[ADwD Spoilers] Well That Was Disappointing

[kungtotte]

Pretty sure that George cleaved the Meereeneese Knot fairly well at the end of the book.

Do you really think Dany will go back to sitting on her ass and dithering over dead freedmen now? She rides a dragon, war is happening between her forces and the Yunkish troops (and Barristan the Bold has a plan that stands a good chance of actually working out) and basically shit is going down.

Five'll get you ten that Daario was one of the first bodies loaded onto the trebuchets too, so she's going to rage out and people will rue the day they woke the dragon.

[Fez]

I had been hoping for years now - years! Cripes! - that this book would see the ascendance of Dany into a seasoned, strong leader with a nice little Fellowship of sorts. Tyrion and Barristan, multiple suitors, etc and onward. I figured that this Knot that GRRM has been laboring over for 11 freaking years would mean he'd actually untie it in ADWD, get the hell out of the thoroughly un-interesting Slaver's Bay, and get the damn show on the road as my mother says. Not so much.

And who in the hell wants to read about Theon motherfucking Greyjoy anymore?

Me for one, regarding Theon. I thought his chapters were some of the best in the entire book; tremendous stuff, and I hated his ACOK chapters. And I know I'm not alone on this one, quite a few people who have major problems with other parts of the book still say that Theon's chapters were a highlight.

As for Dany, its clear that her story is not headed in the direction in you would have liked. But that doesn't make it a bad story, it just means not the one you wanted.

[Ellroy]

So, basically, on one hand we have an author who believes that the more gratuitous details a book has the more immersive it is.

You are forcing a quote out of him and that's unfair. And it seems to me that we have readed 2 different authors during those long years. GRRM have allways detailled anything to no end. Yes, even in the first 3 books. AGoT, ACoK and ASoS has a "stupid" amount of detail.

I think that what George want to say is that since he values charachterization over plot and since the world is a charachter in itself, details are important and are one of the strenght of his books to give the kind of vicarious experience he wants the reader to feel. And I agree and that's allways been the case for ASOIAF. Infact, I have friends who could not appreciate the series because of GRRM's mannerism.

[Argonath Diver]

Me for one, regarding Theon. I thought his chapters were some of the best in the entire book; tremendous stuff, and I hated his ACOK chapters. And I know I'm not alone on this one, quite a few people who have major problems with other parts of the book still say that Theon's chapters were a highlight.

As for Dany, its clear that her story is not headed in the direction in you would have liked. But that doesn't make it a bad story, it just means not the one you wanted.

I concede that the Reek-to-Theon process was well-written and interesting. I simply am uninterested in dithering around with the character entirely, though. Reading about a disliked character is something that we all do, in this series and others. Surely you spent a portion of your ADWD first read thinking, "Get on with it already!", yes?

Regarding Dany, it was apparent early on that a whimsical Fellowship (Queen, Dwarf, Knight, Barbarian, Love Interest(s) on a quest for glory) wasn't going to happen. I can dust off Eddings for that stuff. I certainly did think that Dany would be in a position of strength by the finale of ADWD, though. I did not mean that her story is now 'bad', I simply want it to get moving back to Westeros, or at least Volantis. Not alone, with an angry dragon and more Dothraki.

I gave up on Jordan after, oh, 8 or 10, somewhere in there. I will ride out Martin's ship until the end. I just want it outta the doldrums and sailing onward, to glory or ruin.

[Ded As Ned]

It's like putting a fox in a charge of guarding a coop of suicidal chickens.

:agree: Loved that analogy!

[Tom Sawyer]

Wait, are people saying that this book actually did have an editor assigned to it?

That makes it even worse.

[Podrick + Arya = Win]

Wait, are people saying that this book actually did have an editor assigned to it?

That makes it even worse.

LOL :rofl:

[Lord Eddard]

Wait, are people saying that this book actually did have an editor assigned to it?

That makes it even worse.

What is even more worse that she, George's editor, apparently pushed him to leave out the two major climaxes at the end of the book because she thought that dDnce wouldn't need those - unbelievable!

Here is the source and the quote:

http://sf-fantasy.suvudu.com/2011/07/dance-interview-with-george-r-r-martin-editor-anne-groell.html

"Anne Groell: Finishing this book where he absolutely wanted to end it would have taken probably another year and more pages than could be realistically bound between two covers. And so much great stuff had happened already that no one, I felt, could be unsatisfied by the developments. So he voluntarily pulled one big sequence out of the book. I lobbied for another…and it came out, too. People may hold me to blame for this, but I still think it was the right choice. The book is so big and complex and rich and wonderful that adding these two sequences would not have made it any better than it already its."

[Raksha the Demon]

You are forcing a quote out of him and that's unfair. And it seems to me that we have readed 2 different authors during those long years. GRRM have allways detailled anything to no end. Yes, even in the first 3 books. AGoT, ACoK and ASoS has a "stupid" amount of detail.

I think that what George want to say is that since he values charachterization over plot and since the world is a charachter in itself, details are important and are one of the strenght of his books to give the kind of vicarious experience he wants the reader to feel. And I agree and that's allways been the case for ASOIAF. Infact, I have friends who could not appreciate the series because of GRRM's mannerism.

That may well be the root of my slight disappointment with ADWD. I look for a balance between plot/characterization, and, if one has to overwhelm the other, would prefer more plot and less characterization to more characterization and less plot. That's a personal preference. GRRM is capable of balancing plot and characterization (read Fevre Dream), but it may be more difficult for him to do in a series this size, with so many interesting characters.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Except for the pesky fact that Petyr will reveal too much plots. He knows, and does, too much.

I don't think he'll be a POV either, but isn't some of LF's knowledge getting superceded by events? Okay, so it was LF who poisoned Joffrey. But how does it hurt the reader to know that?

He's a weaselly snake plotting for the crown, but at some level, I can't imagine he has that many secrets remaining that would be true spoilers for readers.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

I concede that the Reek-to-Theon process was well-written and interesting. I simply am uninterested in dithering around with the character entirely, though. Reading about a disliked character is something that we all do, in this series and others. Surely you spent a portion of your ADWD first read thinking, "Get on with it already!", yes?

For me, the Reek/Theon chapters were good because GRRM did his character development while advancing the plot at the same time. Theon was a window into what was happening in the North. The problem I had with Arya was that while her character arguably progressed, nothing that happened to her told us anything about what was happening in the larger picture.

As for Danaerys chapters....well, I was just waiting for her to tug on her braid to complete the circle.

[Cot]

The odd thing was, I was expecting to enjoy the last 400pages more, as I was under the impression this was when events overtook AFFC, which they did.

However, I loved the first 600 pages, thought the book was superb, I'd rank it right on par, and superior in some ways, to the first trilogy.

The last 350 odd pages though, jesus, it just fizzled, completely, went bloody nowhere... so frustrating. As Rockroi alluded to, all build up, no money shot. Disappointing, especially as it started so well - I preferred AFFC.

I find it utterly bizarre how some people could find this book (in totality) superior to ACOK, bizarre.

[Herta]

I didn't have to wait for Dance.I came to the series from the HBO show & read all four books in succession in the past few weeks. I only finished AFFC 2 days before Dance came out, and I still found Dance to be a massively inferior book to all the 4 that preceded it. Yes, even Feast.

AFFC was a character driven book, well drawn, vivd, with a pathos and a depth of insight only matched by the Theon chapters in ADWD. Though the book differed in tone and structure from the first 3 books it has a definite character of its own and once I got used to it I found a rhythm to the succession of chapters that made the book flow for me. The characters that dominated AFFC, I found engaging. I loved what Jamie and Breinne and even Cerssie, the mad cow, had to tell me about themselves and their surroundings. Not so with ADWD.

I didn't mind the cliffhangers, what bugged me was: The craft of the book. The POV read as completely disparate from each other, unconnected. The book moved in jerks and stops for me. The material covered was mostly uninteresting, the character development lacked authenticity, and most annoying of all, 2 of the main POVs (Tyrion, Dany) inhabited a cartoonish world with hardly any dimensionality at all which robbed their POVs of context (more pronounced for Dany than for Tyrion). Also, the story told in ADWD could have easily been told just as well in a lot less pages. When I can skim through chapter, sometimes skip entire chapters, and still not miss a single beat of the plot, that tells me that this book was in dire need of some old fashioned tightening.

I was extremely disappointed in ADWD and it has nothing to do with expectations or waiting time, I'm afraid.

My feelings exactly! What drew me (and kept me) to the books was the wonderful, insightful characters and the dilemmas they faced. I am very worried that these characters are becoming cartoons and sacrificed to some kind of fantasy ethos where people have to become assassin zombies or are revived from the dead for no purpose except to shock.

[Vvion]

Five'll get you ten that Daario was one of the first bodies loaded onto the trebuchets too, so she's going to rage out and people will rue the day they woke the dragon.

Isn't it far more likely that they are using their trebuchets to fling rotting bodies that are infected with pale mare over the city walls? Killing the hostages would weaken the position of the Yunkai. But causing a full fledged plague outbreak inside a besieged city is as good as winning the war.

[Layne]

Re: Layne

The worst kind of fan review are the kinds that are based on the fan's individual hate/love of the characters. Why, I don't like Theon, so let's cut his chapters because fuck it, nobody should care about Theon.

I don't hate Sansa. She's just not relevant to the narrative anymore. She, like the Greyjoys, needed to be a "Hey, did you hear that happened?" moment when Baelish shows back up with her in a later novel. Wading through pages and pages of material that isn't relevant to the greater story just for one final "Oh, guess what, I'm going to use you to claim Winterfell by marrying you to somebody!"

:wideeyed:

Wow, I totally didn't think Littlefinger had a master plan when he stole away with Sansa. And it has to do with Winterfell? Oh wait, you mean like everyone else that has had their hands on Sansa? Or with Arya (or fake Arya)? Well, I'm certainly glad we devoted eighty pages of this book to finding that out while she sat around, griped, and played with Robert Arryn. These are all after-the-fact type events that didn't need a POV chapter series. If we don't want Littlefinger around because it would expose too many plots, then we also don't need him around to be a tertiary character in Sansa's otherwise meaningless story in Feast.

The problem at hand being discussed was that the series has become over-bloated and over-written, and taking way, way too long to finish. If Martin could write at a better pace and was actually finishing books anywhere near "on time" or a "reasonable time", then it wouldn't be an issue and I'd again, like I said the first time, say "Over-write away!". Now, I don't expect Martin to actually read this, or really even care what I have to say. But, this being the Internet, means I'll happily take a few minutes out of my day and write an honest critique for the means of intelligent debate. Or, in the case of you, debate in a less intelligent way, with curt and childish insults. Aren't board moderators supposed to discourage your kind of behavior, not contribute to it? If you want to argue against me and say that you felt Sansa's chapters could/should have stayed in a trimmed down version of Feast/Dance, be my guest. I didn't say I was automatically right, I gave a list of chapters I felt could/should be cut.

[Sun]

I don't know the industry well enough to say whether they could have added a few hundred more pages, but I will say one thing: this book left me feeling that book 6 could be amazing.

ETA: Another way of looking at it...and I know this doesn't help at the moment...but fast-forward to a future in which book 6 is out. I don't think people who get into the series then will finish book 5 being disappointed. I think they'll finish book 5 and tear into book 6 right away.

Or, they'll read the book, skimming through large chunks of it as I did, be very grateful upon reaching page 959 that they managed to get through it, crack open the first page of book 6 with an ardent prayer, to both the old gods and new, for it to be a reading experience more akin to the first 3 books than the last.

[Ryan E]

I really loved the book, other than the ending (or lack therof). If we would've gotten a satisfying resolution to the Meereen War and the Stannis/Bolton War, it would have been an amazing book. Unfortunately we didn't and the story feels cut short. Still excellent but it really did need another 200 pages, it feels like we got everything but the climax. And I can handle the Jon cliffhanger, but I thought we should have resolutions to the other story points, especially the wars.

Great book, but unsatisfying because the climax of the stories wasn't included.

[Shaun Snow]

I really loved the book, other than the ending (or lack therof). If we would've gotten a satisfying resolution to the Meereen War and the Stannis/Bolton War, it would have been an amazing book. Unfortunately we didn't and the story feels cut short. Still excellent but it really did need another 200 pages, it feels like we got everything but the climax. And I can handle the Jon cliffhanger, but I thought we should have resolutions to the other story points, especially the wars.

Great book, but unsatisfying because the climax of the stories wasn't included.

That pretty much sums up my feelings upon completion of the novel. I had enjoyed it right up until I saw the word "epilogue", at which point my reaction was "Wait, thats it!? Wheres the resolution to the Stannis v Bolton fight? Does this mean we have yet another book of bloody Meereen to go? Aw, man"

[TerraPrime]

Re: FLoW

I don't think he'll be a POV either, but isn't some of LF's knowledge getting superceded by events? Okay, so it was LF who poisoned Joffrey. But how does it hurt the reader to know that?

He's a weaselly snake plotting for the crown, but at some level, I can't imagine he has that many secrets remaining that would be true spoilers for readers.

Still, if all of LF's POV are revelations that don't matter much any more, then would it be an interesting POV to add? Perhaps. But it might also seem too much like the old detective stories endings, wouldn't you think? I think Martin had also said before that Varys and LF POVs will ruin too many plots and so we'll never seen those POVs.

Re: Layne

I don't hate Sansa. She's just not relevant to the narrative anymore. She, like the Greyjoys, needed to be a "Hey, did you hear that happened?" moment when Baelish shows back up with her in a later novel. Wading through pages and pages of material that isn't relevant to the greater story just for one final "Oh, guess what, I'm going to use you to claim Winterfell by marrying you to somebody!"

I'm amused when I read complaints concerning the so-called "greater story."

Wow, I totally didn't think Littlefinger had a master plan when he stole away with Sansa. And it has to do with Winterfell? Oh wait, you mean like everyone else that has had their hands on Sansa? Or with Arya (or fake Arya)? Well, I'm certainly glad we devoted eighty pages of this book to finding that out while she sat around, griped, and played with Robert Arryn. These are all after-the-fact type events that didn't need a POV chapter series. If we don't want Littlefinger around because it would expose too many plots, then we also don't need him around to be a tertiary character in Sansa's otherwise meaningless story in Feast.

It's called character development. You know the trope where a main character becomes a badass fighter in the blink of an eye? Yeah, that's the trope Martin is trying to avoid here, I'm guessing. A pawn can take a queen in the chess game, but only if it's placed at the right place, with the right support. Littlefinger is obviously a key player in the Game of Thrones, and he will need a worthwhile adversary so that the can triumph/be defeated in a believable, and satisfying, manner. My own guess is that Sansa is being positioned right now to offer us that leverage when the time comes. Show the dagger in act1 if you want to use it in act2, so to speak.

The problem at hand being discussed was that the series has become over-bloated and over-written, and taking way, way too long to finish. If Martin could write at a better pace and was actually finishing books anywhere near "on time" or a "reasonable time", then it wouldn't be an issue and I'd again, like I said the first time, say "Over-write away!".

Taking too long to finish? According to whose schedule, anyway?

Or, in the case of you, debate in a less intelligent way, with curt and childish insults.

Insults? Disagreement, yes. Mocking, yes. Criticism, yes. But not insults. If you can't separate insults from disagreement, then the internet is probably not going to be a happy place for you.

Aren't board moderators supposed to discourage your kind of behavior, not contribute to it?

I'm not sure what my being a moderator has anything to do with anything, but gripe away.

If you want to argue against me and say that you felt Sansa's chapters could/should have stayed in a trimmed down version of Feast/Dance, be my guest. I didn't say I was automatically right, I gave a list of chapters I felt could/should be cut.

I was not aware that you were presenting arguments. What you had posted so far seemed to consist mostly of your opinions backed by your own preferences. "I like the color orange because I like bright colors" is not an argument, you know. So, no, I wasn't trying to argue with you.

[The Stranger]

Taking too long to finish? According to whose schedule, anyway?

The Grim Reaper's.