Anticipating "A Feast For Crows" by George R. R. Martin (Nov. 9)

Creepy psychos are awesome, tho

yeah i thought she was gonna be an assassin or some shit, not like some do-gooder

kinda assuming she will leave the facelessbros at some point and team up with jon, danaerys or tyrion

but i think a lot of wrong shit tbh

i'm convinced bran is turning into a creepy psycho, too.

Rickon is going to end up uniting the 7 Kingdoms and the Wildlings

arya + daenerys wd be amazing, too.

remy, no!! Bran is going to be awesome!

Faceless folk seem like hacks to me, would enjoy it if she just killed that kindly old man.

yeah no way bran can be a psycho with jojen reed supervising him

Rickon is going to end up uniting the 7 Kingdoms and the Wildlings

― I HAVE ISSUES (DJP), Monday, May 23, 2011 4:40 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dont get why martin wont just kill him off already

HODOR ftw

im still #teampodrick

should we start a dance with dragons thread

probably but I'm lazy

also can i just say how much it annoys me that martin titled three of the boys X of Y and is now changing up his prepositions

the last two should be called The Winds Between Winter and A Dream Before Spring

a dream up spring

hahaha

trying to reread these in anticipation gawd is bran the worst

rickon is worse

HODOR

more like BLODOR

THE HODIARTRIST

lol whats your beef w/rickon max - he doesnt have any POVs and he literally ceases to exist after the 2nd book

hes nuts, way too hyper, cant control his wolf, its like, chill out lil bro

speaking of shit that annoys me in these books

why are the starks "words" (dont even get me started on calling it "words" instead of "motto") in the present progressive?? "winter is coming" sucks -- what about "winter will come" or "winter always comes" or something? even "winter comes" would be better.

haha i dont like him for the same reasons tbh - when he went off on his own w/osha i felt bad for her because i knew she'd end up being eaten by Shaggydog because hes a brat who sets the wolf on anyone who tells him what to do

Pishposh, it's clearly a reference to Ezra Pound's parody of Sumer Is Icumen In

Winter is icumen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!

The Starks are high modernists for sure.

one of the things im really enjoying this read through is finding little easter egg nods to other sff writers reminds me of what a total fanboy martin is @ heart

speaking of shit that annoys me in these books

why are the starks "words" (dont even get me started on calling it "words" instead of "motto") in the present progressive?? "winter is coming" sucks -- what about "winter will come" or "winter always comes" or something? even "winter comes" would be better.

― ban drake (the rapper) (max), Monday, May 23, 2011 10:10 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

s1ocki wanted me to tell you that 'winter is coming' is way doper than all those other suggestions (i agree w/him)

tell s1ocki to start fukken posting again...

hmmm

finished the fourth book & still feel p let down by the series. i mean im happy that dance/dragons is finally coming out but the reread kinda just reminded me of all things i dislike abt the series particularly as an 'epic fantasy'. i think the thing that bothered me the most is the sorta hand-waving that goes on around the idea that theres a deeper level going on thing, which is sorta a dumm trope in general in i think implemented particularly badly here w/ the oldtown stuff.

also littlefinger as devious political tactician sorta wears thin - at one point he tells sansa that cersei was fucking things up faster than he had anticipated which a) seemed like a nod to his original idea that he could timeskip after book 3 and b) how did lf even know cersei wld end up in charge?

Tyrion covered his mouth and belched politely[... The first thing he had done after taking up residence in the Tower of the Hand was inquire after the finest cook in the city and take her into his service. This evening they had supped on oxtail soup, summer greens tossed with pecans, grapes, red fennel, and crumbled cheese, hot crab pie, spiced squash, and quails drowned in butter. Each dish had come with its own wine.

i think the thing that bothered me the most is the sorta hand-waving that goes on around the idea that theres a deeper level going on thing, which is sorta a dumm trope in general in i think implemented particularly badly here w/ the oldtown stuff.

what do you mean by this? i was under the impression that the "oldtown stuff" (i.e. the maesters conspiracy against magic? i guess?) was going to be explained in more depth in the next book?

i do think littlefinger's kinda getting lamer and lamer, i'd really like to see someone outsmart him for once (hoping its not some super obvious sansa-learns-how-to-be-a-schemer-from-him-and-then-disposes-of-him thing)

yeah the littlefinger/sansa stuff is pretty boring/stupid

This evening they had supped on oxtail soup, summer greens tossed with pecans, grapes, red fennel, and crumbled cheese, hot crab pie, spiced squash, and quails drowned in butter. Each dish had come with its own wine.

no olives, huh

'i wonder what a medieval feast would have looked like eh i guess i can just make some shit up'

tbf dude looks like he must've done meticulous research

ha i googled that phrase and it was on one of those 'open the book nearest to hand and type the xxth sentence of the yyyth page' threads in another place, and all they had glossed it with was 'fat author is fat'

what do you mean by this? i was under the impression that the "oldtown stuff" (i.e. the maesters conspiracy against magic? i guess?) was going to be explained in more depth in the next book?

in book 4 it felt like he started to make explicit a couple of intertwined plot threads that had sort of been undergirding a bunch of the action and more importantly his world-building but to me it felt clumsy & sorta thinly-realized? i think ideally these sort of 'ancient propechy'/secret cabal type of plotlines are supposed to reinforce some of the themes/ideas in the other plotlines or add a sense of mythic importance to the novel's goings on. but here they seem tacked-on from the best part of the series - the messy human politicking involved in the game of thrones, the personalities and the betrayals & the reversals. adding a for lack of a better word 'mythic' layer to the book sorta cheapens or at least minimizes the good stuff & exposes a lot of martin's weakness as a fantasy writer.

like in both of the oldtown chapters we're give a bunch of exposition that still fails to really explain much of anything, he sortof hints around abt some stuff we already know & then its like actually this whole conflict is really abt something else. which is like, blah.

oh i dunno i never got that "actually" feeling -- i liked the oldtown stuff (sort of -- it did feel tacked on) because the whole time im reading the series im thinking, you know, "the maesters dont make sense, why/how are they so apolitical, when their irl counterparts were not, these guys should be a separate power base from the aristocracy (& religion)." and then it sort of comes into focus -- theyre playing a different game, fighting a different battle or whatever.

& maybe i missed something but it didnt subsume the game of thrones stuff, it just was more of the kind of continual widening of focus that grrm has been doing since the first book. instead of being 'the conflict is really about this' it was like, 'heres a whole other set of conflicts that feed into the main conflict but you didnt even know about until now.'

but it seems like kind of a moot discussion till we get dance of dragons and can see where the citadel stuff actually goes

i guess - & i am probably not explaining this v well - my big problem was with the way the ideas presented in the oldtown chapters forcefully broaden the scope of the series. like wed been getting hints & insinuations that there were older/wilder/more magical forces at work in the war of the five kings, but i felt like he just sorta dropped things in our laps, w/o developing them or adequately foreshadowing them?

also i do think it does more than widen the focus or build his world or w/e - taken at face value the idea that danny represents a specfic & necessary force that will 'save humanity' changes the tone of the conflict. its no longer a war based on political necessities but prophetic ones. & i guess it begins to move the story from one of moral greyness to one thats more black & white? does that make sense? i guess i cld be reading too much into it/extrapolating too much from what we actually know...

i mean there are a lot of really good fantasy series that work w/in those parameteres & are in interested in looking in how salvation occurs in human terms, what the compromises are &c. but that doesnt seem to be the series that martin really wants to write, & im... less than enthusiastic abt reading him on it...

yeah if he takes that tack itd frustrate me too! & while i see how he could definitely push in that direction based on the citadel chapter, i didnt get the sense of inevitability that you did. though i may need to reread that bit.

trying not to read anything on the thread since i only just finished the second book but i wanted to rant for a second. i feel like martin took my need to have resolution re the lannisters from the first book (really for me, from the tv season) to propel me thru his second book without actually resolving any of the things i actually cared about. re robb v lannisters there is a remarkable lack of resolution on any kind of satisfying level and i'm not sure i want to read the third book w/ the hope that there will be some catharsis. even worse, i feel like the first 75% of the book does basically nothing to forward the action and then he crams all the major shifts in the last 1/4th. does this kind of thing get better in the 3rd + 4th books? i don't want to keep reading if it's going to be the same lack of progress stretched out. i always wondered how these fantasy authors can write thousands and thousands of shitty words in their books and now i kinda feel like (at least re: GRRM) it's bc nothing ever happens in them. argh, frustrating.

im not quite sure i understand what youre saying but theres not a whole lot of "satisfying" resolution at all in the series. are you saying that you wanted the stark and the lannister armies to come head to head and have a winner emerge? i think one thing that people like about martin is that he deliberately avoids that kind of dramatic confrontation. i mean if your inspirations are the wars of the roses or the 30 years war it kind of follows...

but maybe im misunderstanding what you dislike

I've been re-reading them in prep for the new one. I'm on Clash of Kings right now and am just loving every minute of it. Savoring every word even of story lines that made me impatient the first time I read it. I guess now that it's just about the journey (already knowing the destination), I am just enjoying his way with words and immersing myself in the world.

they don't necessarily need to come head to head but if i'm going to read a 900 page book i don't want the status quo to be basically the exact same in the end as it was in the beginning. those 900 pages should develop something. the daenarys storyline is mired in orientialism and obscurity, the big update in Winterfall is Theon taking control for a minute and a half (and even there, the most dramatic element -- bran + rickon's deaths -- turns out to be a fakeout), stannis is built up throughout the story only to fail anti-climatically during the battle at king's landing, the lannisters open w/ tenuous control of KL and end with only slightly less tenuous control of KL, etc etc. the biggest power shift in the book is the invasion at the very end and that takes multiple chapters of Jon Snow + the brothers wandering in the wastes with pretty much nothing going on. even the character arcs seem totally stalled. arya is pretty much the same character from beginning to end, as is sansa, jon snow, robb (who is barely even present), catelyn, jaime, cersei, joffrey -- really no one changes at all over 900 pages! in most of those cases, traits from the first book are just hammered home further in this one. arya is kinda a badass but out of place gender-wise in the first book? now she actually kills ppl and leads a revolt on that fort. sansa is damaged and tragic? now she's even more damaged and tragic. jon snow is honorable and a bastard? etc. etc. jaime spends all 900 pages in cuffs! i'm not asking for grrm to just have the two armies come head to head and resolve, but i would like some progress in what i'm reading. if you had asked me to extrapolate from the end of the first book till the end of the second one, i'd be pretty otm if i just had guessed everything would stay the same. sansa is still a captive. arya is still on the run. jon is still in the black. robb is still leading a war. jaime is still captured. joffrey is still on the throne...