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You're GRRM's editor. He gives you his manuscript of A Feast for Crows. There's a red pen in your hand.


Good Guy Garlan

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Take out Aeron Greyjoy's POV. It just wasn't necessary. Take out Hotah's POV. Also wasn't necessary either & Hotah just has nothing interesting going on even in his internal thoughts. Every thing he does could've been accomplished wig Arianna. Would also consider taking out Aerys bc he's not necessary as a POV either, but at least his chapters were interesting.

Brienne POV really takes some unnecessary turns. It would've been much better had she just went straight to the inn with Gendry. I don't get the whole purpose with Dick & some left over Mummers. Maybe it'll serve a purpose later on but right now it seems unnecessary.

He leaves out all of this stuff maybe he can get to the two battles he's going to put at the beginning of Winds

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I rather like Feast. Ditching the big three is a bold decision that I find quite refreshing. Cersei and Jaime are solid gold. I enjoy Brienne without reservation - some of the best traditional questing & action stuff in the whole epic. And I certainly wouldn't snip any Kraken tentacles.

But giving an independent plotline to Samwell bloody Tarly, filled with record numbers of cringe making goody-goody hippy black people stereotypes and the worst sex scene ever?

Making Arya in Westeros-Venice-where-Syrio-came-from dull?

And Dorne as we have it, with at least one unnecessary A?

These are serious flaws.

How about - cut Samwell (if I was really the editor he'd never have got this far to begin with. Dareon would be so much better as Jon's regular sidekick it isn't funny). Give Qyburn a PoV and link his plotting to Marwyn's, so we get Oldtown eventually through him. Cut Arys and Areo. And give Lord Bronn of Stokeworth a PoV.

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Oh look, it's another "we know better than George" thread.

Folks, the man is writing what he needs to write. The Brienne chapters give us a great look at the non-noble side of things, a POV for the common man. That's critical to understand the Lady Stoneheart stuff fully and to establish why the common folks will side with the High Sparrow and the new regime (be it Dany or Aegon) over the old one.

Hotah sees things Arianne does not get to see, so no he cannot just be replaced with her. Arya is training, that's kinda boring but if you want her to just magically git gud overnight go read Harry Potter. Giving Qyburn a pov would ruin the surprise of Ser Roberts appearance, since obviously Qyburn has been working on him a lot. The lack of info is why Qyburn and his activities are so creepy.

Every other complaint is somewhat reasonable.

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Cutting the POVs of Arys, Areon, Victarion, Hotah, leaving Arianne and Asha as the solo POVs of Dorne and the Iron Islands respectively, shortening some of the more superfluous and overlong stuff...that's all fine for me, of course, but it would only make the book a bit more bearable, but by no means great. It would still be a book with zero endings, zero resolution, just cliffhanger after cliffhanger, all set up with no pay off. I'd say the book was doomed since its inception, as the idea to split the characters proved to be disastrous, to say the least.

In other words, I'd tell him, "Cut the fat or streamline stuff or whatever, but you need to fit all of this shit in one book. I don't care how you do it, but the separate books thing ain't gonna fly"

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Oh look, it's another "we know better than George" thread.

 

Folks, the man is writing what he needs to write. The Brienne chapters give us a great look at the non-noble side of things, a POV for the common man. That's critical to understand the Lady Stoneheart stuff fully and to establish why the common folks will side with the High Sparrow and the new regime (be it Dany or Aegon) over the old one.

 

Hotah sees things Arianne does not get to see, so no he cannot just be replaced with her. Arya is training, that's kinda boring but if you want her to just magically git gud overnight go read Harry Potter. Giving Qyburn a pov would ruin the surprise of Ser Roberts appearance, since obviously Qyburn has been working on him a lot. The lack of info is why Qyburn and his activities are so creepy.

 

Every other complaint is somewhat reasonable.

Thanks God we have you to tell us what's reasonable and what isn't, Thought Police member/GRRM fanboy.

Ever heard of a guy called Barthes? The authors no longer have the last word, that's so 19th century. And GRRM, believe it or not, isn't perfect. 

So yeah, readers are perfectly able to know better than GRRM.

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I like Feast....

 

Well, except for the superfluous POVs. Arys gets literally one chapter before dying. The Damphair, I'm sorry, he should have died in Clash. Victarion is necessary to show us Euron's attack on the Reach, and the bringing of ships to Dany later on, but as a character he's terrible. So bloody stupid. And as much as I love me some AshAndIronWife, Areo Hotah is the most nonexistent character in the books. Really, the only good Dornish character got killed by Gregor Clegane.

 

But other than cutting those guys and making adjustments to Vic, I wouldn't change a thing.

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If I could basically force him to do anything?

I would have him combine it with Dance.

I'd start with removing the minor PoVs. I think with Feast he realized the gross limitation of his system, but it was too late to simply have anyone be eligible, even though that's kind of what he did. So it's fine that he added new PoV characters, but it would have been better if he just made one or two new major ones. So, I'd keep Brienne, Victarion (to whom I'd merge the points of Aeron's and Asha's chapters) and Arianne (who gets Areo and Arys). The same thing with Dance: Quentyn and Jon Connington are not PoV characters, but respectively appear in an Arianne chapter as he leaves and in a Daenerys (who gets the Barristan chapters) chapter when he arrives, and in the Tyrion chapters and gets mentioned in the Epilogue; Melisandre's chapter becomes Jon's.

Next thing, removing the amount of chapters some characters get. We don't need 10 chapters to establish that Cersei is going mad, nor 5 chapters to see Sam's travels, nor 8 with Brienne, nor 12 with Tyrion. There is a ton of pointless, filler descriptions and dialogue that serve no purpose whatsoever but to increase the length. Almost each chapter could have easily been cut in half with nothing of value lost.

That's more or less it to fix the biggest problem with Feast and Dance, the complete lack of focus and elegance. The pacing isn't slow, it's just bad.

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Oh look, it's another "we know better than George" thread.

Folks, the man is writing what he needs to write. The Brienne chapters give us a great look at the non-noble side of things, a POV for the common man. That's critical to understand the Lady Stoneheart stuff fully and to establish why the common folks will side with the High Sparrow and the new regime (be it Dany or Aegon) over the old one.

Hotah sees things Arianne does not get to see, so no he cannot just be replaced with her. Arya is training, that's kinda boring but if you want her to just magically git gud overnight go read Harry Potter. Giving Qyburn a pov would ruin the surprise of Ser Roberts appearance, since obviously Qyburn has been working on him a lot. The lack of info is why Qyburn and his activities are so creepy.

Every other complaint is somewhat reasonable.

What important information did Hotah give us that Arianne couldn't? His POV doesn't even tell us who betrayed Arianne. His POV doesn't add anything to the plot. And yes Brienne POV does give us some insight to the non-nobles, but that could've been done w/o the random detour.

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I do have to say, I liked some of the new POVs we got and honestly thought they should have been given more time. Melisandre's chapter in Dance was extremely interesting, and I honestly thought she should have been given one or two more. When Jon is revealed as a Targaryen, I desperately want it to be in her POV, so she can reveal how much she's fucked up with Stannis.

Really, I liked all the Dance POV's. JonCon was cool, though I think he got the exact right amount of chapters.

Anyone who has a problem with Barristan being a POV can go hide in a corner and think about how awful you are.

 

The Feast POVs were problematic, but I've already said what I thought of them.

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I like Feast....

 

Well, except for the superfluous POVs. Arys gets literally one chapter before dying. The Damphair, I'm sorry, he should have died in Clash. Victarion is necessary to show us Euron's attack on the Reach, and the bringing of ships to Dany later on, but as a character he's terrible. So bloody stupid.

He isn't that stupid and Aeron will be important.

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Oh look, it's another "we know better than George" thread.

 

Folks, the man is writing what he needs to write. The Brienne chapters give us a great look at the non-noble side of things, a POV for the common man. That's critical to understand the Lady Stoneheart stuff fully and to establish why the common folks will side with the High Sparrow and the new regime (be it Dany or Aegon) over the old one.

 

Hotah sees things Arianne does not get to see, so no he cannot just be replaced with her. Arya is training, that's kinda boring but if you want her to just magically git gud overnight go read Harry Potter. Giving Qyburn a pov would ruin the surprise of Ser Roberts appearance, since obviously Qyburn has been working on him a lot. The lack of info is why Qyburn and his activities are so creepy.

 

Every other complaint is somewhat reasonable.

Agreed.

Put the pen down. Applaud.

:agree:

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