[ADwD Spoilers] A bitch to write – a bitch to read?

[Grell]

Martin himself describes the writing process of Feast: ‘The last one was a bitch.” and of ADWD: “This one was three bitches and a bastard”. If the author had trouble writing it It’s not surprising that it is also “three bitches and a bastard” to read. Presumably the first 3 books were easier to write, I also found them far more enjoyable to read.

I think part of my difficulty with reading ADWD is my refusal to skip anything, I never felt this urge to in the 1st 3 books. I read this today and thought it was very applicable, in his essay “The Art of Fiction” Sommerset Maughm writes: “The wise reader will get the greatest enjoyment … if he learns the useful art of skipping. A sensible person does not read a novel as a task. He is prepared to interest himself in the characters… and what happens to them, he sympathises with their troubles and is gladdened by their joys. But he knows instinctively where his interest lies and he follows it as surely as a hound follows the scent of a fox. Sometimes, through the author’s failure, he loses the scent. Then he flounders about till he finds it again. He skips”

My interests are in Westeros, not in Mereen. I didn’t feel the urge to skip in the Theon, Jon or Davos chapters. With Dany, Jon and Tyrion’s character regression from the end of ASOS I have lost interest and sympathy with them. Its not a very plausible or thoroughly fleshed out setting, unlike Westeros with full family trees, coast of arms and centuries of history. As a reader I am floundering in these chapters because the author floundered in these chapters. Generally I can enjoy brilliant prose with zero plot. However Martin’s excessive repetition of words especially inconsistent faux-medieval ones (serjeant, neeps, needs must, nuncle) is not good prose.

I have only just finished ADWD but others seemed to have finished very quickly, I suspect they skipped many Tyrion and Dany bits and probably found the whole experience more enjoyable.

The Martin in the first 3 books is no longer the Martin of these last two, I hope returns to enjoying writing the next 2 (or 3) so I can enjoy reading them again!

PS I was going to reply to the “Well that was disappointing” thread but its been locked without comment.

[Stubby]

PS I was going to reply to the “Well that was disappointing” thread but its been locked without comment.

It was locked for reaching 400 posts.

[tozka]

It read very easily. There is not comparison between AFFC and ADWD. ADWD is on par with ASOS for me. I read it for 3-4 day with work and studies and all that. It seems to me that people are disappointed that things did go the way they wanted them - like Tyrion never met Dany or Dany never went Westero. That's why I don't have expectations. I like to read theory or theorize about what might happen but I never let them get in my head as that's what will or must happen.

[Podrick + Arya = Win]

Hmm, I wonder if there's some foreshadowing in "three bitches and a bastard". We know Jon and Ramsay are both bastards. Maybe one of them survives ADWD? We know, Cersei, Dany and Asha are bitches. If someone takes issue with the "strong girl gets called a bitch", you can replace anyone of those three with Sansa if you like. Maybe these three bitches will have an epic pillow fight in TWOW?

Hmm, hmm, what could it mean I wonder.

Anyway, I want to know where this paragraph is in the book,

"Tyrion ate a bowl of blueberries that were small, juicy and succulent, they were also blue and he used his fingers to pick them up to put them in his mouth, he then washed it down with wine as red as blood. He then put down his glass with his left hand and wiped his mouth with his right."

Maybe this is why it's a bitch to read?

[Grell]

I dont think there is anything quite as awful as that in the book, someone said made that up in another thread as the "type" of tedious descriptions we get of food in most chapters, although when searching I did find on p84 of ADWD:

"He poured for them from a flagon of blackberry wine so sweet that it drew more flies than honey. Tyrion shooed them off with the back of his hand and drank deep. The taste was so cloying that it was all he could do to keep it down. The second cup went down easier, however. Even so, he had no appetite, and when Illyrio offered him a bowl of blackberries in cream he waved it off."

A lot of wind? Yes I think so, it is another example of the frequent use of superflous words/description. Some people say they like that, which is fine. But personally I find it infuriating when it meant that chapter(s) Martin says he wanted to include in the book were cut. We lost story to wind.

[Grell]

I think its a bit simplistic to dismiss all critque or disappointent of ADWD (or FfC) as thwarted expectations. Feast prepared alot of us for the slowdown in pace, plot and potenital for travelogue.

It read very easily. There is not comparison between AFFC and ADWD. ADWD is on par with ASOS for me. I read it for 3-4 day with work and studies and all that. It seems to me that people are disappointed that things did go the way they wanted them - like Tyrion never met Dany or Dany never went Westero. That's why I don't have expectations. I like to read theory or theorize about what might happen but I never let them get in my head as that's what will or must happen.

[ZombieWife]

I found this far more dense. GoT was a tight book. This one felt as though 1/3 of it was describing setting, naming characters (lords or wildlings or crows) and then describing them after they were named. I felt like there was a LOT of description. A. LOT.

I did have many urges to skim especially with the Iron Suitor, some of Dany's court meanderings, etc.

I did find the most engaging chapters to be: Tyrion, Theon (Reek), Jon, Davos and Asha.

Davos has, in the past, been a bit of a yawn for me in the past books but I really did appreciate him more in ADWD. So much so that I want to go back and reread his passages from previous books.

[StormWolf]

I didn't begin reading the series until sometime in May, after seeing a few episodes of the HBO series. I finished AFFC in June and only had about a month wait for ADWD. So, it was all fresh on my mind when I began reading ADWD. After finishing it, there is no question that it is the worst of the books so far. I also had never felt the desire to skip through paragraphs in the other four books, but this one forced me to start doing it halfway through. I enjoy imagery as much as the next reader, but this one was drowned in it. It also somehow left me uninterested in Tyrion (one of my favorite characters) and absolutly hating Dany to the point of hoping she'd get killed or lose the dragons to someone else.

[Manderly Maneater]

I think part of the problem with ADWD is GRRM and his editors didn't spend enough time polishing it after the whole thing was finished. They should have edited out the repetitive words and phrases.

Also, i think a large problem with the past two books is that they don't contain the climaxes to most of their arcs. So instead I find the end results that occur after years of waiting to be "oh hey, that's what happened, I guess" rather than "HOLY SHIT" like it might otherwise be if it was just at the end of the book. If he had included the resolution to the Meereen arc people would be very pleased with the book, I think. Quentyn was an alright character but his chapters could have just been removed to make space for more interesting things. Instead, we end up with I think is the equivalent to Clash of Kings ending just before the Battle of the Blackwater. Sure, everything's set up to be awesome... NEXT book. I want the awesome stuff to happen in an awesome climax, in the same book it was set up in. You don't need cliffhangers in a series like ASOIAF. I don't think a single person reading the series would be like "well, now that I know what happens in Meereen, I can finally stop following the series because they've resolved everything I care about."

The only real climaxes that ADWD has are Jon's, Theon's, Bran's, and Davos'. Jon's main arc is bringinbg the wildlings south of the wall and dealing with all that, with the conflict coming from men of the watch who don't like it, and it comes to a head when they stab him up. While him getting stabbed and his fate being left in the balance is a cliffhanger, it IS a resolution to the arc within the book. Theon's arc is about recovering himself from his torture at the hands of Ramsay Bolton, and it is completed when he escapes with Jeyne and he meets up with his sister. His fate from there is unknown, but we know how his Reek, Reek, it rhymes with weak arc ends. Bran's arc is going to find the three-eye-crow and he finally freaking does, and it's awesome. While there is much more to happen there, his journey from the wall to the three-eyed-crow is completed, a new one begins, and his chapters end. Davos is sent to treat with White Harbour he does, the conflict of Manderly and the Freys being douches is resolved when Davos finds out that Manderly is in fact awesome.

I think that is why these POVS seem to be the favourites among most readers for ADWD. Quentyn's arc also comes to an end--he meets Dany, she refuses him, he tries to impress her and dies. But... that was it.

Tyrion's chapters are like Bran's from ASoS, which I liked somewhat but I think a lot of people just found boring. Tyrion's goal is to get to Dany, and he neither succeeds nor fails, just gets closer. Arya's chapters were good, but there were only two. It might have been better to find a way to include them in AFFC. Asha's chapters were just kinda there as a POV for what Stannis was doing, they were alright, and they do have some resolution, with her running thoughts on being able to declare the kingsmoot illegitimate if someone couldn't make it, and Theon shows up at the end, who was not able to make it. Dany's gigantically frustrating chapters end in her... coming to a realization after having a bunch of visions and stuff. Her chapters had been about fighting the Harpy, the Yunkai, and how to control her dragons. None of those are really resolved. She makes some headway on the dragon front, everything else comes to a head on its own, but it is not resolved. Dany was kind of the lynchpin for this book. If she had been positioned to be able to leave Meereen by the end of the book, then Tyrion and Victarion's plots could have also reached some form of climax in the battle for Meereen. Cersei's plot also pretty much went nowhere. We end AFFC looking forward to her trial and it has yet to happen. Aegon and Jon Connington actually get somewhere. Their arc is not even close to resolving, but I think people are okay with that because it was just introduced this book and is not the sort of thing people expect to be resolved in one book. Martin at least did not leave us hanging with ending JC's chapters before he tried to take his old castle back. So his mini-arc of being home is resolved at least, and he has succeeded in his long mission of raising Aegon, forming an army, and getting him to Westeros.

GRRM should focus more on delivering on the implied promises his books make. People who have been reading about Starks, Lannisters, and Targaryens for three books don't care as much about Greyjoys and Martells, and care even less about Meereenese and Yunkai. The Free Cities are so fare removed from what readers see as the real plot that they will never care about them except insofar as how they affect the longstanding POV characters and longstanding non-POV characters. So the solution would have been to have those characters get to Meereen and have stuff happen there. Pages are also used more effectively when two or more POV characters are in scenes together. Put Tyrion, Dany, Barristan and Victarion in the same city and sparks are guaranteed to fly. Having all the characters separated makes things more "epic" only to a point, then it becomes nobody doing anything important because nobody is interacting with anyone else.

And in general, I think more experienced people know not to have their expectations too high when something has been in development for way longer than it should have been. It means something is plagued with problems--usually lacking a clear vision for what it wants to be, and lacking cohesion among its parts--not that it has been polished to perfection. But some parts really will be great.

[Davos' Middle Finger]

I would never say this book was " a bitch" to read.

My view of ADWD is that it was a good book, maybe even a very good one, that had the potential to be great and just missed, due to some pacing and editing problems.

[The Smelly Peasant]

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. ~Bill Cosby

I think that pretty much sums it up. Theres just no pleasing some people...

[Sun]

[snip]

I have only just finished ADWD but others seemed to have finished very quickly, I suspect they skipped many Tyrion and Dany bits and probably found the whole experience more enjoyable.

The Martin in the first 3 books is no longer the Martin of these last two, I hope returns to enjoying writing the next 2 (or 3) so I can enjoy reading them again!

I did skip most of Dany's, and skimmed Tyrion's, Quentyn's, and Barristan's, but the very fact that I was forced to do so in order to get through ADWD made reading it a chore, and not a pleasant one. Theon's chapter's were the saving graces of this book, and for them at least, I am grateful.

Where ADWD took characters I loved and rendered them unreadable, AFFC did the opposite. I didn't give a whit about Jamie, Cersie, Breinne before AFFC, and now I count them among the most memorable characters of the series for me. And while ADWD did that for Theon, It did the reverse for Dany and Tyrion and Arya.

AFFC, though not the best book of the series, was to me a throughly enjoyable, and fulfilling experience. I never skipped a word of it.

I can fully believe that GRRM found writing ADWD "three bitches and a bastard”, because that's exactly how it felt to read.

[Grell]

I don't think you understand the meaning of your own quote

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. ~Bill Cosby

I think that pretty much sums it up. Theres just no pleasing some people...

[inkasrain]

I personally enjoyed the experience of reading ADWD much more than I did reading AFFC, which I can't explain as well as I'd like given that many of my favorite characters don't feature in this book at all. Maybe the pace and character gaps of Feast prepared me for Dance-- I don't know.

I do think that ADWD is more successful than AFFC in its structural surprises. I found myself enjoying old POVs that I hadn't anticipated liking much or at all (specifically Theon, but also Asha and more of Jon than I'd anticipated) and appreciating new views (Barristan, Connington, even poor stupid Quentyn) more than I had enjoyed the new POVs in AFFC. I also found most chapters readable, even if I wasn't wild about the POV or story-- two Cersei chapters worked very nicely, where in Feast her stupidity was absolutely overwhelming, and even Victarion was slightly easier to read in this go-round. Again, this could be due to lowered expectations, but I really do think that GRRM just had a better handle on things when it came to this chunk of the story.

As a start-to-finish book, no, neither ADWD or AFFC is anywhere near as cohesive and tight as the first three novels. I don't think it's unfair to say that the crazy vastness of the story has made these two books something of a mess as far as storytelling goes, and I'm certainly not absolutely confident that GRRM will get back to the quality of the early books. Still, I think the story post-Dance is now in a place much more similar to the end of ASOS than AFFC-- much straighter, more aligned, and cleaner than it was-- and I think The Winds of Winter accordingly does have a better chance than ADWD ever did of returning to the quality that GRRM is known for.

[estrellas]

There was absolutely nothing in the first 3 books I ever wanted to skip, but I skipped whole chapters of AFFC the first time I read it. And, this is how you know your writing has gone astray...skipping chapters did NOT impair my plot understanding at all. You should not be writing books where readers can skim over 200-300 pages and not miss a beat.

I did not skip any part of ADWD, but I COULD have. I was always sure that it was going to get better and that all this stuff would be important, but by the end of the book I realized I had waded through an impressive amount of fluff. Now, I still think it was better than AFFC and my opinion of it has improved through reading various analysis on this forum, but it's still alarming to think how much filler there was. Then again, AFFC and ADWD are technically supposed to be the SAME book. I'm hoping this is just one big transitional novel and he'll be back to form for the next 2 or 3.

[tozka]

I think its a bit simplistic to dismiss all critque or disappointent of ADWD (or FfC) as thwarted expectations. Feast prepared alot of us for the slowdown in pace, plot and potenital for travelogue.

It's neither simplistic nor am I dismissing anything. People have as many reasons to like or hate something as there are people. But my impression is that most people's disappointed are based on that. But it's *my* impression, an opinion if you will.

[Podrick + Arya = Win]

I found this far more dense. GoT was a tight book. This one felt as though 1/3 of it was describing setting, naming characters (lords or wildlings or crows) and then describing them after they were named. I felt like there was a LOT of description. A. LOT.

I did have many urges to skim especially with the Iron Suitor, some of Dany's court meanderings, etc.

I did find the most engaging chapters to be: Tyrion, Theon (Reek), Jon, Davos and Asha.

Davos has, in the past, been a bit of a yawn for me in the past books but I really did appreciate him more in ADWD. So much so that I want to go back and reread his passages from previous books.

I think a reason for Davos' chapters being so well received is because they showed much of the equation between the Manderlys and the Freys and less due to Davos himself.

I didn't begin reading the series until sometime in May, after seeing a few episodes of the HBO series. I finished AFFC in June and only had about a month wait for ADWD. So, it was all fresh on my mind when I began reading ADWD. After finishing it, there is no question that it is the worst of the books so far. I also had never felt the desire to skip through paragraphs in the other four books, but this one forced me to start doing it halfway through. I enjoy imagery as much as the next reader, but this one was drowned in it. It also somehow left me uninterested in Tyrion (one of my favorite characters) and absolutly hating Dany to the point of hoping she'd get killed or lose the dragons to someone else.

I'm in the same boat. Although, AFFC is quite horrible. Probably the worst fantasy book I've ever read.

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. ~Bill Cosby

I think that pretty much sums it up. Theres just no pleasing some people...

It's neither simplistic nor am I dismissing anything. People have as many reasons to like or hate something as there are people. But my impression is that most people's disappointed are based on that. But it's *my* impression, an opinion if you will.

Dismissing criticism, however you honey-coat it, is just insulting someone else's opinion. If you say, "I like so and so book because of so and so", it is different from saying, "I don't know why these guys hate so and so book, they're not looking at it right, I found it enjoyable". At this point, you're just reviewing someone else's opinion rather than the book itself. I hardly see anyone saying "why do you like this book so much, you're just easy to please".

Arguments like this are popping up all over Amazon's reviews and Martin may have some credence when he says Amazon reviewers are a bunch of trolls. He's just pointing at the wrong group.

[Pecan]

I really enjoyed ADWD, but I agree it's problematic from a structural standpoint. The problem, I think, goes back to that damn 5-year gap and the decision to abandon it. In the first 3 books, GRRM knew exactly what he wanted to accomplish in each one. But now, in books 4 and 5, it's like he's getting caught up in the action himself.

[gmavridis]

I read it in 8 days. Some chapters "flowed" better than others but the whole book was interesting enough to keep me reading and looking forward to the next chapter.

I think the purpose of this book (as also AFFC) was to prepare all the necessary plots for the climax of the story in the next two books.

[Korvin]

Well, I skipped, but only to get to the most important things in the novel (I exprected a resolution for the Meerenese knot and hoped to see John go down from the Wall). I soon as I realized that all these things were moved to the next book, I finished skipping and started one nore time. I find the world building in Essos fine und would see more of the continent as much as Westeros... Varyria, more Free Cities, Mantarys are always welcome.

PS: Why is serjeant supposed to be a faux-medieval term? That´s just another spelling for sergeant, and the word was used in medieval Europe (in a slightly different meaning, but still...)