[ADWD SPOILERS] After ADWD, how big is your anticipation for the next book?

[One Hand Clapping]

I have no hidden agendas at all - I loved the first three books, found Feast interesting in parts and was hugely disappointed by ADWD.

I am neither a fanboi or a hater, have read thousands of books over the last 40-odd years and reviewed a fair proportion of them.

And look at the highest ranked negative reviews and they are not haters either - they are just deeply disappointed readers like me who hoped for a great book, would have settled for an OK one and got an incomplete (how else is one to take the editors statement that the final chapters were dropped?) and abysmally edited mess of a book.

Yes there are people and even a website or two whose loathing of GRRM is IMO creepy and semi-pathological - in the last analysis he is a writer of genre fiction making an honest buck and is entitled to bad days or even a whole bad decade like the last one just as you or I are.

But I am not one of those people and neither AFAICS are most of the hundreds of reviewers on amazon.

The people I really can't understand are those who gave it five stars - come on - even George called it a bitch of a book and has IIRC admitted that he wished he could have done it differently.

And any book that takes a decade for a genre writer as professional as George to complete and is abandoned multiple times is clearly problematic.

If the author himself is giving out coded messages that this is not as good as it might/should have been how can you give it five stars unless you are also playing a game and trying to boost the average score (which last time I looked was 3-stars on both the US and UK amazons - which is distinctly underwhelming for a series whose first three volumes were on 4 or 4.5 stars).

[Sega AM2]

I don't really see a big shift in GRRM's shift or style, honestly. I think people are more familiar with it and have analyzed it ad nauseum, which accounts for many peoples' perceived shift.

You don't see a shift in style? You think the first three books are anywhere near the last two? That GRRM hasn't changed at all?

You don't see that the first three books took only a few years each to write but the last two have taken over a decade? You don't see him wanting to jump five years and then scrapping it as him being completely lost? Or him splitting the POVs into two books as not changing his style?

You don't see that he made no snide comments at the ends of the first three books but at the ends of the last two he expressed that he hated writing them? "These books were bastards and bitches to write". You don't see that he hates writing ASOIAF now? Or that he at least hated the last two books? You don't see that GRRM is putting off on writing TWOW until 2012 at the very earliest? You think he actually wants to finish this series? He's not in any rush it seems. "Don't worry...ADWD with all your favorite characters will be out next year".

You don't see the inconsistencies with chapter titles? Arya. Bran. Theon. Davos. Straight to the point. That's how the first three books were. The Lost Lord. The Drowned Prophet. The Watcher. The Silly Little Girl. The Sacrifice. The Iron Man. Meandering and indirect. It's another change in style, for better or worse. Even if you like it, it is still a change in style. And while the chapter titles might be minor to some, for me, they reflect an overall change in attitude towards the series for GRRM. He's experimenting now, and no editors are there to check him.

You don't see how before the HBO show GRRM was relatively humble for a major author? Now he bashes BSG and LOST like no one's business (though deservedly in my opinion)? Says that he is immune to negative reviews and that Amazon.com reviewers are only trolls who have a secret conspiracy to keep him down (yes he actually believes this LOL)? I mean seriously...his 'yes men' must really be working full time to ensure that no one dare mocks the emperor for his new clothes.

You don't see how in AGOT when people travel it takes hardly any time, sometimes even a single chapter. Cat goes from Winterfell to King's Landing in zero pages. Tyrion and Jon are at The Wall in one chapter. Davos and Stannis travel to The Wall off POV. But in the last two books? Sam takes an entire book to travel from The Wall to the Citadel in AFFC. Tyrion travelogues his way through Essos in ADWD buying time until GRRM can resolve his Meereense Not. When Jon Connington and New Aegon made it from Essos to Westeros off POV in ADWD I almost feinted.

Even if you heap praise all over AFFC and ADWD it should still be obvious that the styles have changed dramatically. Even if you assert that the quality of the first three books is the same as the last two you should still be able to see the changes in styles. The splitting of the POVs alone is a major change that shows that GRRM is "a gardener and not an architect". GRRM himself admits he changes styles. It seems like the rabid fanboys get upset when people say GRRM changes styles because they think it is criticism. I don't care if GRRM gardens his story as long as it is continually good. Well for me, GRRM watered AFFC and ADWD, and nothing of substance grew.

Now, it might not be your opinion that Dance is a 2.9/5 book - fair enough - but to invent "hidden agendas" for the negative reviews - sorry, that's pretty pathetic.

Denial won't change facts. ADWD is sadly not the masterpiece we all wished it to be. Deal with it.

Yes...people will deal with it...by making up hidden conspiracies and agendas and doing anything that they possibly can to discredit any criticism or dissent in the ranks. The grand Amazon.com troll conspiracy is out to get GRRM! Quick get the pitchforks! No one must reveal to the emperor that he is naked!

At least Amazon leaves up the valid criticisms, and we've seen them delete the idiotic and inflammatory reviews. I've seen GRRM's web admins hack and slash any negative comments, even constructive ones, from his site. I don't mind the assholes having their comments burned with wildfire but to take any valid critique of the book and remove it from existence? That is just pathetic. And the mods here have been deleting lots of good posts that analyze and critique ADWD. I guess people are not confident in their assertion that ADWD is as good as AGOT-ASOS because they are deleting or discrediting with abandon all contrary opinions.

I hope TWOW is as good as ASOS, and that GRRM uses a flaming sword to cut away all doubt that he is truly in command of this series. I'd love to see him recover and put the series on track to be the greatest fantasy series ever written, like it was after ASOS came out. But seeing as he hated writing AFFC and ADWD...and that he refuses to start writing TWOW until 2012. I just don't see him being enthusiastic about the series anymore, at least compared to how he started things out by cranking out three incredible books one after the other.

[Buster52]

Regarding the Amazon reviews... meh. I've long ago learned to discount a lot of them.

Publishers Weekly:

Reviews

SF/Fantasy/Horror

WINTER HAS COME

Ice, fire, and blood infuse a long-awaited epic tale.

A Dance with Dragons: A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5 George R.R. Martin. Bantam, $35 (1,056p) ISBN 978-0-553-80147-7

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.

These themes suggest that readers should think strategically, be patient as the story grows, and brace for a beating. Martin's fans, however, are hungry for more action and purpose, their appetites whetted by a six-year wait and the recent HBO adaptation of A Game of Thrones. Dance was originally the second half of 2005's A Feast for Crows, sometimes criticized for shifting from battles and intrigue to slow trudges through war-torn, corpse-littered Westeros. The new volume has a similar feel to Feast and takes plate over a similar time frame; Martin keeps it fresh by focusing on popular characters Tyrion Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, and Jon Snow, all notably absent from the previous book. These three are generally thought the most plausible riders of the titular dragons, but plots within plots abound, and two strong new candidates for those scaly saddles emerge as a powerful enemy threatens Daenerys's captured city of Meereen, Tyrion is kidnapped by slavers, and treachery undermines Jon's command of the undead-battling Night's Watch. More characters are revived than killed off and more peace accords signed than wars declared, but the heart-hammering conclusion hints that the next installment will see a return to the fiery battles and icy terror that earned the series its fanatic following. Even ostensibly disillusioned fans will be caught up in the interweaving stories, especially when Martin drops little hints around long-debated questions such as Jon's parentage. Author tour. (July)

Entertainment Weekly:

A Dance With Dragons

George R.R. Martin

FANTASY

Back IN 2005, George R.R. Martin released A Feast for Crows, the fourth book in his fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire (the basis for HBO's hit show Game of Thrones). Despite its almost-800-page length, Crows was only half a novel, really. The author admitted that the sheer size of his ambitious narrative had forced him to split one planned book in two. What's more, many of his most beloved characters were absent from Crows.

But now the second half of that tale has arrived. And if Crows was only half a novel, A Dance With Dragons is its opposite: By turns thrilling, funny, scary, emotionally devastating, oddly inspirational, and just plain grand, it feels like a compilation of several different great fantasy novels as it pulls together the disparate characters' story lines. The imp Tyrion Lannister finds himself on a genuine quest, traveling by land and sea. Jon Snow, hero of the icy north, is building an army to battle an ancient evil. Daenerys Targaryen, the Dragon Queen, must contend with far more human concerns, ruling a rowdy city-state whose government rivals The Wire's Baltimore in complexity. There's a pirate lord sailing through mystical waters, a warrior princess rebelling against kings, and an imprisoned traitor-prince brutalized by his captors. (And these last three are all members of the same family!) But Dragons is also a brilliantly unified work: Each character is struggling, in his or her own way, to create order out of chaos.

Halfway through, one character says, "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one." In Dragons, "a thousand lives" is a low estimate. This is top-notch kitchen-sink storytelling--part straightforward pulp, part high fantasy--that will leave you thirsty for more. Luckily, Martin has two more books on the way. But let's not rush the man, people: When the writing is this good, it's worth the wait. A

[alguien]

The people I really can't understand are those who gave it five stars - come on - even George called it a bitch of a book and has IIRC admitted that he wished he could have done it differently.

And any book that takes a decade for a genre writer as professional as George to complete and is abandoned multiple times is clearly problematic.

That seems like a pretty valid opinion.

The only other thought I would add is that I'd be willing to bet that if this exact same book had come out a year after AFFC, the average rating would be significantly higher.

Whether or not one thinks its valid to include frustration at a long-awaited book or acknowledge heightened expectations as part of a review, I do think the wait had some influence on peoples' opinions of the book.

ETA: and honestly? I think the same criticism can be given to those who gave it a one star review. That's letting your hate of the wait take control.

[winter wonderland]

Denial won't change facts. ADWD is sadly not the masterpiece we all wished it to be. Deal with it.

I actually agree with this thought, but I don't see how that means it was a bad book, or that the next book will suck. I liked the book alot, but I didn't think it lived up to the last few. I gave it four stars in my review, while the first three I would have given five. Expecting someone to write a masterpiece with every book is unrealistic. If you are really that disappointed stop reading the books. No one is forcing you to.

[David Selig]

I personally would give it four stars if I weren't too lazy to write a review. But I find the one star review much more problematic than the five stars. The high quality of the writing style should be enough to get the book at least 2 stars, no matter how much the reviewer hated the cliffhangers, the padding, the character development, the slow plot, or whatever other flaws he has seen, if he had tried to be objective at least to a degree. Giving ADWD just one star show a big lack of objectivity IMO, usually by people who either had extremely high expectations and were disappointed they weren't met or from people who are so angry at the long time of waiting between books that they magnify all flaws to an extreme degree.

[alguien]

You don't see a shift in style? You think the first three books are anywhere near the last two? That GRRM hasn't changed at all?

No. His style is pretty much the same. He uses lavish descriptions, POV narration, has an instinct for killer dialog and a TV sense of when to end a chapter. I don't see any significant change in his rhythm, prose, or action.

You don't see that the first three books took only a few years each to write but the last two have taken over a decade? You don't see him wanting to jump five years and then scrapping it as him being completely lost? Or him splitting the POVs into two books as not changing his style?

Time to write isn't the same as style. I think the story structure itself has changed, and has become progressively more and more difficult to get under control. That's a very different thing than writing style.

So if you're saying that the structure of the books has changed, certainly. They've grown larger, more encompassing, and more difficult to keep moving.

You don't see that he made no snide comments at the ends of the first three books but at the ends of the last two he expressed that he hated writing them? "These books were bastards and bitches to write". You don't see that he hates writing ASOIAF now? Or that he at least hated the last two books?

I think you're reading a little much into these statements. If you listen to any interview he's given, GRRM consistently talks about how he loves writing and loves his characters. Now, can you still love a task even if its really hard? Certainly. I ran 17 miles last Saturday. It was a bitch. But I also really enjoyed it.

You don't see the inconsistencies with chapter titles? Arya. Bran. Theon. Davos. Straight to the point. That's how the first three books were. The Lost Lord. The Drowned Prophet. The Watcher. The Silly Little Girl. The Sacrifice. The Iron Man. Meandering and indirect.

Changing chapter title names?!? That's a little weak. In every book there's been new characters added. I really don't mind if the title denotes a stage in the character's narrative arc. Perhaps that's a slight change, but pretty damn minor IMO.

He's experimenting now, and no editors are there to check him.

Well this is just flat out untrue. Its been confirmed that Anne Groell is the reason you're holding ADWD in your hands. Now, she also might be the reason for all the cliffhangers, but she was the one who made him cut segments from ADWD so we could read it this year.

You don't see how before the HBO show GRRM was relatively humble for a major author? Now he bashes BSG and LOST like no one's business (though deservedly in my opinion)? Says that he is immune to negative reviews and that Amazon.com reviewers are only trolls who have a secret conspiracy to keep him down (yes he actually believes this LOL)? I mean seriously...his 'yes men' must really be working full time to ensure that no one dare mocks the emperor for his new clothes.

Have you met him recently? By all accounts he seems to be pretty much the same guy as before, at least from the BwB people I know. He's never been shy about bashing things, from Star Wars, to Harry Potter, to Lost or BSG. That's the same as its always been, its just now people pay more attention. And to be honest, he was already a pretty big success before HBO came out. I know its grown now, but I really can't see any evidence for this claim that GRRM has changed. He's a pretty nice guy with a good sense of humor. A bit nerdy, but hey, I can't hold that against him. :)

[One Hand Clapping]

Actually I don't mind George experimenting with a new more expansive style.

One of his other projects has been editing a new book of stories set in Jack Vance's Dying Earth and I can fully see that he decided to try his hand at a Vancian travelogue where characters amble about a weird and wonderful universe encountering strange individuals and societies.

But that is not what the first three books or even AFFC (which for all its faults is fairly tightly focused and where the travelogues have a purpose in firstly deepening our understanding of what war means in such a society and secondly on getting at least a couple of the characters to where they need to be to advance the plot) were about.

And for Vance's stories to work required a very special and deeply perverse sense of humour and an ability to imagine and convincingly describe stuff that is truly alien and bizarre.

But ASOIAF was not supposed to be that sort of fantasy - its grounded very solidly in an 'if you are not covered in Sh*t you must be a king' view of the real medieval world plus a fair bit from historical slave societies (the unsullied are a particularly nasty version of mamelukes and janissaries, the fighting pits of Roman arenas, the decadent slaver lords are lifted from Carthage as depicted in Flaubert's Salammbo etc).

And in fact George while he gives us hundreds of pages of travelogue in ADWD doesn't really introduce any new cultures at all - we learn a bit more about Volantis and maybe Pentos (neither of which is however that distinctive or interesting) get a bit closer to the ruins of Valyria without actually arriving there, encounter the Stone Men but only as if they were a random monster encounter in an RPG.

So in contrast to the simple and economical journeys of books 1-3 where Catelyn leaves Winterfell and pops up in Kings Landing a few chapters later or Tyrion and Jon travel the hundreds of leagues to the wall with but a single fireside stop for a bit of exposition and character development we get these interminable and repetitive descriptions of boats and the flora and fauna the passengers see from the boat and the games of cyvasse they play to fill the time and the stuff they eat and the emptying of their bladders and bowels afterwards (although being a middle aged man whose had a UTI myself I can well appreciate GRRMs apparent obsession with natural functions since he had his own bit of trouble)....

And for this we were denied any resolution of the Mereen or Winterfell or Jaime/Brienne or Jon cliffhangers? (I am not asking for them all but resolving just one would have made all the difference between a bad and an OK book).

Plus George can write brilliantly funny and witty conversations - why else do we love Tyrion? - but that skill seems to have completely abandoned him after ASOS - and without humour you can't just do Vancian fiction.

Of course they are his books and he really owes us nothing and now he no longer has to write another word to pay the rent or keep the pot boiling George can do any damn thing he wants with his intellectual property.

The real question is whether he is willing to admit that some experiments work and some don't - and if it don't work then you stop doing it and go back to a style that does.

[Tom Sawyer]

The main thing I think of when trying to describe ADWD is a scene from the middle of Monty Python's The Holy Grail where the narrator is meandering on about birds for a bit and then they cut away to an army that screams "GET ON WITH IT!!!!". Martin lacks the cutaway scene to the army. The writing's fine and all, but there's too much exposition and too little story.

Oberon the Ambivalent and Aegon the Redundant are the two main new plotlines introduced in this book and my reactions to both was a big "meh". Oberon was a dud throughout his whole adventure and his getting fried by a dragon barely rated a shrug. The Aegon thing made it look like he was trying to shoehorn a Dunk and Egg story into the series for no particular reason and left me wondering why he was there more than anything else.

I'm kind of looking forward to the next book because I'm rereading ASOS right now and that's a kickass novel and I want to see more of it. On the other hand, I'm nervous that this was Martin's Path of Daggers and we still have to sit through Winter's Heart and Crossroads of Twilight before the story starts moving forward again.

[Lord Eddard]

I'm kind of looking forward to the next book because I'm rereading ASOS right now and that's a kickass novel and I want to see more of it. On the other hand, I'm nervous that this was Martin's Path of Daggers and we still have to sit through Winter's Heart and Crossroads of Twilight before the story starts moving forward again.

I share your concern. Furthermore when you think, when was the last time Martin published a real quality work? 2000, with Storm of Swords, 11 years ago. Eleven years! In between he wrote the two "half" books Feast and Dance that are deemed lacking compared to the first three (look here in the Rate the Books thread and on Amazon), one Dunk and Egg short story that sadly fell short as well IMO - and that's it. Not much output for a writer, quantity and quality wise.

I'd like to compare writers with musicians. They rise to fame with one or two smash albums but then - meanwhile successful and with a loyal fanbase - they start changing their style; their scope and ambitions changes as well and maybe they are not longer interested in what made them famous in the first place - or in doing music at all any more. Success does not only bring fame and riches, it can bring complacency as well.

Let's face it, the Martin of 1996-2000 is not the Martin of the last eleven years.

[One Hand Clapping]

Well I do think we may have to accept that George just doesn't enjoy writing in this setting any more.

If it takes you ten years to write two books and even then you deliver the second one at the last possible moment in such a state that they can't edit it properly in time for publication and you repeatedly refer to both books as bitches and bastards that you hated writing, something has gone very seriously wrong somewhere.

For those of us who want resolution of the main plot and not the constant piling up of more details about Rhoynish river life or the minor lordlings of the Riverlands our best hope may well be that that George focuses primarily on his contributions to the TV series so that if and when they overtake him in 2015 (I really can't believe that they'll get two series out AFFC and ADWD) the final resolution that the HBO writers provide is as close as possible to his original vision.

This would also liberate him to write the two remaining books as straight novelisations of the TV series with none of the deep structural problems he spent a decade trying and failing to resolve in the last two.

It won't be as awesome as we or he expected back when we put down ASOS 11 years ago but assuming I (and for that matter western civilisation) make it to 2016 it'll be something to look forward to.

[One Hand Clapping]

I share your concern. Furthermore when you think, when was the last time Martin published a real quality work? 2000, with Storm of Swords, 11 years ago. Eleven years! In between he wrote the two "half" books Feast and Dance that are deemed lacking compared to the first three (look here in the Rate the Books thread and on Amazon), one Dunk and Egg short story that sadly fell short as well IMO - and that's it. Not much output for a writer, quantity and quality wise.

I'd like to compare writers with musicians. They rise to fame with one or two smash albums but then - meanwhile successful and with a loyal fanbase - they start changing their style; their scope and ambitions changes as well and maybe they are not longer interested in what made them famous in the first place - or in doing music at all any more. Success does not only bring fame and riches, it can bring complacency as well.

Let's face it, the Martin of 1996-2000 is not the Martin of the last eleven years.

Interesting analogy.

But how many musicians are still expected to produce top quality work in their sixties?

The only big rock musicians I can think of who are in GRRMs age band who still produce new albums every year or two and tour properly are Bob Dylan and Neil Young - and although I am a huge fan of both I don't feel any great lack in my life for not having bought more than a handful of those albums or caught more than one or two of the tours since 1996 or so.

We just accept that after a certain age a musician doesn't necessarily burn out but they certainly do start to rust - and make allowances accordingly.

Hell - as we age with them and acquire other priorities they can't even expect us to buy all the albums they still turn out or turn up at the gigs they still do (and if we turn up at all we'll probably be moaning that they are playing too much of that new crap and shouting out for tracks that they have played literally thousands of times and are sick to death of...)

But somehow we assume that every writer must be like Tolstoy and get better and better as they see and experience more.

However even Tolstoy produced his two great novels in his 40s and 50s - the great works of his old age (Master and Man, The Kreutzer Sonata, Hadji Murat) are short stories or novellas and his one major late novel (Resurrection) is a slighter work in both size and content than War and Peace or Anna Karenina.

And if you turn to genre writers although they may have to keep churning out the volumes to pay for their medical bills its hard to think of any who improved in old age - and much easier to think of ones whose quality has declined either catastrophically or gently with each passing decade.

So George is getting on and he may (but not certainly) be past his best as a novelist - so maybe we should let him gradually hand off the task of completing the saga to the HBO guys and spend his sunset years as a TV producer, editor of other people's books and globe-trotting bon viveur if that is what he wants to do with it - disappointed as I am with ADWD he's more than earned that right from his other work.

[One Hand Clapping]

Sorry - duplicate post

[alguien]

Well I do think we may have to accept that George just doesn't enjoy writing in this setting any more.

No offense, but I see zero evidence for this. Like, at all. In fact it flies in the face of every statement he's made, every report that's been given.

If it takes you ten years to write two books and even then you deliver the second one at the last possible moment in such a state that they can't edit it properly in time for publication and you repeatedly refer to both books as bitches and bastards that you hated writing, something has gone very seriously wrong somewhere.

The bolded is your own addition. Again, its like people here have never done anything difficult that they enjoyed.

"Man, that mountain was a bitch to climb."

"You hate climbing, don't you?"

ETA: also, man, I utterly loathe the idea of him handing off the series to anyone else. That would be utter catastrophe. :ack:

[alguien]

Its interesting, because most writer's I've talked to or read say that its one of the few professions that you get better at as you get older.

:dunno:

Remember, GRRM started these books in 1996, in his mid-forties. I don't really see how the following 15 years is going to change his mental state or writing skill. If anything, he's been more prolific since 1996.

In any event, I went back and perused the earlier books with the latter books over lunch time, along with the Dunk and Egg stories and I'm just not seeing this supposed decline in quality.

The way the story's being told has changed slightly, GRRM himself has quoted Tolkien in saying "the tale grew in the telling" and that's a substantive criticism because some of parts being told may not be to everyone's taste, but the way he tells it seems very similar to me.

I honestly think a lot of the frustration is due to waiting and misled expectations.

ETA: AND too many cliffhangers ;)

[rue721]

GRRM started these books in 1996, in his mid-forties. I don't really see how the following 15 years is going to change his mental state or writing skill. If anything, he's been more prolific since 1996.

Like all artists, writers go through different periods. Maybe GRRM is in a relatively fallow period creatively right now. That doesn't mean he's over, doomed, finished, kaput :). I actually think that after a period of "constipation" like that, there's often a huge release of creativity (:P) and that's when some of the artist's best work is often produced.

Also, though most writers *start* working fairly early, I don't think there's an age when they necessarily stop, or even decline. As a genre example, Ruth Rendell is a fantastic writer, in the same vein as GRRM, imo (best-seller, unique in her genre, critic-approved :P) and she's in her late seventies or eighties at this point, still churning out a book every six months or so. For a non-genre writer -- Ian McEwan is in his 60s, and he has continued to improve over time. In fact, it's only in the past decade or so that I would say he's really begun working to his potential.

I don't think GRRM is producing his best work right now, but I think he's just at a relative low in the highs/lows of his career (in terms of writing, not "success"). I would bet that the pendulum will swing back up again. Whether he'll be in the physical shape to make use of that when it does happen, we'll see, but I don't really think it's time to send him to the glue factory yet :P.

[Brucolac]

Amazon Ratings

706 Reviews 09 August 2011 - 11:15 AM

5 star:

(122) (17% all of reviews since release)

4 star:

(89) 13%

3 star:

(169) 24%

2 star:

(192) 27%

1 star:

(134) 19%

873 Reviews 18 August 2011 - 2:35 PM,

5 star:

(172) +50 (30% of all reviews since August 9)

4 star:

(111) +22 13%

3 star:

(203) +34 20%

2 star:

(224) +32 20%

1 star:

(163) +29 17%

*Note the reviews since August 9 other than the 5 stars are still relatively proportionate to each other from the previous totals, but are smaller in this period because of the 200% increase in 5 star reviews*

Actually, it does look like someone might be spamming 5 star reviews. Honestly, who is going to give this book 5 stars without being an overall fan of ASOIAF? So, being a fan they just now got around to reading it and decided to make a review? The majority of 1 star and 5 star reviews seem to have the least amount of words or thoughts behind them anyway so they do all tend to look alike, but the 5 stars have increased extremely disproportionately to the other reviews in the last week.

Maybe the people who had the highest anticipation and were likely to read the book first though were the only ones disappointed and the casual reader likes what they are seeing; I still think anyone that gives this book the highest rating possible is delusional or lying though.

[One Hand Clapping]

I am not saying writers get worse with age but unless they are complete hacks they generally do change style significantly when they hit late middle age.

I chose Tolstoy as an example as he is generally considered he greatest novelist of all time started publishing in his early twenties and was still writing into his 80s.

But while there is no decline in the quality of his later output there is a definite shift from the long novels of his youth and middle age to the shorter novels, novellas and short stories of his 60s, 70s and 80s.

Between 1852 and 1877 (age 24 to 49) he wrote 7 full-length novels (3 of which constitute a trilogy) including War and Peace which remains the byword for a long difficult to read book and numerous short stories

From 1880 to 1912 (age 50 to 84) he wrote only one full length novel, 4 shorter novels or novellas and lots more short stories.

Clearly at some point after Anna Karenina in 1877 he lost interest in producing those great epic novels with many POV characters (which Henry James characterised as loose baggy monsters of books) and began to write shorter and more focused pieces.

Other great novelists show similar stylistic changes - some like Tolstoy become more economical and concise (arguably Conrad, Hemingway), others in fact become much more prolix with advancing age and fame (James, Mann, Nabokov, Faulkner) others retreat into long periods of silence (Salinger, Pynchon?) and produce nothing for decades on end.

But the point I am making is that the better the author (and GRRM while nowhere near any of the above is an outstanding genre writer) the more likely their style is to significantly evolve over time.

And if you can't see the huge change in style between the first three SOIAF books and the two 'half-books' that George took a decade to finish* you really do need to read some proper non-genre fiction or take a literature 101 course.

For me it is utterly inescapable - not necessarily at sentence or paragraph level but in the way each chapter is constructed and the way they link together.

Its also obvious at dialogue level - the first three books have many brilliant lines of dialogue and are often conversation driven - above all whenever Tyrion is on stage.

But the dialogue in AFFC and ADWD is much flatter, more functional and less distinctive - whereas I almost never had to stop and go back over a conversational passage to work out who is saying what in the first three books, I constantly had to do this in ADWD and again this is at its most evident in the case of Tyrion.

I get the feeling that we get far more interior monologues as well - as the POV characters in AFFC and ADWD seem to spend either an inordinate amount of time travelling around at a snails pace on boats and horses accompanied by people who are either not good conversationalists (Jaime and Ser Ilyn, Victarion and his dumb bedslave, Brienne and Pod and Tyrion and a very cross Sir Jorah being the most obvious examples) or are actually in solitary confinement in cells or cages we spend far too much time in the heads of people who are just too stupid and wicked to be truly believable (above all Cersei) or whose interior monologues seem completely out of character with the dynamic figures they were in previous books (Tyrion and Dany)

In fact other than the annoyingly repetitive catch-phrases (another big stylistic change - the catch phrases of the first four books are deployed far more sparingly whereas hardly a chapter passes in ADWD without the same tired old phrases being trotted out multiple times) its hard to recall a single striking conversation in ADWD at all (maybe Varys's confession - not of course a conversation given that his listener is not so much a captive audience but a dying one) - whereas I can recall many from the first three books.

Of course all this is IMO - but I've read enough great and not-so-great fiction over the last 40-odd years to trust my own opinion in this case.

*('ten years to write' is clearly a misnomer given that so much of the writing of ADWD seems to have been crammed into the very last months, weeks and days before the very latest deadline required to allow the publisher to profit fully from the TV show buzz - and GRRM gives us a great deal of information about all that other stuff he was doing in those ten years).

[rue721]

For me it is utterly inescapable - not necessarily at sentence or paragraph level but in the way each chapter is constructed and the way they link together.

Its also obvious at dialogue level - the first three books have many brilliant lines of dialogue and are often conversation driven - above all whenever Tyrion is on stage.

But the dialogue in AFFC and ADWD is much flatter, more functional and less distinctive - whereas I almost never had to stop and go back over a conversational passage to work out who is saying what in the first three books, I constantly had to do this in ADWD and again this is at its most evident in the case of Tyrion.

I get the feeling that we get far more interior monologues as well - as the POV characters in AFFC and ADWD seem to spend an inordinate amount of time travelling around at a snails pace on boats and horses accompanied by people who are either not good conversationalists (Jaime and Ser Ilyn, Victarion and his dumb bedslave and Brienne and Pod being the most obvious examples) we spend far too much time in the heads of people who are just too stupid and wicked to be truly believable (above all Cersei).

In fact other than the annoyingly repetitive catch-phrases (another big stylistic change - the catch phrases of the first four books are deployed far more sparingly whereas hardly a chapter passes in ADWD without the same tired old phrases being trotted out multiple times) its hard to recall a single striking conversation in ADWD at all (maybe Varys's confession - not of course a conversation given that his listener is not so much a captive audience but a dying one) - whereas I can recall many from the first three books.

I agree with much of that -- there has been a major change in style, and there's a "flatness" to FfC and DwD that is both new and disturbing.

Above all, the constant catch-phrases, the chapter titles that use nicknames, and the characterization in general seems *very* heavy-handed. I can't imagine a character like Penny in particular being used in previous books. As another example of heavy-handedness: I also thought that Vary's confession was spectacularly bizarre considering there's no reason for him to give it except to explain things to the reader. Throughout, it seemed as though GRRM was either not trusting himself or trusting the reader to piece together what's going on.

Where I differ, though, is that I think that heavy-handedness and piling-on are more likely signs of GRRM being blocked or confused himself with where the story is going than they are signs of him taking on the style that will define his old age. Usually when a writer matures, and especially when he moves into old age, he becomes more *spare* in his writing. Maybe simply because he doesn't need as many words to explain what he means? Maybe because he's got the wisdom to know what he means in the first place? A prime example of that evolution to "spareness," to me, is a writer like Flaubert. However -- the problem with FfC and DwD, imo, is how *muddled* and *aimless* they are, so it seems to me as though it's not an issue of age but rather of creative fallow-ness.

[alguien]

And if you can't see the huge change in style between the first three SOIAF books and the two 'half-books' that George took a decade to finish* you really do need to read some proper non-genre literature.

Apparently, working for the Great Books Foundation, I have no zero exposure to non-genre literature. :)

For me it is utterly inescapable - not necessarily at sentence or paragraph level but in the way each chapter is constructed and the way they link together.

I guess I have trouble with this. First off, if sentences and paragraphs are constructed the same, then the style is the same. As for chapters... he's done what he does every book, ends them on either a cliffhanger or a memorable line. Almost every chapter could serve as a mini-story. Aside from a greater variance of POV and their number of chapters, and the overall arc of chapters (since stuff was cut) I don't see a big difference.

Now, the overall arc of chapters--the way they link together, I think that's valid. It did feel like we needed to hear a bit more from Dany, Tyrion, and Victarion before their narrative arcs were resolved.

Its also obvious at dialogue level - the first three books have many brilliant lines of dialogue and are often conversation driven - above all whenever Tyrion is on stage.

But the dialogue in AFFC and ADWD is much flatter, more functional and less distinctive - whereas I almost never had to stop and go back over a conversational passage to work out who is saying what in the first three books, I constantly had to do this in ADWD and again this is at its most evident in the case of Tyrion.

Have to say, I just dont' see it. I found the Tyrion dialog to be funny and insightful as it always was. His mocking of the psuedonym "Griff" was great as were a lot of his lines and inner dialog.

This bit:

"Then come," said Barristan the Bold.

The short sentence, preceding the action deliberately like a quiet before the storm, using Barristan's epithet. Awesome sauce.

I think comparisons to any 19th century authors don't really serve any arguments. There were no editors then. Publishing, such as it is today, didn't exist. People like Tolstoy, Melville, and James would have been hacked to bits by any substantive editor worth his salt--and in most cases rightly so.

I believe this book is different from the rest, but within the same degree that all the books in the series are different from each other.

ETA: I think too perhaps pacing is the issue--particularly some Dany chapters felt liked they dragged at times. This I feel can be attributed to the structural problems he was trying to unravel. But I think that's an entirely different issue than whether he's blocked or has slipped. He writes as well as he's always done, he just needs to learn how to incorporate a little more architecture into his gardening. If you haven't read it, I very much recommend checking out his blog entry about the writing of Dance. Its pretty informative.