AFFC/ADWD Hate?

[Errant Bard]

Technically, the only book that could be said to solidly conclude anything was the third one, which finished off the first act. Also, while he definitely left a bunch of cliffhangers, there was a conclusion; it just felt a bit tacked on.

I was indeed tacked on. If we go at it chronologically, there is a bunch of stuff in ASOS that should be either in ACOK or AFFC.

Again, he weaves a unnecessarily complex weave to describe a simple tale of three guys on boats going to Dany before a battle.

I would agree that he lost control of his setting and the plot is becoming less and less streamlined, but I would disagree about the use of the word "unnecessary": if you begin talking like that, then writing whole books is unnecessary, all he had to do was to write a short story, or even a few words: "kids lose their family, acquire power, come back, get revenge and save the world, fin". It's all about the style chosen by the author, and I consider that if he and his editor(s?) thought it was necessary to write, then that's that: there is not a right or wrong way to tell a story, just ways that different people will like more or will like less. (note that I actually dislike most of what Martin wrote set in Essos.)

Also note that while I appreciate what I think he tried to do with Dany (or Tyrion), I also think that he only partially managed to cover how contrived the result he desired was considering where he started from... Still, the fact that the argument against Essos is often more about boredom than about unbelievability, he more or less reached his goal in that, even if it's not great. I don't think I saw anyone complain about the evolution of Dany's personality on the forums, or the plot coupons she got in ADWD and will get later.

[kephv]

I was indeed tacked on. If we go at it chronologically, there is a bunch of stuff in ASOS that should be either in ACOK or AFFC.

Such as? Major events that don't match up you mean? If I recall correctly, the Ironborn chapters of Feast are supposed to take place sometime in Storm, as are other chapters from that book.

[Holy Sock]

I actually don't believe him.

Know why?

Quentyn is the ONLY point of view character to ever meet Daenerys during ADWD. All the others like Tyrion, Victarion and even those who don't get POVs like Marwyn do not reach her. So arguing that he had trouble arranging the order of things is pretty silly since all he needs to decide is when Quentyn shows up. I think his ansawr actually gives the real problem itself. Why on earth dwell on Xaros offer on ships? We already discussed and established that Dany cannot leave Mereen in ASOS. Why are you restating what we already know. Is Qarth a crucial military power? No, Volantis, Yunkai and New Ghis are and they are already at war with her. Qaarths declaration of war is a trivial matter besides that and it contributes only a few ships to the considerable forces arrayed against her; it changes nothing. Its a scene which doesn't add anything to the story and more to the point what does it have to do with the order of events? Its his refusal to cut material like that and the number of characters he added which created the problem of him not finishing the arc even with 1500 pages to do it. He clearly felt the need to kill a few POV characters so we have to have three Quentyn chapters to make us sympathise with him which neccesiates inventing matters of no consequence for Dany to deal with before she marries Hidzhar and we feel sooo sorry for Mr Q. Whilst Tyrion as I mentioned is just a device to introduce Aegon so he can't arrive and this also delays him reaching Mereen. Then Vic can't just teleport there because Martin suddenly follows the timeline so can't do anything until part 2. Instead we need to have 3 chapters explaining why hes going to do what he already stated he woul do at the end of AFFC; betray Euron and steal his dragon queen. But nooo, apparently this was never Vics intention and Moqorro needs to save him from the puppet master...

Martin made problems for himself, this wasn't some unassailable literary obstacle. Its three guys try to get to Dany by boat. Its the simplest thing to do in the world but he tries to interconnect them all needlessly and elaborate on the journey. The end result was that he couldn't pull it off because he ended up cutting the battle of Mereen entirely anyway. So he really fucked up big time if he spent six years trying to reach that point where all these characters converge and we get an epic confrontation.

I don't think you understand. It's irrelevant whether or not that material was needed or not. That's not the point. Read it more carefully. This is not an assessment of the quality of his writing. Simply one of the reasons why it took so long.

Also, it's irrelevant that we did not get to see some of these things actually happen (like Marwyn etc). Either this was some of the material cut out at the last moment or carefully planned outlines of events the follow in Meereen (seems more like the former however)

lets start with the offer from Xaro to give Dany ships, the refusal of which then leads to Qarth’s declaration of war. Then there’s the marriage of Daenerys to pacify the city. Then there’s the arrival of the Yunkish army at the gates of Meereen, there’s the order of arrival of various people going her way (Tyrion, Quentyn, Victarion, Aegon, Marwyn, etc.), and then there’s Daario, this dangerous sellsword and the question of whether Dany really wants him or not, there’s the plague, there’s Drogon’s return to Meereen…

That's all the balls he was juggling. He just used Quentyn's arrival as an example for his problem. He wrote THREE different alternatives with Quentyn's arrival. Then, he had to see how they affected every other character's story. How did he do that? By writing them. And rewriting them. So he's have to write and intricately plot out 3 alternatives for Dany, Victarion, Barristan, Tyrion, and Marwyn.

Now, that's just one plot point. Then we have Drogon's landing. Which he wrote happening at different times. So then this, in turn, affects all the other plotlines. Then GRRM has to figure out this effect on Victarions, Dany's, Quentyn's etc storylines for each time he wrote it occuring. Also, how does this affect other plotlines? Like the marriage pact, the declarations of war etc.

So, now he has Victarion. When would he arrive? GRRM writes out several different chapters of his arrival. How does this affect the other characters? How does this affect other plots? So now he has to figure out the knock on effect in all the other storylines.

Then he has to do the same for Tyrion. Which I know cause a lot of problems. He was only able to reconcile a lot of these chronology problems by making Barristan a POV. But you've got the remember that he spent a lot of time trying to reconcile the POVs without a Barristan POV.

So he has all these plot points that he had to write multiple versions off in order to figure out the chronology.

He DID pull it off in the end. It took a long time until he was satisfied with the reconciliation. But he DID cut out the battle of Meereen. So, a lot of that work won't be shown until TWOW.

Obviously this isn't the only reason for delay. He had every other storyline to finish He has gone on record saying he did extensive rewrites for every chapter in this book. Even ones he had finished when AFFC was released. He was forced to create extra POVs he didn't want to in order to get some of the storylines to make sense. He also got ambitious towards the end of the book and started reconciling the POVs. He ended up writing chapters that he put in ADWD and other chapters that he ended up putting back in TWOW (eg Arianne's chapters).

So there are the reasons that I understand make the book much harder to write than GRRM intended.

You don't have to like it. You can think all that was completely unnecessary since you feel most of the plotlines are unneeded, that we didn't need to see a lot of the POVs to tell the story, that he created too much trouble for himself, that since he cut out the battle it was all for naught. That's your prerogative.

But the Meereenese Knot is over. We didn't get to see the Meereenese plotline finish in ADWD but GRRM figured out his extensive chronology problem and it should be smoother sailing from here.

But you never know.

[hollowcrown]

But the Meereenese Knot is over. We didn't get to see the Meereenese plotline finish in ADWD but GRRM figured out his extensive chronology problem and it should be smoother sailing from here.

But you never know.

Biggest mistake we've ever had. He should've just been given more time to finish the battles and have them in the book because at the moment it's such an anti-climax. The battle of Mereen looks like it's going to take up about half of Winds so far with chapters from Dany. Tyrion, Barristan, Victarion and then a massive aftermath. Also Stannis is nowhere near Winterfell so half of Winds might be resolving the two major plotlines from THE LAST BOOK. Definitely not a good way to open a new book with all this crazy stuff going on, because it sets a precident.

Winds will likely be the battle, then the build up for the next big set of events, so we will be blue-balled all over again. I can't see George finishing the books within the next 2 books at the moment, but if he'd cut down on some of Tyrions travelogue and Dany's chapters then I think we mightve been able to finish the Battles in Dance and then got a proper Winds novel instead of the first half of Winds tying up what should've been concluded in Dance.

It's like Clash building up to the Battle of the Blackwater...but then it cuts out right before the Battle so the first few chapters of Storm are about the battle, instead of the aftermath of the battle. It's just a horrible narrative structure that might ruin the structure of the novels in the rest of the series due to a weird stilted novel structure.

[Errant Bard]

Such as? Major events that don't match up you mean? If I recall correctly, the Ironborn chapters of Feast are supposed to take place sometime in Storm, as are other chapters from that book.

Jon's election (and assorted sam chapters) to LC should be in AFFC, ditto Lysa's murder

First two AFFC brienne chapters, also cersei's should be in ASOS, kingsmoot should be in ASOS

All of ASOS Dany chapters should be in ACOK, so should Cat letting Jaime go and then being judged

Jon killing qhorin should be in ASOS, ditto last ACOK Tyrion

There is not a month between the last ACOK chapter and the first AFFC one...

[hollowcrown]

Basically in Dance we get a beginning, continuing the story from Storm, a middle, building up events and developing characters, but not an end.

The only narrative arc in the books that works is Jon because he has a clear beginning, middle, and end.

And the end of Dance is going to be the beginning of Winds which is just fucked up because it means Winds isn't going to have a beginning middle and end properly.

Feast works though, because at least Brienne and Cersei get proper beginning/middle/end arcs.

[TalalOfDorne]

Feast is actually my second favorite book after SOS. Its the characters that I enjoyed (Dorne, Iron Islands, Cersei, Alayne, Jaime). Yes it doesnt have any battles but there a lot of things still happening.

ADWD wasn't as good IMO. I think it was Tyrion, Dany, and Jons dragging chapters that lead to loads of cliffhangers. (Jon, Dany, Cersei, Jaime, )

[Holy Sock]

Biggest mistake we've ever had. He should've just been given more time to finish the battles and have them in the book because at the moment it's such an anti-climax. The battle of Mereen looks like it's going to take up about half of Winds so far with chapters from Dany. Tyrion, Barristan, Victarion and then a massive aftermath. Also Stannis is nowhere near Winterfell so half of Winds might be resolving the two major plotlines from THE LAST BOOK. Definitely not a good way to open a new book with all this crazy stuff going on, because it sets a precident.

Winds will likely be the battle, then the build up for the next big set of events, so we will be blue-balled all over again. I can't see George finishing the books within the next 2 books at the moment, but if he'd cut down on some of Tyrions travelogue and Dany's chapters then I think we mightve been able to finish the Battles in Dance and then got a proper Winds novel instead of the first half of Winds tying up what should've been concluded in Dance.

It's like Clash building up to the Battle of the Blackwater...but then it cuts out right before the Battle so the first few chapters of Storm are about the battle, instead of the aftermath of the battle. It's just a horrible narrative structure that might ruin the structure of the novels in the rest of the series due to a weird stilted novel structure.

Well, it was more of an editorial decision. The editors convinced him to moved the battles into the next book since ADWD was getting far too big. They also wanted him to stop Jon's chapters after a certain point but GRRM wrote on until Jon got stabbed.

It's true, there is a chance it could ruin the narrative structure of Winds. But it also might not. 200 mauscript pages written for ADWD were moved into TWOW. Some of those pages were the climaxes. Other pages was material originally supposed to be in TWOW but GRRM considered putting them in ADWD so he wrote them.

[kephv]

There is not a month between the last ACOK chapter and the first AFFC one...

Didn't know that; and I don't think I would've ever guessed. Most probably don't either, and I even think GRRM mentioned something to do with that fact, which is why he's always been rather vague about the time passage in the books. Seems it's only for purposes of expediency. It would have been a bit jarring if he had held back Jon's last chapter only to put that at the beginning of ASoS, for instance.

[hollowcrown]

Well, it was more of an editorial decision. The editors convinced him to moved the battles into the next book since ADWD was getting far too big. They also wanted him to stop Jon's chapters after a certain point but GRRM wrote on until Jon got stabbed.

It's true, there is a chance it could ruin the narrative structure of Winds. But it also might not. 200 mauscript pages written for ADWD were moved into TWOW. Some of those pages were the climaxes. Other pages was material originally supposed to be in TWOW but GRRM considered putting them in ADWD so he wrote them.

I personally don't think it's going to work, the editors should've got him to cut down on several of the chapters - maybe condense some Dany and Tyrion ones?

In Winds we're going to have the end section of what should've been the conclusion to Dance. Fair enough. Then we've got the aftermath of the battles, which is going to be what should've been the beginning to Winds. Then we've got to have the meat of the story of Winds, and then Wind will be really long and end up with the same problem as Dance....no conclusion, and the cycle begins again.

[Errant Bard]

Didn't know that; and I don't think I would've ever guessed. Most probably don't either, and I even think GRRM mentioned something to do with that fact, which is why he's always been rather vague about the time passage in the books. Seems it's only for purposes of expediency. It would have been a bit jarring if he had held back Jon's last chapter only to put that at the beginning of ASoS, for instance.

I agree, of course, that it was for the sake of expediency, but that choice had an impact on the story structure nonetheless, hence the "tacked on" feeling some stuff could give.

[Ours if the Fury]

I am in absolutely with you on this Dance with Dragons was my Favourtie book!!!! all the detail the cliff hangers it was simply amazing

Feast for Crows was awesome as well seeing inside Cersi's head was interesting... hahah and Jamie, Samwell, Victarion, Areon, Arienna and the whole dorne and iron islands :) the only thing wrong with either books was the fact that GRRM kept Brienne alive she is the one character i despise and hate she was a horrible character in COK, SOS and then in FFC. So i don't consider that one a fault !!!!

SO OVERALL THE LAST TWO BOOKS FFC and DWD ARE AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Holy Sock]

I personally don't think it's going to work, the editors should've got him to cut down on several of the chapters - maybe condense some Dany and Tyrion ones?

In Winds we're going to have the end section of what should've been the conclusion to Dance. Fair enough. Then we've got the aftermath of the battles, which is going to be what should've been the beginning to Winds. Then we've got to have the meat of the story of Winds, and then Wind will be really long and end up with the same problem as Dance....no conclusion, and the cycle begins again.

Well, this is all conjecture at this point, but it's possible. If that does happen, however, it will eventually end in ADOS (or an eighth book if it comes to that). Also, I'm not so sure the editors can really tell GRRM what to write about. That's up to GRRM I would imagine.

But it could work out. GRRM might be more stubborn and insist he reaches a certain point in the story by the end of Winds. Or maybe it will all work out naturally? We won't know until it's published or announced on his blog.

[Sun]

I will be pissed if Vic goes the same way as Quentyn and is just so Martin can kill off another POV. Then I will know that he just invented Q + V as cannon-fodder to cover his five year gap.

Vic has plot device written all over him, imo.

[Joyful Union]

Vic has plot device written all over him, imo.

The horn will probably attract the dragons, he is toast.

[total1402]

I don't think you understand. It's irrelevant whether or not that material was needed or not. That's not the point. Read it more carefully. This is not an assessment of the quality of his writing. Simply one of the reasons why it took so long.

Also, it's irrelevant that we did not get to see some of these things actually happen (like Marwyn etc). Either this was some of the material cut out at the last moment or carefully planned outlines of events the follow in Meereen (seems more like the former however)

lets start with the offer from Xaro to give Dany ships, the refusal of which then leads to Qarth’s declaration of war. Then there’s the marriage of Daenerys to pacify the city. Then there’s the arrival of the Yunkish army at the gates of Meereen, there’s the order of arrival of various people going her way (Tyrion, Quentyn, Victarion, Aegon, Marwyn, etc.), and then there’s Daario, this dangerous sellsword and the question of whether Dany really wants him or not, there’s the plague, there’s Drogon’s return to Meereen…

That's all the balls he was juggling. He just used Quentyn's arrival as an example for his problem. He wrote THREE different alternatives with Quentyn's arrival. Then, he had to see how they affected every other character's story. How did he do that? By writing them. And rewriting them. So he's have to write and intricately plot out 3 alternatives for Dany, Victarion, Barristan, Tyrion, and Marwyn.

Now, that's just one plot point. Then we have Drogon's landing. Which he wrote happening at different times. So then this, in turn, affects all the other plotlines. Then GRRM has to figure out this effect on Victarions, Dany's, Quentyn's etc storylines for each time he wrote it occuring. Also, how does this affect other plotlines? Like the marriage pact, the declarations of war etc.

So, now he has Victarion. When would he arrive? GRRM writes out several different chapters of his arrival. How does this affect the other characters? How does this affect other plots? So now he has to figure out the knock on effect in all the other storylines.

Then he has to do the same for Tyrion. Which I know cause a lot of problems. He was only able to reconcile a lot of these chronology problems by making Barristan a POV. But you've got the remember that he spent a lot of time trying to reconcile the POVs without a Barristan POV.

So he has all these plot points that he had to write multiple versions off in order to figure out the chronology.

He DID pull it off in the end. It took a long time until he was satisfied with the reconciliation. But he DID cut out the battle of Meereen. So, a lot of that work won't be shown until TWOW.

Obviously this isn't the only reason for delay. He had every other storyline to finish He has gone on record saying he did extensive rewrites for every chapter in this book. Even ones he had finished when AFFC was released. He was forced to create extra POVs he didn't want to in order to get some of the storylines to make sense. He also got ambitious towards the end of the book and started reconciling the POVs. He ended up writing chapters that he put in ADWD and other chapters that he ended up putting back in TWOW (eg Arianne's chapters).

So there are the reasons that I understand make the book much harder to write than GRRM intended.

You don't have to like it. You can think all that was completely unnecessary since you feel most of the plotlines are unneeded, that we didn't need to see a lot of the POVs to tell the story, that he created too much trouble for himself, that since he cut out the battle it was all for naught. That's your prerogative.

But the Meereenese Knot is over. We didn't get to see the Meereenese plotline finish in ADWD but GRRM figured out his extensive chronology problem and it should be smoother sailing from here.

But you never know.

Law of dimishing returns. It does not make ADWD a vastly better story by extending the chapters and us going "oh thats the same red priest Tyrion met washed up on Vics boat; clap clap clap". Plus things like the Qarth chapters really are redundent and are going over what was already established firmly and at length in ASOS. We then have POV characters repeating the exact same information to us at length. Other plots like Dany marries Hidzhar to solve problems take way too long to pan out simply because we're waiting for Tyrion, Vic and Quentyn to do there shit first.

It was all for nought.

He has written 200 draft pages in two years. It is not going to be smoother sailing from here. He has the same ungodly number of POV characters with their menageries, a ton of plots which need to be addressed and resolved. People who need to meet up. Then, he needs to do a bunch more travelogues talking about Dany n co going the other direction. On top of that, whatever issues Martin had with a split version of the story will of be magnified when he tries to tell every POV character story at once. It will take him many more years to finish that book and I fully expect the show to finish the series before that point. Thats not sarcasm or meaness to the man its just a fact.

[Dicer]

I found AFfC to be utterly boring. It's the one book I have not re-read and I don't think I will. Getting through it once was hard enough.

On the other hand I really liked ADwD. Granted, I struggled a bit with Dany's story, but I think that's mainly because Essos and it's denizens are not very well written. Tyrion's adventures with Penny was also a bit tiresome but he did introduce Aegon and JC and started off that whole arc.

But on the whole I loved the story in the North: Jon dealing with the Wildlings and planning for battle, Stannis' march to WF, Theon and Mance, Davos, Manderly etc.

From AGoT to ASoS I liked the WOT5K and the happenings in the south more than the story in the North. But after ASoS (Tywin, Joffrey are dead, Cersei is crazy, Tyrion is gone, LF is being lazy in the vale) I have sort of lost interest in the south and my focus has shifted North. I think Martin did a good job in ADwD moving the focus to the North and WF and start setting things up for the arrival of the Others.

[First of My Name]

I don't dislike them, but I understand the complaints. The pacing slows down and there's a lot more padding in between important events, but AFFC/ADWD contains some of GRRM's strongest writing to date in spite of it. ASOIAF at it's 'worst' is still more enjoyable than 98% of the fantasy genre for me.

A lot of the flaws tend to get picked apart and blown out of proportion moreso than the other books in the series because of how long it took them to come out, I think.

Nailed it. I fully agree.

[13th Warrior]

They shouldn't be lumped together. AFFC is way better. ADWD is easily the worst book in the series. Theon's arc is great, a few other chapters are high quality, the rest is really not up to the standards of the rest of the series IMO.

Thank You... Im glad Im not alone in the world with my opinion, my biggest beef is with the lenght of the books not so much if it is well written but when you get lost reading, and when I say lost its not in a good way

[Holy Sock]

Law of dimishing returns. It does not make ADWD a vastly better story by extending the chapters and us going "oh thats the same red priest Tyrion met washed up on Vics boat; clap clap clap". Plus things like the Qarth chapters really are redundent and are going over what was already established firmly and at length in ASOS. We then have POV characters repeating the exact same information to us at length. Other plots like Dany marries Hidzhar to solve problems take way too long to pan out simply because we're waiting for Tyrion, Vic and Quentyn to do there shit first.

It was all for nought.

Nonsense.

That is entirely your own personal opinions on the quality of the book. Someone else who loved the book would say the opposite. You just can't seem to grasp that someone put a lot of time and effort into a book that you did not enjoy and especially that it almost took x3 as long to write a book in a series that you very much dislike than a book in that series you really love.

It's about what you feel is important as opposed to what someone else feels is important or what GRRM felt was important. Someone else could dislike the book for everything you liked and loved everything you hated.

He has written 200 draft pages in two years. It is not going to be smoother sailing from here. He has the same ungodly number of POV characters with their menageries, a ton of plots which need to be addressed and resolved. People who need to meet up. Then, he needs to do a bunch more travelogues talking about Dany n co going the other direction. On top of that, whatever issues Martin had with a split version of the story will of be magnified when he tries to tell every POV character story at once. It will take him many more years to finish that book and I fully expect the show to finish the series before that point. Thats not sarcasm or meaness to the man its just a fact.

That's not fact. That's just severe pessimism. Expecting the worst case scenario. Which is understandable. GRRM has done nothing over the last 11 years to alleviate such fears.

But, perhaps you're looking at the situation a bit too negatively. AFFC took so long because GRRM tried for so long to make the 5 year gap work. Then, when he scrapped all that work, he had to figure out how to work within the 5 year gap. This required a lot of new POVs. Then he split the book continentally so he could publish at least half of the storyline by 2005 because the storyline was getting too big. This also allowed him to expand some POVs a bit (Cersei, Brienne & Jaime) and include more material for them in the book.

ADWD took so long for reasons previously stated (Rewrites, the Knot, etc) - This also allowed him expand the story a little bit further by the end of the book (reconciling the POVs). But he also found that he needed to add more POVs to the story.

Anyway, the point is: AFFC & ADWD ook so long because he had to completely overhaul his original plan and, after a few years, was face with great structural problems and the need to create all these new POVs in order to get where he wanted to in the story.

He doesn't have that problem any more. Sure, it's going to take him longer than ACOK or ASOS because he has so many POVs. But he isn't face with huge structural problems. We know he's going to kill off a lot of characters in the next book. He's spent two books trying to get everyone into place and establish the story threads for the Winds of Winter. All he has to do now is move forward.

It shouldn't take as long as the last two books because he isn't face with all the problems that delayed those two books.