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First review of ADWD


Werthead

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Oh come on, the problem he had was always the "Mereenese Knot". What exactly that is we don't know, but we know it has to do with Dany and Mereen. So given that Dany was not in AFFC, how can anyone think that AFFC contained the part he had the greatest struggle with?

Because we never even heard about the Knot until several years later.

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What was in AFFC that was so difficult? There were almost no major plot advancements other than the fall of Riverrun and the fall of Cersei,

I think you've answered your own question there. The problem with AFFC is that whilst certain stories 'needed to be told' (in GRRM's view, readers' may vary), others didn't and were ready to be moved towards their conclusions already. Essentially it was an issue of stories getting out of synch with one another, a problem compounded (I believe) by the split of narratives between AFFC and ADWD.

However, AFFC by itself didn't take much longer to write than the first three (3.5 years) so I agree it is more the case that the real impacts of these decisions were not fully felt until GRRM was deeply immersed in ADWD. We can see from his page count summaries in a blog entry a couple of weeks back that for a good couple of years he was doing so much rewriting and restructuring that actual forward progress was painfully slow.

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We all knew the book would be an orgy of Greyjoy POV's that 99% of loyal readers don't care about, we just didn't want it confirmed.

Well then, here's to the 1% of loyal readers who, you know, enjoy the entire series!

I love the Greyjoys, the Martells even more, and think Brienne is just fine.

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Well then, here's to the 1% of loyal readers who, you know, enjoy the entire series!

I love the Greyjoys, the Martells even more, and think Brienne is just fine.

Alas, I think i'm there with you. I love them all, and i'm a cynical, hateful mother fucker. So that's saying something.

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Alas, I think i'm there with you. I love them all, and i'm a cynical, hateful mother fucker. So that's saying something.

Yeah, I don't know if I'm in the minority about this or not, but I seem to have had a much different experience reading AFfC than most readers.

For me, when I first cracked open the book and realized the story was in Oldtown, I was really, really intrigued. Then when I read about Alleras, I was doubly intrigued and was already hoping for more of her. Then the next chapter was Aeron and I was even more riveted to have a new POV and more backstory on Euron. This was followed of course by the Dorne chapter which was just as interesting, if not more, than the chapters that preceded it, and had me trying to figure out who my favorite Sand Snake was in between trying to figure out Doran's game. In short, this continued for the rest of the book and I was thoroughly entertained.

If anything, and this is likely to be decidedly against what most fans feel, reading AFfC made me wish the writer had done away with a third of Tyrion chapters in ACoK and ASoS, where he did nothing but bone Shae and get up to petty schemes that never amounted to very much, and replaced them with more Greyjoy and Martell stuff, or even a Tyrell POV.

But what can I say? Everybody has different tastes. That said, if you're one of those people that don't like the Greyjoys, don't like the Martells, don't like Daenerys, and don't like Jon, why the hell are you reading the series?

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Oh come on, the problem he had was always the "Mereenese Knot". What exactly that is we don't know, but we know it has to do with Dany and Mereen. So given that Dany was not in AFFC, how can anyone think that AFFC contained the part he had the greatest struggle with?

Besides, any illusions about that should have been dispelled after you read AFFC. What was in AFFC that was so difficult? There were almost no major plot advancements other than the fall of Riverrun and the fall of Cersei, neither required much plot twist or tied into any other plots threads that would have made them hard to write. Seriously, if you thought AFFC was the harder part, just which POV did you think was his main road block, which POV had an story arc so complex and dense and world affecting that would make you think was a terribly difficult for him to write.

As others have pointed out, none of us had heard of the Meerenese knot until two, maybe three years ago. Nobody sure as hell knew what it was during the writing of AFFC, or thought it was the reason for AFFC's delay. And clearly GRRM found AFFC hard to write. Hence the first words of his afterword being "This one was a bitch." I'm not saying that ADWD wasn't hard or harder to write; obviously it was. What I'm saying is that many readers in 2005, including myself, thought that ADWD would come a lot faster than AFFC due to our assumption that GRRM resolved the five year gap. Maybe I'm remembering everything wrong and there were scores of readers predicting that ADWD would take longer than Feast. But I doubt it; there was lots of optimism back then about Dragon's completion date. My overall point then, is that we shouldn't necessarily think the rest of the series will flow easy just because one problem has been resolved. The five year gap problem turned into the Meerenese knot/rewriting problem, and it's possible that Winds of Winter will have another problem, causing it to be delayed. Trust me, I will be extremely happy to be proven wrong and have Martin write WoW in two to three years.

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So with AFfC the problem was fudging the story into place with no five-year gap, which caused problems with timeline synchronicity (particularly for those going to Essos: Meereenese knot) that delayed ADwD.

We have no idea what problems may arise with TWoW, but my sense is that AFfC and ADwD have been getting everyone into place for the third act. Now he just needs to write that third act. Based on the problems we're aware of, it sounds like they should be written faster, though GRRM may go through extra rewrites and revisions to get it juuust right.

Keeping my fingers crossed for the full set by 2020.

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I expect TWoW to take another 2 years, 3 max. GRRM has said that he doesn't want the TV series catching up with him, so that gives him 4 years to publish the next one and 5 to publish the last one. So I think we will see the next two falling into place 2-3 years since the last one.

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GRRM himself has said 3.5 years, give or take, was what he himself was hoping for/expecting... not predicting, mind, just kind of hoping for it. He's more a perfectionist, and the material's a lot more complicated than it was, so... 3.5 years, +/-.

It'd be cool if it just raced along, but I wouldn't hold my breath (as even a speedy two years would be a really long time to hold one's breath!)

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We all knew the book would be an orgy of Greyjoy POV's that 99% of loyal readers don't care about, we just didn't want it confirmed.

You obviously weren't around the forums when Arms of the Kraken (the novella that was released a few years before AFFC) came out. It was highly regarded and got everyone here MORE excited about AFFC. It also earned a Hugo nomination. AotK consisted of the Greyjoy chapters that later made it in to AFFC right up until the end of the Kingsmoot.

I thought it was the strongest story arc in all of Feast; with a beginning, a midpoint and a whiz-bang ending.

It inevitable in a well-crafted tale of a world falling into chaos that while the story may start small, it must grow to reflect that more players would enter the game. Only in hack-written fantasy stories would the rest of the world stand idle while a bastard, an exile and a dwarf saved humankind. Thankfully, this is not such a story. Each of the players big and small attempts to turn events in their favor.

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Hmm. Despite the 'no ARCs' thing, it does sound like a few review copies (bound proofs, presumably) are doing the rounds. io9 are apparently expecting one any time as well as PW and TIME. So we should have more reviews soon, hopefully (though not from io9, their reviewer still needs to review AFFC first).

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Hmm. Despite the 'no ARCs' thing, it does sound like a few review copies (bound proofs, presumably) are doing the rounds. io9 are apparently expecting one any time as well as PW and TIME. So we should have more reviews soon, hopefully (though not from io9, their reviewer still needs to review AFFC first).

Great to hear. I'm looking forward to a good in-depth review from someone who knows the story well.

Why send a bound manuscript, presumably in short supply, to a reviewer who hasn't yet reviewed AFFC and may not even get to ADWD before July 12? Beats me.

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Review=meh for me. I'll judge it on my own terms. And to be honest, if it is written exactly like AFFC, I won't mind. It is impossible to give Storm a great successor, and the slower pace of Feast set itself apart from any fantasy novel I've read, if it only made you realize what kind of shitstorm is still around after a war.

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A few images recur in the enormously complex fifth installment of Martin's massively multicharacter epic: the chess-like game cyvasse, small rivers flowing into larger ones, ships and armies battered by terrible storms.

Granted this is a one-paragraph review for booksellers, but cyvasse seems like a curious element of the book to pick out. Will we get chapters of Areo watching Doran playing games by himself, with Arianne, with Cersei's emissary?

Quentyn passing his time playing cyvasse? That seems consistent with his character from his spoiler chapter.

Maybe Victarion takes up the game in Meereen?

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Granted this is a one-paragraph review for booksellers, but cyvasse seems like a curious element of the book to pick out. Will we get chapters of Areo watching Doran playing games by himself, with Arianne, with Cersei's emissary?

Quentyn passing his time playing cyvasse? That seems consistent with his character from his spoiler chapter.

Maybe Victarion takes up the game in Meereen?

Maybe Jon Snow and Stannis will play together?

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Damnit. Just got a big book order in. I badly want to start Peter Hamilton's Pandora's Star but im not sure im going to have the time to finish it before ADWD.

That's a good series. It's separate from the void trilogy (it's nice background but two are completely separate) and you can read both independently.

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Well then, here's to the 1% of loyal readers who, you know, enjoy the entire series!

I love the Greyjoys, the Martells even more, and think Brienne is just fine.

I like the Martells (the Queen of Thorns rocks!) and have no problem with Brienne; but I hope that all of the Greyjoys sink, die, take the black, or otherwise leave the scenario, starting with Theon.

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