as newts

left for Arianne's perusal in 

A Feast for Crows  The Princess In The Tower

[SeaWitch]

"Not the underbelly, as certain old tales would have it." *snorts*.  Anybody got a black arrow?

I'm going to have to buy the rest of books in bulk, and use extensive post-it notes to sort reading order, aren't I?

[Walda]

Well, you have already read Feast  more times than me, but leaving that aside...while I found it distinctly underwhelming on the first time through, for Dorne Arianne Ironborn No Jon no tyrion no Dany Brienne So few chapters such tediously long chapters and especially those mendacious patronising intellectually insulting lies that were called 'chapter 46' to boost the word count  all kinds of reasons, the second reading convinced me that maybe it wasn't the sign that GRRM had peaked in the '90s and didn't have to please his readership  anymore, could now sit back and watch the royalties roll in and spend the rest of his life selling the derivative rights and organising trusts to ensure the profits flow where he wants them to flow, and not to fanfic writers, at least until the 22nd century.

After Game, it is the one I keep going back to, to look forward.

There is a lot of repetition in Feast, literally covering ground we have gone over before in the case of Brienne, retracing the route she took with Jaime in Storm of Swords. It gets very interesting, very intricate in the details. I've been stuck in the middle of a big post on the subject for some time, trying to get my head around Briennes chapters, just astounding how much I missed the first time, when I was so much less aware of what was to come, and oblivious of who had been there, by sea and land, before. Or who was likely to come that way in the future, by air. Note that Dragonstone, Duskendale, Rosby, Kings Landing are pretty much a straight flight path, and one that has been done before. We begin to understand better what the cost of Bolton sending Harrion Karstark et al to Duskendale was. (By the way, that re-read of Brienne's feast chapters was prompted by what you said, @Clegane'sPup, on the dead near the saltpans, about Gendry's meeting with Brienne at the Inn at the Crossroads. Although I didn't find anything impossible about Gendry showing up there when he did, I am still somewhat sidetracked by other things.)

 But there is also Lord Tywin's funeral, seen first through Cersei's eyes, then Jaime's. (Where Jaime sees Cersei abuse Tommen, and does nothing. And we learn that Cersei sees herself as an affectionate mother, is completely oblivious of her cruel treatment of Tommen). Sansa is in the same room in the same tower her mother had at the Eyrie (In these chapters, I believe we see that Marillion is alive and at large in the Eyrie, moving from the Maiden's Tower to the Tower of the Moon on the night Petyr entertains the Lords Declarant); we see Braavos through the eyes of Arya, then Sam traces her steps, then Arya traces his; we see Cersei travelling comfortably to Baelor's sept to bribe the septon with arms in exchange for a crown, laughing as she plots against Margaery, a plot that will have her walking butt naked from the Sept, humbled, we now know. With the prescience of reading Dance of Dragons previously, we also see her bring the Rosby Inheritance down on her own head.

That is the real trick about Feast, it is like Janus, looking forward and looking back. Or maybe it is a three-headed beast, looking back to Game of Thrones and earlier, looking forward to Dance and Winds and beyond, and the third head right in the present, saying howdedo to the High Septon and his bones at Rosby, or visiting the ancestral home of the Brunes and the smugglers coves at Crackclaw point. I think Feast might be the pivot on which the whole Song turns, although I won't know until the story ends. I see a lot of things relevant to the riots of Kings Landing cropping up in Feast. There are also a lot of added developments (Like Melara and the Younger More Beautiful Queen) that seem to have been dreamt up this century, and a lot of development of other things mentioned in the Clash, like the Ironborn, and Dorne. Actually, a lot of water themes are being developed: Melara, the Kingsmoot; Cersei flirts with 'the biting crabs' of former Stannis Loyalists like Celtigar and Velaryon; Arya pushs a barrow of molloscs around the canals, Sam is at sea; the action in Oldtown winds around the Honeywine; Brienne heads towards Jaime in the riverlands, when she is not by the sea; and even the Dornish chapters make multiple references to the Watergardens, and reach their climax on the Greenblood. Practically the only part of Feast that doesn't have running water references are the Alyane chapters - Alyssa's tear has frozen at the Eyrie.

That it was originally a part of Dance with Dragons, does not mean that it doesn't stand on its own. I can see the chapters that make this book have been carefully selected for juxtaposition: Jamie with Cersei; Cersei with Brienne; Jaime with Sam; Sam with Arya;; Arianne with Sansa, and Asha. Not all the juxtapositions are in Feast, for instance there is Gilly and Sam vs Jon and Val, connected by the swapped children.

A lot of things in Feast become more interesting when you consider where people from other chapters and other books are at this point in time. The Ironborn story seems almost entirely unconnected with the rest of the book, until we remember that the Isle of Ravens at the heart of the Citidel was once the stronghold of a pirate king, or that Rosby and Duskendale are a dragon-flight from Dragonstone, where Loras is collecting a navy to repulse Euron (too late), and maybe dragon eggs or awakening a stone dragon (time will tell). Brienne and Arya almost cross paths. I suspect the real reason Feast was hived off from Dance was to introduce the territory before Davos, Stannis, Aegon, the White Walkers attack the east side of Westeros. And maybe to conceal something in Davos' storyline that might be obvious if his chapters are read in sequential order in a Feast/Dragon read.

The single chapter points of view have points of interest. Although, to be honest, nearly the only thing that intrigues me about Arys is that he is the only point of view to die after just one chapter not an epilogue or prologue (although he doesn't die in his own chapter). For that reason alone, I wonder if he is really is dead. Or perhaps undead.
 Hotah, the renegade Norvoshi priest, I still find a bit underwhelming, with his hulk speech thoughts and his steadfast retainer schtick, apparently to foreshadow that Norvos will be as bullshit as Dorne. Still, he juxtaposes with Arys.

Then there is Pate. Who is Pate? He doesn't wonder who he is, so neither do we, until he is no more. Likewise Archmaester Walgrave. But then, the prologue did not disappoint me on the first read, it is an elegant introduction to Oldtown and the Citadel, it's stone streets, its people, its politics, with secrets like Alleras and its Pirate heart.

The real final chapter (ie chapter 45) bookends it. I think the pirate king has crept back into his ancestral home, although Oldtown does not know that yet. And look how much heavy lifting the Prologue did - the final chapter of Feast is only the second chapter at Oldtown, but it seems almost as familiar as Kings Landing by the time we return with Sam. @Good Guy Garlan , when you say that Sam's future is meant to be at Oldtown, you don't know that. Sure, Sam is under orders from Jon to become a maester of the Citidel, but his author is foreshadowing more like he is now zero chapters from his death.

On my first read, Arianne was instantly unlikeable, an idiot full of what seems to me to be GRRM's contempt and objectification of young women. While I have not located any hidden depths in her childish character on re-read, it does make me appreciate Doran as a brilliant father, if not a masterly player of the game of thrones.Among other things, I appreciate the masterly way Doran extracts a full confession from Arianne, and she tells him the names of all her confederates (confirming the plot was hers, and her allies are only the friends she has known since childhood, that she is not the stalking horse of a foreign power) Also the way he strengthens her loyalty to him, by simply leaving her to her own devices in the tower. She is a contrast to the other princess in the tower, Sansa, and to the other Queenmaker, Asha.

At the moment, I'm still re-reading Storm, but one of the questions I'm going to ask myself on the next re-read of Feast is why GRRM chose that chapter as the introduction to that place eg. Brienne I as the introduction to Rosby and the Northern Crownlands, Arya for Braavos, Aeron for Great Wyk, Asha for Harlaw, Hotah for Dorne, Victarion for the Sheild Isles, Sam for Skaggos (sort of - we haven't really been to Skaggos). 

There are a lot of mystery characters to identify, and a few mysteries to solve, a few new prophecies, but every other book in the series has their share of those. So far, Feast and Thrones have been the ones that offered me most on the re-read though.

Although if @Cas Stark is right, I'm deluded and have wasted the last four years reading meanings that are not there. It is a bit disturbing to notice how many of the Feast haters here are people who have demonstrated their close-reading skills and sound understanding of the details in many a post, and have read Feast more than once with no lack of comprehension. Even so, I'm pretty sure what they call filler is at the least very high quality, carefully chosen and intricately thought through filler.

Hopefully you can find something to keep you involved, or at least prevent you tossing it against the wall.

ETA: Also, @Amris gave a good answer to the Feast question at the end of this post.