Just finished AFFC...

[BreastplateWithNipples]

-= WARNING SPOILERS APLENTY =-

So I just finished the book. I understand it's meant to be a "filler", i.e. wrap up some story arcs and prepare others, with not so much action since the sequel is supposed to take place several years down the road.

BUT. Why does GRRM have to bore me with so much crap in this book??

1. The Ironborn: What a sorry cliché these folk are. Geez. They were sort of cool in ACOK, especially the Asha/Theon banter, but the entire arc in this book was just a waste of pages.
   
   • Asha, set up with all that exposition in the earlier books and the early Ironborn chapters, totally doesn't matter at all when the action starts to roll and the Ironborn choose their king. And what a farce her bid for the crown was!! This was supposed to be the warrior woman, but all she utters at this silly kingsmoot is "Let's make peace with the Northmen and maybe they will give us a couple of their forests or desolate coastal regions!" Oh my.
     
   • Aeron Damphair. Another waste of pages. His "religion" is even more clichéd and one-dimensional than the Ironborn culture. They believe in a merciless god who does no miracles, gives no comforts, has no texts to speak of, and has only one or two prayers? What an underwhelming farce of a religion!! And even their main prophet lives in fear of the "Storm God", against whom the "drowned god" offers no help or recourse. SERIOUSLY?? GRRM, this was really a low point in your creativity.
     
   • The Kingsmoot. WHAT WAS THE POINT?? We got to learn the names of a dozen ironborn houses and the deeds of their savage scions, but nothing ever comes of it. Euron launches a war against the Reach's coasts but as soon as they hit their first success, he decides that this is not what he actually wanted (i.e. grab a hold of Dany's dragons and conquer Westeros) and he calls the whole thing off, proclaiming instead that he'll make the trip to Essos with just a couple of ships. Again, what was the frickin point?? I get it he'll show up again in Mereen or wherever Dany is when ADWD starts, but couldn't we have had this prepared with a third of the exposition? You'd think Bantam House paid GRRM by the page count rather than by sales.
     

[*]Stannis in the North: This was actually a disappointment that carried over from the prequel, ASOS. We get all this cool Night's Watch vs WIldlings vs Others suspense, and we worry about whether Sam and Gilly are going to make it back or not, and then at the height of suspense, all of a sudden Stannis frickin Baratheon and his thousand knights come storming across the field, Deus Ex Machina, and saves the day. BUT throughout this whole book nothing happens!! We get a little glimpse of things - a handful of Northern lords join his cause, and Davos is said to be executed at White Harbor - but other than that the whole affair seems to just have been an excuse to have Sam sent to Braavos and Oldtown so GRRM can dump another 150 pages of exposition on us about places that are irrelevant for the story but will feature in ADWD (I presume)??? Stannis himself doesn't actually do anything, and his presence in the north has no consequences at all for any of the other story arcs in AFFC (save Sam).

[*]Brienne's aimless wandering: Brienne was sort of cool in the previous book but here she's just a plot device to show us how outlaws that I don't care about and explain what happened to half a dozen characters whose storyline GRRM wants to end. Beric Dondarrion, Lem, Tom Sevenstrings, the Hound (he's the limp grave digger on that island in the reed swamps, isn't he?), Gregor Clegane's "pet rats", Vargo Hoat, etc etc etc. They were interesting characters back in ACOK and ASOS, sure, but are 300 or so pages really necessary to wrap all their storylines up?? Not to mention the graceless and abrupt way her story is literally "terminated" all of a sudden at the end of the book. It wasn't even unexpected to me - halfway through the book (after the Crackclaw point episode) it became obvious Brienne was just a plot device, and once she had met Gendry at the inn all the loose ends I remembered had been wrapped up so the plot device had outlived its usefulness. BAM Brenne is dead.

I liked the way the story moved forward in other aspects, with Cersei slowly but inevitably running the Iron Throne into the ground and Jaime coming into his new role as the elder knight who can't fight any more but tries to win back his honor. I never thought the Lannisters could be this interesting without Tyrion.

But those three things about the Ironborn, Stannis in the North and Brienne just pissed me off to no end. I seriously hope ADWD is not as much of a letdown as this book was.

[armidil0]

ADWD explains what everyone else is doing, I believe. So yeah, and I agree it's kind of boring for the most part, but the ending chapters were awesome. atleast to me anyway.

[Gurthnar]

I have recently finished AFfC too.

So much comes to my mind in reply to OP. I will just settle with telling you I think you are all wrong :D and a very shortened reaction

1.) Kingsmoot blows mind, end of story. The Iron Islands did not even cover THAT MUCH pages IMHO.

2.) Brienne rules also. I was looking towards her fighting ever since she got Oathkeeper. The end for her is very ironical and kind of cliffhanger, because we are not told if she finally dies, or some miraculous help appears.

3.) Stannis acts a little bit weirdly, but his appearance on the Wall shuffles decks everywhere around there. Without him, the fight would eventually be lost for Watch (I think), Jon may not be chosen as lord commander, which in turn would mean Samwell would not go to Citadel. Which I was looking forward to get more info about since the prologue. Actually all the time the fighting was going on on the wall, I was thinking, how comes nobody from all bloody Westeros sent no help yet. Also, I believe, that actions of Stannis will be explained in ADwD or later books.

[BreastplateWithNipples]

The ending chapters were indeed awesome. But before that I didn't like it so much. I kept waiting for the big bang (like the blackwater battle or the red wedding) throughout the second half of the book, thinking "surely the next chapter will deliver some action?" but right until the end it did not.

re 3)

I haven't yet read ADWD but just from what's given about Stannis' motivation in AFFC, the only reason he sailed north was that he was swayed by something Davos said right after a chapter's cliffhanger end. Well that and wanting to get away from Dragonstone, before the Redwyne navy encircles him...

I guess my main frustration was hearing next to nothing about him throughout the whole book. But that was probably inevitable - I hadn't read any of the Wiki articles or reviews about AFFC, so only after reading all of AFFC did I realize that this book intentionally left Stannis and the North out of the story. (Leaving it for ADWD) Too bad...

re 2) Brienne

I liked some of the parts of her story, but the fight scenes didn't do it for me really. Brienne isn't a character whose thoughts illuminate any of the plots or other aspects of the story, she's just a duty-focused dullard IMO so having her wander through the world in search of someone I *knew* was not where she was looking was... well, not very gripping. For example, finding out that Sandor didn't die where Arya left him did nothing to me. He might as well have died there, I had already made my peace with him when Arya left him, so to say. Same for a lot of the other characters she encountered.

re 1) Kingsmoot

I guess it depends on personal taste, but I felt the Kingsmoot was just talk and no action. And 90% of the talk didn't even lead anywhere. Like all those boast and proclamations of the king title contenders at the Nagga's Bones hill. Some people may like reading of random Ironborn characters and their habits (finger dance?) but I found it not so exciting. Just a lot of wanton cruelty.

Having Asha be such a non-player at the Kingsmoot also pissed me off. I cared about her character and there was so much exposition about her, like the chapter where she visits her "Reader" uncle, or where she sits in the hall and talks to all those people about making a bid for the crown. It all felt pointless when she made such a weak and feeble proclamation under Nagga's Bones. Most of the other characters at the kingsmoot were shown as fierce warriors who want plunder and glory, and then she goes and speaks of pine trees and peace?? I felt that was a total let-down.

Moreover, what was the point in setting her up like a 150% true Ironborn character, when there is Euron Greyjoy who tops it all? He's all she is - fierce, cunning, trickster, unconventional by ironborn standards - only much better. At this point I don't see why Asha was ever put into the story in the first place. She's become a pointless character.

[Light a wight tonight]

Agree with Breastplate that Asha's perfomance at the Kingsmoot was underwhelming, but Crow Eye had it all going and she wasn't really in line for the throne due to gender issues.

So, does the dragon-binding horn cancel Dani's dragons?

[Samwell_NOT_Craven]

I also have just finished aFfC (a few hours ago actually), and while I agree that the book dragged on a bit too long and didn’t offer as much action as the previous books, I have to disagree with the points you’ve raised.

I am a fan of the Ironborn. Their religion of the Drowned God is perhaps my favorite religion in the series. It suits the nature of the Ironborn well, and is much more interesting than the Faith of the Seven. I quite liked the ritual of actually drowning someone and then bringing them back with CPR. That’s some intense stuff.

I enjoyed the Kingsmoot scene as well. I do share your disappointment in Asha. From the moment she appeared in the books, I thought of her as the future Queen of the Ironborn. Yet, while she was all gung-ho about succeeding Balon in the chapter where she met with the Reader, she then offered to support Victarion the night before the Kingsmoot. Lame! Her appeal to the Ironborn the next day was also very weak. It may have been reasonable to yield to the North in exchange for some pieces of land, but she should have known that there is no way it would satisfy the savage raiders. On the other hand, Euron’s dragon horn and speech were pretty sweet. I’d have to shout his name as well if I were a Ironborn captain.

As for Stannis, you must have missed what GRRM wrote at the end of the book, explaining the reasoning behind splitting the story into two volumes. The story in aFfC and aDwD occur simultaneously, for the most part, not sequentially. AFfC focuses on the events and characters in the South of Westeros, while aDwD tells the stories of people in the North, on the Wall and beyond, and across the Narrow Sea. That’s why we didn’t see much of Stannis, or Tyrion, Dany, Jon, and Bran, for that matter. All we know of Stannis’s movements are from reports presented to Cercei in King’s Landing, and I doubt they have a lot of informers all the way up on the Wall.

I’m not a huge fan of Brienne, or her quest of cluelessly wandering the Riverlands, but she’s not, as you claim, a plot device that was swiftly killed off when no longer useful. This is purely speculation, but I think of her as a delivery girl, who will, eventually, deliver the Oathkeeper, reforged from Ned’s greatsword Ice, back into the hands of one of the remaining Stark children. The last two of her chapters ended in cliffhangers, with her dying but not actually, explicitly dead. I think she’ll come back around, but then again, GRRM is known to be unpredictable, so maybe I’m completely wrong. I would like to see something happen between her and Jaime though :D