Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Yikes. I've enjoyed this series, honestly I have, but the latest entry--A Feast for Crows--has forced me to seriously reconsider whether it has been worth it. In the first place, frankly, this is no longer the series I'd signed on for. The first novel introduced a group of characters, the Starks, and led us to believe that they would be central to the narrative. Now with most of them dead or scattered, they're almost incidental to it. Since this volume only deals with half of the current "main cast," some of my personal favorites completely disappear (like Tyrion and Daenerys). In short, when I decided to continue on after A Game of Thrones, I didn't know I'd be reading 1000 pages of Brienne and the Iron Born. Aside from this literary 'bait and switch,' there's also the fact that... well... nothing really happens in this book. Okay, maybe "nothing" is harsh, but it certainly feels like it. *Lots of things* should happen in a 1000 page book, but Martin strives to put all of the relevant happenings at the very end. Before that, characters spend an endless amount of time wandering from place to place. We readers get to meet all sorts of new and extraneous characters, instead of spending time with the countless we've met before. (Though in fairness, given the time between publishings, it's unlikely we'd remember all of those older characters. I can't keep straight who's died anymore... I forget, is Theon dead?) Incredibly, most of the exciting action (battles and the like) take place between chapters, and we only learn about it through conversation after the fact. Many of the new characters introduced here get their own POV chapter, sometimes one to a character. The series is becoming increasingly disjointed, and there's certainly no kind of resolution for anything in sight. The one real thru-line is Cersei's story. She probably gets the most chapters, and something like an actual plot. Of course, I can sum up all of those chapters to you here with: Cersei hates and is suspicious of/jealous of everyone and everything. Cersei sits around and snapes at everything, over and over again, and lord but it doesn't get much more exciting than that until page 900. The series is, at least, consistent in that the worst things always happen to the best characters and things can always be counted on to go wrong (unless you're a villain). While it was once possible to say that Martin was being "realistic" in showing that, sometimes, bad things happen to the heroes... well, it's almost ridiculous now, in how nothing good ever seems to happen to anyone who could be described as "virtuous." Though, of course, very few of the remaining characters could so be described. Most have been decapitated well before this novel. There is a line between "realism" and "sadism," and it isn't all that "fine." Martin has crossed it some time ago. Man, I was looking forward to this book. But really what I was looking forward to was a sequel to the novels that had come before it. Instead, this book (and, increasingly, the series) abandons the characters who have come before and, rather than offer any resolution, creates new conflicts spiraling off into the aether. It doesn't deal with any of those conflicts, either. Instead, it contents itself with having all of its main characters walk from locale to locale, talking, thinking and dreaming but never doing. George R.R. Martin has taken up close to 4000 pages now, more than three times what Tolkien used in The Lord of the Rings and more than twice War and Peace. He has accomplished very little for all that, and given us little hope that there's any relief in sight. His preferred method of resolving conflicts seems to be having his characters abruptly die, and so that's how I figure he'll tie the loose ends here. It's all rather depressing, if like me you feel you have to finish what you start. Martin is capable of good, snappy storytelling--his graphic novel which takes place in the same world, The Hedge Knight, was really quite good. But it has one large advantage over A Song of Ice and Fire in that it has a beginning, middle and end. A Song of Ice and Fire, on the other hand, seems to be nothing but an endless middle. (The fact that it's a series doesn't mean it can't have both rising and falling action and resolutions to conflicts sprinkled along the way. Examine almost any other series, ever, for examples.) Not all of these flaws are new to the series--in fact, they've been there since almost the start--but over time they're becoming more and more inescapable and damaging to the overall experience. Two stars for this novel. If things don't rapidly improve, and there's no reason to expect them to, we'll quickly find ourselves at a solitary star. A shame.