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GRRM ADwD Jan 2 update ADWD SPOILERS


mcbigski

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I have been avoiding the spoiler threads and have just read the officially posted Dany, Tyrion and now Jon chapters. I loved that Jon chapter. By far my favorite of the three. I cannot frickin' wait for ADwD now. I had started to become passified with all of the other books out there I want to read but now I'm going back into that frantic mode where I'm going to be checking the site way too often.

Can we all say it's a safe bet that we will get ADwD in 2008?

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She also says something that she did not cross the Narrow Sea to support just another King.

That means that she beleaves in TPTWP.

No it doesn't. She might very well be lying. It's just as likely that she's powerhungry ****. Of course she'll say that Stannis is Special. Telling him that's she there for her own sake and that Stannis is the only "power player" around that's gullible enough to go along with her despicable schemes.

I don't think that Melisandre can be dismissed at all, we know that she has some kind of power:

* She survived the attempted poisoning by Maester Cressen

* She gave birth to the shadow baby that killed Renly and is strongly implicated in Ser Courtney Penrose's murder.

I suggest you go back and re-read Dany's ACoK chapters. In Qarth Dany is given a fairly common anti poision choker that's a a deadringer for the choker Mel wears. So unless the enitre noble class of Qarth are devoted and favored by R'hollor, no divne intervention saved Mel from Cressen.

The shadowbaby is no proof of divinity either. If she's a fake, of course she claim divine power since it sounds better than the "I'll steal your lifeforce to murder your brother" line.

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If Loras is healthy and if Sandor is the gravedigger, these things are supposed to be a surprise. You would reveal the surprise through someone else's POV towards the end of a book, I would think. It's got to be Mel.

Well, Sandor is supposed to be dead. So all it would take to effectively convey the surprise would be a chapter entitled "Sandor". After that, the fact that he's the gravedigger on the Quiet Isle is really just filling in the blanks.

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Well, Sandor is supposed to be dead. So all it would take to effectively convey the surprise would be a chapter entitled "Sandor". After that, the fact that he's the gravedigger on the Quiet Isle is really just filling in the blanks.

While true, that would suck ass. Wouldn't you rather have him step into a room and lower his hood and OMFG!!1 it's the Hound!

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I suggest you go back and re-read Dany's ACoK chapters. In Qarth Dany is given a fairly common anti poision choker that's a a deadringer for the choker Mel wears. So unless the enitre noble class of Qarth are devoted and favored by R'hollor, no divne intervention saved Mel from Cressen.

The shadowbaby is no proof of divinity either. If she's a fake, of course she claim divine power since it sounds better than the "I'll steal your lifeforce to murder your brother" line.

There is no proof there necklaces in Qarth actually work. More likely they are cheap knock-offs purporting to be the real thing.

Melissandre obviously has powers of sorcery, whether her power comes from a divine origin has yet to be determined.

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While true, that would suck ass. Wouldn't you rather have him step into a room and lower his hood and OMFG!!1 it's the Hound!

That would be cool, but it would require another POV standing in the room to go "OMFG!!1" ...

Which would mean another POV would have to bump into him.

Which would mean no Sandor until TWOW, because there are no confirmed ADWD POVs anywhere near where he is right now. So the only way for us to get our vitamin H in 2008/9 is if he gets a POV.

And the idea of Sandor vanishing from the story until TWOW makes the baby Jesus cry. :cry:

EDIT: There are about 30 people reading this thread right now. God Bless u(pdate)s, every one!

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I can't remember the last time I was in a thread about, you know, the books. Kind of giddy right now.

Heh. :P

The shadowbaby is no proof of divinity either. If she's a fake, of course she claim divine power since it sounds better than the "I'll steal your lifeforce to murder your brother" line.

Divinity? I think you are misinterpreting things. All people were suggesting is that she has some magical power. That's clear. The only question is whether her power comes from her god (which is presumably where your divinity comment comes in) or is just a power she has. I doubt we'll ever know that for sure. Religion is all about faith. :)

And she could be powerhungry but still believe in her prophecies. I think most people have concluded she isn't lieing in general.

Brienne visits the Quiet Isle around 2/3 of the way through AFFC, and ADWD is set to extend for a few months more. That gives Sandor more time to do something new in ADWD than Loras, whose movements we can already account for right up until the end of AFFC).

Except if he has learned the power to fly, it doesn't give him a lot of time to get anywhere. :P By the time he does get somewhere the book will be just about finished, so you'd wonder what was the point in the first place.

With Asha, Theon, Davos, Bran and Sam being elsewhere occupied Melisandre as a POV would also allow Martin to let us know things about the plot at the Wall which he doesn't want Jon to know at a particular time. Finally, it would allow us to view Jon and the way his new responsibilities change him from the outside.

Indeed. Interesting...

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While Melissandre looks to be the most likely POV given the north/east focus of the book, the other 2 are not impossible considering that GRRM long ago said he may put extra "AFFC-characters" chapters in at the end of ADWD, if he has room. Not meaning Asha and Arya, but such characters as Cersei and Jaime to show us how the situation in KL ends (or Brienne and her cliffhanger). If he still has such plans and if he is even already writing those "extra" chapters (perhaps while other parts of ADWD, on the primary focus of north and east, are left on the back burner for a while so he is not quite near completion yet), Loras or Sandor could yet be written in. In Loras' case it requires his burns to not be as severe as told or else a rather miraculous recovery, though.

GRRM hasn't told us anything, nor been asked about, those plans to include some resolution to AFFC plotlines in quite some time so we don't have a clue whether he still hopes to do this or is even doing it already (or has abandoned the idea alltogether).

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That would be cool, but it would require another POV standing in the room to go "OMFG!!1" ...

Yes.

Which would mean another POV would have to bump into The Hound.

Yes.

Which would mean no Sandor until TWOW, because there are no confirmed ADWD POVs anywhere near where he is right now. So the only way for us to get our vitamin H in 2008/9 is if he gets a POV.

And the idea of Sandor vanishing from the story until TWOW makes the baby Jesus cry. :cry:

It's not just geographical problem. The emotional impact is key too. Which would make Cersei, Arya, Sansa the likely POV's for a Hound reveal. Which would indicate a TWOW appearance. Bummer.

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For the record, Melisandre _is_ the POV that I'd most like to see, of the three possibilities. It's also the most likely, in my view. I wasn't trying to argue that she would be uninteresting, just that I don't think that her motives are in doubt; what I find fascinating about her is that her motives are basically admirable, and that her actions would be justified if she were right. The alternative--that Melisandre is capital-e Evil--is frankly boring to me.

Incidentally, it's in part because she's got such a strong pre-existing bias that she's not likely to count as a character who Knows Too Much; like Cersei's POV, everything Melisandre thinks comes with an asterisk. She can tell us about magic, about shadowbinders, and about prophecy, and she's unlikely to be entirely wrong, but she's equally unlikely to see the big picture.

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GRRM hasn't told us anything, nor been asked about, those plans to include some resolution to AFFC plotlines in quite some time so we don't have a clue whether he still hopes to do this or is even doing it already (or has abandoned the idea alltogether).

I also think some resolution to aFfC is the only way Sandor or Loras could crop up but I find it unlikely that GRRM will find time to go south again. There has been no hint of that in a couple of years and it sounds like GRRM has enough balls in the air already.

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I don't know, I was rather disappointed with the Jon chapter. I expected the pacing to be better, and I was hoping that with all his revising and rewriting that he would've put the thought and attention so that everything played a role, and wasn't just filler or petty mechanisms of suspense. The prose seemed like it hadn't been streamlined through editing yet either, and through many of the descriptions all I could think about was how many of the words were unnecessary to the image and scene, and just slowed down the pace.

That chapter was 6,000 words, and I can't help but think that GRRM could have used that amount of words more effectively.

He still isn't back to the quality of the first three books, it seems to me. Ah well...

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When I first read the update, the first character to jump out at me as the likely POV he mentioned was the Hound. True, he's boring if he keeps digging graves but I think his story is going to bring him somewhere else. He doesn't know about Gregorstine, and probably thinks he's dead so I doubt he'll go to King's landing. He could easily go somewhere there is story going on and have some role.

Melisandre is a POV we don't need because she's not going to see anything Jon won't be seeing too. Two POV's on the wall would be redundant. There's also still 3 books. I think GRRM probably doesn't want to use characters that "know too much" as POV's yet, and Melisandre just seems a little too mystical and all knowing, even if she interprets stuff wrong. I think she still has a lot more real power then Aeron. I know we have POV's with magic but none of them really know how to use it to tell the future the way she seems too.

Loras could be the POV but he's still very involved in event in Kings Landing to make it seem probable. If Loras is the POV then I'm sure the near mortal wounding is complete BS for Cersie's benefit, and Loras is probably be doing something further north having to do with mobilizing people against the Iron Isles.

I loved the sample and am now also getting too excited which is going to make the wait worse for a while again.

The "you know nothing Jon Snow" line from Melisandre gave me chills a little too.  I wonder if Melisandre will start seeing Jon more in the flames and realize he's very important to prophecy as well?  She might just be being nice to ingratiate herself to the Lord Commander for her own purposes, but it'd be great fun if she started seeing Jon and Dany all the time and realizes mabey the PwwP isn't Stannis.

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That would be cool, but it would require another POV standing in the room to go "OMFG!!1" ...

Which would mean another POV would have to bump into him.

Which would mean no Sandor until TWOW, because there are no confirmed ADWD POVs anywhere near where he is right now. So the only way for us to get our vitamin H in 2008/9 is if he gets a POV.

And the idea of Sandor vanishing from the story until TWOW makes the baby Jesus cry. :cry:

EDIT: There are about 30 people reading this thread right now. God Bless u(pdate)s, every one!

Please DON'T say that. We just have to get more Sandor action before TWOW. I was actually thinking along the same lines, that it would be a very pleasant surprise for Sandor to pop up in the last part of ADWD due to some unforeseen event. And some of us could get our Sandor fix. With that said, I think I would rather see him from other POV's rather than be in his mind; some parts of him should stay mysterious, I think.

I treated myself to the Jon chapter just a few minutes ago. I was actually getting depressed when I got near the bottom. But a ray of sunshine in the GRRM update! Perhaps this year!

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I think I just died with happiness reading the new preview chapter, particularly as Jon is one of my faves. I can't wait for the book!

As for the new POV, I think it's going to be Melisandre. Sandor and Loras, for me, seems to be 'too far away' to be included in ADwD. Melisandre's POV would be terribly interesting, but Loras and Sandor doesn't strike my fancy. What would get out of their POVs?

As for Mel, I think she's sincere in her belief of Stannis as Azor reborn and is doing everything she can to 'help' him in that role. I'm not sure if she knows Lightbringer is a fake, though.

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There's no real need for Melisandre to remain at the Wall either. Stannis is trying to gain the allegance of the northern lords, so if he rides out to treat with them I'd expect Mel to go with him. And if previously read preview chapters are true;

SPOILER: Stannis in ADWD

Stannis attacks Deepwood Motte and takes it back from Asha. Melisandre would almost certainly be there for a battle, after the disaster on the Blackwater when she was absent.

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I have been avoiding the spoiler threads and have just read the officially posted Dany, Tyrion and now Jon chapters. I loved that Jon chapter. By far my favorite of the three. I cannot frickin' wait for ADwD now. I had started to become passified with all of the other books out there I want to read but now I'm going back into that frantic mode where I'm going to be checking the site way too often.

Amen on all counts. That was a good chapter. Loved the Jon/Stannis banter - even reading it I could tell that Stannis respected Jon despite the beheading threats, and Mel confirmed it later.

I am way too seasoned to get "frantic" about the "pending" release of any ASOAIF book until Amazon tells me my order has shipped, but I have to admit that this did stoke my interest again.

dornish prince:

this is totally off topic but i'm tickled to death by this thread...things sure are gonna be awesome around here when the book finally comes out; not that things aren't great right now

I sometimes forget that a good portion of the current boarders are post-AFFC members - or at best, joined sometime during The Great Wait for AFFC. Yes, you will certainly enjoy the way this book will be carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey within 24 hours of its release, and will be asking yourself whether you really read the same book as everyone else, as you didn't pick up even 10% of what they did. Then it's quickly back to "release date" threads for a few years....

For what it's worth, I think Mel is the most likely candidate as well, although I think I'd rather see Sandor. His decision to join the faith would be good material (at least, good AFFC-type-story-rebuilding material) and I would love to see his PoV, particularly if he does anything other than fight UnDeadGolemGregor, which seems a bit anti-climatic at this point. Who was it that suggested Sandor meeting the BF and heading north into the Neck? that would be really, really interesting, and would provide a unique PoV.

But I also sense that the Jon/Mel relationship will continue, possibly at the expense of Mel abandoning Stannis (the next Night's King, to lead the horde of Others/Wights as they destroy the Wall and head south, is my theory). Clearly Mel has a fascination with Jon, and certainly knows more than she has let on (the quote "you know nothing Jon Snow" has to be more than simple coincidence).

Ah, so many questions and speculation from just one chapter and update post. Good God I cannot wait for this book.

and I just had to add my favorite quote from that chapter.

"The Night's Watch built those castles... "

"And the Night's Watch abandoned them."

"... to defend the Wall," Jon finished stubbornly, "not as seats for wildlings and southron lords. The stones of those forts are mortared with the blood and bones of my brothers, long dead. I cannot give them to you."

"Cannot or will not?" The cords in the king's neck stood out sharp as swords. "And to think, I offered you a name."

"I have a name, Your Grace."

"Snow. Was ever a name more ill-omened?" Stannis touched his sword hilt. "Just who do you imagine that you are?"

"The watcher on the walls. The sword in the darkness."

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