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My Theory on what GRRM did with AFFC


Bad Hound!

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This is my theory: AFFC is a "What was life like in Westeros at the time of the War of the 5 Kings".

You know how people complain that "not much happens in AFFC" etc etc. Well, I have just started AFFC (about a third of the way through), and I agree that it is quite a different book. But I think that's what GRRM intended.

AGOT, ACOK and ASOS (can't comment on ADWD as I haven't read it yet) are full-on history books. Think Anthony Beevor writing about the Second World War, or Stalingrad. Big, powerful books describing, at a military and political level, a massive historical event, the tactics, the political machinations, the alliances, etc. I think GRRM wrote the first 3 books like that too.

But other people sometimes write different types of history books: like "Peasant Life in the Middle-Ages", or "Life of An Ordinary Roman", or "Village Life in Japan in the 14th Century" or whatever.

Well, I think GRRM wanted to write a book like that, and this is what AFFC is, to a degree: life in Westeros for all sorts of more ordinary people in the era of the War of the 5 Kings.

He already hinted at that with Arya's chapters in ASOS.

It's like the history of that war at a military and political level is covered by other books, and he wanted to write about people at the fringes (the Ironborn, the Dornish) as well as the life of smallfolk in affected regions like the Riverlands.

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In my opinion, martin already knew there was to be a TV-series, and thought, " hey, if I pack less action into the books i can make more of them. if i have more books, i get more money from the producers. YAY, let´s write AFFC "

but since i don´t know him personally, i can be wrong of course.

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Bad Hound! I agree with this, though I wouldn't have thought of it myself. As much as I enjoy reading sweeping historical works, I also very much enjoy reading from the perspective of the "small folk"- the soldier on the front, the farmer struggling to survive as the front line constantly shifts over his fields and he is subject to the evils of being dominated by both sides. Good stuff.

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I think he's just re-starting the series. The first three books build on top of each other, so by the time you've finished with SoS, you've realized you've read an incredible trilogy. A lot of exposition and foundation was used in GoT, while CoK built the action up, with SoS reaping the benefits. There's really no way to keep doing that without layering in more base to build off of, so AFFC was that base. To a certain extent, the first half of DwD fills the same function. These stylistic differences are what are jarring to so many readers, though I suspect they'll pay dividend in the last two books.

Also, Martin may have gained a touch of hubris with his writing, as the delays in the release of AFFC and DwD seem to be due to him overestimating his ability to edit his grand plans.

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You always got to give the reader a time to re-coop what exactly happened. And if you ask me AFOC is the perfect rest point from all the action that happened in the second and third book. I feel like if AFOC was another action packed book people would start to get lost in terms of history, only focusing on the action parts. I was actually reading through certain chapters as fast as I could to get to the better parts in SOS.

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  • 3 weeks later...

AFFC is a reset. With SoS we had the crescendo of the first act of a large Opus; really the first act has finished with the closing of SoS. GRRM, with AFFC is setting the stage of the next crescendo, if not, finale of the entire series. A few new characters and plot lines to tie in and wrap up over the next 3000 or so pages. Silly to think he could just carry that volume for another 3000 pages and not stop to build it up for us.

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  • 2 months later...

The first three books build on top of each other, so by the time you've finished with SoS, you've realized you've read an incredible trilogy. A lot of exposition and foundation was used in GoT, while CoK built the action up, with SoS reaping the benefits. There's really no way to keep doing that without layering in more base to build off of, so AFFC was that base.

I think this is by far the best explanation. Other things may be going on in A Feast for Crows, like exposition on daily life, but I don't think that is the book's primary purpose. You need to set up the dominoes before you can push them down. You need to build a house of cards before it can fall.

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