The problem with the series post ASOS

[bloody_mummer]

"This one was three bitches and a bastard." I'm sure. And it comes across to the reader.

Agree. I think GRRM and his fanatics throw up a staw man when saying that detractors just want battles and gore. Not true. Like many, I believ ethat while AFFC and ADWD had some great chapters and nuggets of good story lines, the pointless wanderings, repeated catchphrases, etc. etc. just made me not care. Why did we need 100 pages of Tyrion being depressed and asking where whores go? We get it: He is in a severe depression and and alcoholic now...ok., lets move on then. Instead, we get counting turtles.

Ayra's training was one of my favorite parts, but again, no payoff.

Same with UnCat....great curveball, but no real follow up, no payoff. The multiple cliffhangers wiith Brienne, Jamie, and Uncat seemed forced and again, no payoff.

And, Martin is entitled to break all the "rules" he wants. But, it makes it incredibly difficult for readers to keep track of people with similar sounding names, esp. when they are all "foreign" and sound alike. Slogging through 10 "hizznik mo rezznik vo zezzniks" was execruitiating. A reader shouldnot have to repeatedly consult the internet to remember who characters are.

I still believe GRRM ran out of steam/ideas after the red/purple wedding. Those two events had brilliant set-ups and payoffs, but I don;t think he knew how to get from point A to point B after that. So, what we got was a lot of meaningless meandering. Movement but no progress.

[Sir Lee knot]

I pretty much agree with the OP. Ever since I started reading the book I always felt that there would be a few year time skip. I even guessed it would be at around ASOS. It just seemed like a lot of the characters were to young to complete the rolls they were put into. I was even a little disappointed when it never happened but it wasn't until a while later where I came to this forum and learned that a time skip was actually supposed to happen.

I agree, I feel like the Aegon story line is tacked on. Even though it was apparently being planned from the beginning it still seemed like an unnecessary entity in a world that is already so rich.

You also have the Dany problem. She is presumably going to unite the Khalasars, take down Yunkai and Astapor once and for all, go to Volantis and finish them off, then finally go capture Pentos and give it to the tattered prince according to the deal Barristan made. Then after all that she will finally go to Westeros only to start a whole new complicated plot line.

Between Dany and Aegon we're going to need an eighth book just to finish the series.

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

ASOS was an explosion, AFFC and ADWD are the long process of picking up all the pieces and putting them back together so we can blow them up again in TWOW.

[Good Guy Garlan]

ASOS was an explosion, AFFC and ADWD are the long process of picking up all the pieces and putting them back together so we can blow them up again in TWOW.

Two books of +1000 pages each is just too much set up, however big the explosion. aGoT and aCoK were setting up aSoS but they are infinitely superior to aFfC and aDwD

[Jasta11]

Shifts within a series are OK, but only to a point. To use an example familiar to all, The Fellowsip of the Ring doesn't read like The Two Towers (especially the first half!) and that's not a bad thing. But problems arise when you go from the non-stop action of ASoS, to suddendly crash into a wall of travelogues, repeated catch-phrases, redundant PoVs, Greyjoys and little plot advancements. It's like if you put the post-Mordor bits of LOTR... smack-dab in the middle of The Two Towers. It would be boring and out of place.

See, I do think Dance was better than Feast, if only because it moved some plots along (Bran, Theon, Jon, especially). But apart from Jaime's coming of age story and Cercei's amusing descent into idiotic madness, Feast offers very little that is interesting. Dorne's story goes nowhere and ends on a cliffhanger. Sansa's chapters are decent but we had to put up with Littlefinger making everyone around him a drolling imbecile, and it ended on a cliffhanger. Brienne's story is doomed to go nowhere from the start, and the reader knows about it even! It's a gigantic waste of time. And it still has the gall to end on a cliffhanger as soon as it starts getting slightly interesting. And then we get the Kingsmoot, where we have who knows how many pages of the Ironborn being their chest-pounding, stupid selves, Asha and the Reader acting as the only sane entities in vain, and then they all vanish from the plot.

And no, it's not about readers wanting a Red Wedding-like event every chapter. Arya's chapters in Clash and (especially) Storm could also be travelogues, but they were good because 1) they moved the plot along and 2) they made the little she-wolf interact with interesting characters. Unless GRRM is trying to convince us that Nimble Dick Crabbe was as interesting to read about as Sandor Clegane or the Brotherhood without Banners. Martin is capable of both advancing the plot and building the world at the same time as he should, he just didn't do it in Brienne's chapters.

Both of these books were in desperate need of an editor to lay the smackdown on all these boring chapters and make GRRM advance the plot. As it is, I'm pretty sure that with some healthy trimming both Dance and Feast could have been nicely crammed into a single book the size of Storm, and we would have avoided all those issues about trying to determine what event happens when for which character.

That's of course glossing over the overuse of cliffhangers even in Dance, Sam's story being pretty bad in general (fat pink mast?? :bang: ), Dany's story generally not being interesting, Tyrion being awful in his first half and full of contrived events (he just happens to run in Jorah? come on), and JonCon/Aegon being pulled from Varys's posterior. Overall the two books are a drop in quality compared to the first three, albeit Dance remedied enough things overall to get me hooked back. I tell ya, if the fifth book would have been as boring as the fourth, I would maybe have put it down.

[RoamingRonin]

Well, perhaps you shouldn't be reading a fantasy book set in a pseudo-medieval setting, then ?

I appreciate your suggestion and I will think long and hard on it.

[Wicked Woodpecker of West]

I believe Feast and Dance are much, much better than first three books.
Rambling, travelling and pointless cliffhangers. That's real life, that's what I want to read about.
Really serious here.

[Florina Laufeyson]

I liked Brienne's journey a lot. Totally old school Tolkien stuff, just going from town to town and meeting peculiar creatures.

So did i and this is likely the reason. I want to see Westeros, not just hear about it. Brienne and Arya show us the real Westeros.

Personally I like Brienne's POV's I quite like Jon Conn as a character too. I quite liked the slower pace of AFFC and ADWD, I found some of the fleshing out of Essos to be quite interesting.

Dude, i dont like Jon Con but i love his chapter(s) loads. Cuz he deals with the outlook a lot of us have been wondering about, Robert's Rebellion and Rhaegar. Plus i like Aegon and i like seeing him. Tyrion's Shy Maid Mystical Journey was some fucking awesome times. (when Tyrion wasnt peeing in everyone's cheerios that is.) I liked Sam's journey to Old Town and his stop in Braavos is the win. I even like Cersei's batshit chapters showing her side of things.

As for Meereen, im engrossed into the Harpy subplot and wish to see it resolved. I was ok with Meereen but Dany hitting roadblock after roadblock (without much elaboration and characterization of said roadblocks) was frustrating. But seeing Meereen itself is interesting (and i think the show is going to make this pretty awesome).

ADWD gives us some of the best writing ive ever seen in the form of Theon's chapters. Omfg. OMFG.

[The Broke Howard Hughes]

My problem, if you can call it that, is that there is nobody to root for since Ned and Robb died.

As soon as I start to like Jon he gets stabbed.

I don't like Tyrion.

I like Jamie but he doesn't deserve my cheers, he's a bit of a scumbag.

Stannis is okay but he's pretty much doomed.

Cersei, come on.

Sansa, I keep waiting for her to do something dumb and get herself killed. She isn't worthy of my effort.

Arya is cool but she's too young and too far away to have an impact.

My ultimate problem is the books lack heros. This is why most people love them but not me. I hate watching morally bankrupt people get away with murder. Even in real life karma catches up to people, a guy like Littlefinger strains credibility.

[Queen Whore]

I really liked Dance. Shame on me, I guess.

After a few rereads, I felt like everything fell together better than I had after my initial read. There are a lot of details and foreshadowing that you don't notice on the first read.
I would agree that the pacing is just so slow, but I feel like it is put in place to set us up for something. I don't think it is all for nothing.

[hardhome]

I have 3 excellent suggestions for people who think the story has gone nowhere within the last books because of cliffhangers that go nowhere, slowly paced plots, plotlines you don't care about, or any other complaint you have.

1. Skip reading all the chapters of characters you don't like, i.e. Brienne, Aero, Damphair. That way you will get an even bigger shock if something they does the part of the story that "matters."

2. Completely forget what you have already read in said POVs that way you can really be shocked that Sandor Clegane is still alive , LF has probably unwittingly let one of Varys spies into his inner circle, learn how thoroughly ignorance is acceptable and praiseworthy on the iron islands, and we will know what an abject political coward Doran Martell is. Just to name a few.

3. Don't read the next books. That way you won't be disappointed about more cliffhangers that go nowhere, your favorite king or queen making a single blunder, and just live with the "Happily ever after" scenario that the books leave us with.

Alternatively you can come to the amazing conclusion that we don't know which characters were meant/needed to do what things from the beginning, and some of it is a lot more relevant than we yet realize. We don't get to decide what matters in the story, for all we know Izembaro, where Arya is (heading) might be in Bravos, Pentos, Lorath, Volantis, Lys, Myr Tyrosh, Astapor, Yunkai, or Mereen. Any of which by many people's definition would make it irrelevant. So let us accept one of the two following sentences as adequate for the rest of her story.

Either Arya became an assassin . OR Arya failed to complete her assassin training.

Done! Simple! you can fill every surviving character of the 5 year gap with the same fluff and have TWOW done in 10 pages. Nobody would want to read it but it wouldn't be bogged down in unnecessary details and that's the point right?

[DeepBlueSky]

The only problem I have with the series after ASOS is the length of time between book publishings. The last two books were great in my opinion.

[Queen Whore]

I have 3 excellent suggestions for people who think the story has gone nowhere within the last books because of cliffhangers that go nowhere, slowly paced plots, plotlines you don't care about, or any other complaint you have.

1. Skip reading all the chapters of characters you don't like, i.e. Brienne, Aero, Damphair. That way you will get an even bigger shock if something they does the part of the story that "matters."

2. Completely forget what you have already read in said POVs that way you can really be shocked that Sandor Clegane is still alive , LF has probably unwittingly let one of Varys spies into his inner circle, learn how thoroughly ignorance is acceptable and praiseworthy on the iron islands, and we will know what an abject political coward Doran Martell is. Just to name a few.

3. Don't read the next books. That way you won't be disappointed about more cliffhangers that go nowhere, your favorite king or queen making a single blunder, and just live with the "Happily ever after" scenario that the books leave us with.

Alternatively you can come to the amazing conclusion that we don't know which characters were meant/needed to do what things from the beginning, and some of it is a lot more relevant than we yet realize. We don't get to decide what matters in the story, for all we know Izembaro, where Arya is (heading) might be in Bravos, Pentos, Lorath, Volantis, Lys, Myr Tyrosh, Astapor, Yunkai, or Mereen. Any of which by many people's definition would make it irrelevant. So let us accept one of the two following sentences as adequate for the rest of her story.

Either Arya became an assassin . OR Arya failed to complete her assassin training.

Done! Simple! you can fill every surviving character of the 5 year gap with the same fluff and have TWOW done in 10 pages. Nobody would want to read it but it wouldn't be bogged down in unnecessary details and that's the point right?

Agreed! I understand complaints but a few of these are getting pretty critical. Who passed out the haterade?

[Fat Trell]

The only thing that truly bothers me about Feast and Dance is that the Winterfell and Meereen situations were not resolved by their end. Leaving those out makes the two books an incomplete narrative. Which isn't something we saw in the first three books.

• In aGoT, the main plot was Ned discovering the truth about what Jon Arryn knew. By the end of the book. Ned discovered this, and Ned died because of it.
  
• In aCoK, the main plot was the war. By the end of the book, the Iron Throne was secure
  
• In aSoS, the main plot is bringing the war to a close. By the end of the book, this is done.
  
• Feast is unique because it doesn't come across as an actual narrative. It doesn't have a conclusion because it doesn't have a beginning or middle. Its a look at the aftermath of the first act of the story, and the set up of the second.
  
• Dance's main plot was the restart of the conflict for the Iron Throne. So we can summarize the main plot as Stannis' efforts to win the North, Aegon's emergence onto the Westerosi scene, and Dany's unraveling of the Meereenese knot. The problem is that we are left hanging in all three situations(Stannis' and Dany's more so). The frusterating part is that we can reasonably figure that for the narrative to continue; Stannis must win the Battle of Ice, the Yunkish and sellswords must be massacred by the Ironborn/Dany loyalists outside Meereen, and Aegon must capture Storm's End. If Dance had included the reasonable conclusion of its arcs, I think it wouldn't be criticized nearly as much.
  

[horizon]

That I can agree on, The Battle of Mereen should have been in ADWD, the battle of the North less so.

[kilthan]

You're not alone. It's very tiresome. Especially when you have no clue about what he's describing. A hauberk? A mantlet? A tunic? Sorry, did not study medieval warfare so I have no clue what you're talking about.

You are on the internet... look them up, maybe? I started reading high fantasy and sci-fi in fourth grade. I had to look things up constantly. you quickly learn, and then more often then not, when you encounter a new word, you can figure out what it means without hitting a dictionary because you've learned a dozen new words that are related to it. Complaining about a period style setting using period style words seem... I don't know... angsty for the sake of angst.

[MegaAIP]

I think the problem with dance was it didn't resolve the whole Meereen deal, she is still sitting in Meereen and who knows how long she stays there

[The Human Abstract]

I totally agree with the "payoff" problem, but I think the payoff will happen very soon.

I just got through reading TPATQ last night. Wow. Ok, so it was a completely different style. But talk about lots of payoff and epic moments. I think this fellow still has the same knack for creating truly powerful moments.

And think about where this story left off. Many of these are right around the corner in ASOIAF as well. And I can't even imagine what book 7 will hold.

[Woman of War]

Some of us enjoyed Tyrion Tour more than others, I suppose. Look, these aren't my two favorite books of the series, but I guess I'm just not that picky, I thoroughly enjoyed the read. I feel lucky that GRRM gives us the level of detail he does. Imagine if he'd just written one book, as he'd started out to do. Character, plot, crises, denouement, we're done. No, I prefer the slog. I like being in the muck and the mire.

And if Tyrion did a whole bunch a learnin' and growin' and stuff in every book, I'd be very disappointed.

I think he's a brilliant tour guide, and through his eyes we've learned about Illyrio's deeper involvement with Varys in Westrosian politics, the (F)Aegon plot, the history and geography of Essos, the Penny plot line (what can I say, I like Penny), the Jorah-will-do-anything-to-fuck-Dany plot, details on some of the massing of mercenaries surrounding Meereen...and we've really built some tension around finding out where whores go (not!). Doesn't work for everyone, okay, but it works for me.

I like your post

[Cas Stark]

I think the problem with dance was it didn't resolve the whole Meereen deal, she is still sitting in Meereen and who knows how long she stays there

Plot wise, this was a big problem because there doesn't seem to be much chance of a quick 1/2 chapter resolution that gets her out of Meereen and finally on her way to Westeros where she might accomplish something in terms of the main plot in book 6. She still has to take the khalisar, meet Tyrion, meet and hook up with Vic...and then have the battle and then get to Westeros. This sounds itself like an entire book's worth of action.

But plot wise, nothing was resolved in Dance, really. The Battle of Winterfell didn't happen. Arya is still in Braavos. Dany is still in Essos, no battle of slaver's bay. Sansa and LF are still in the Vale plotting.