the north remembers.
first of all, i saw deathly hallows yesterday with lori and it was awesome. i think overall i actually liked part 1 slightly more, but i thought part 2 was very well done. can't believe it's over. as soon as it ended i said "uh, now what?" :( also i don't hate ginny but a) the chemistry between danrad & bonnie is like non-existent, and b) the chemistry between danrad & evanna is super delicious, so pretty much harry/luna 4eva. ♥
billy was pretty excited about the movie but decided he'd wait for dvd to see it.
in even geekier news, i read a dance with dragons so
i guess i'll divide this by character?
dany: i'm an unrepentant dany stan, but this book was the first time i wasn't especially into her storyline. i hated that she married that dude (tho i understand why she did), i didn't really get the daario thing, and i hated that she had her dragons chained up underground. i also didn't really like her ending; so she's in a faceoff with some random dothrakis? do we know the khal? eh. that being said, my favorite scene in the entire book (minus possibly one other one) was when drogon re-appeared. her being all fucking alpha dragon and screaming at him and then flying the fuck out of there had me screaming in joy. bad.ass!
tyrion: didn't love his storyline either, but there were things i liked. the bridge with the stone men will be awesome/scary on tv if we get that far. i love that he's with jorah now. penny is darling and so she'll probably die soon. i had it in my head that young griff was edric storm, then realized he was too old. loved that aegon survived. love that he seems to be so much like rhaegar. (love that jon connington had such an obvious giant mancrush on rhaegar, too.) don't care where whores go, but if we don't eventually see tysha after all this talk about her i'll be annoyed. also: who is septa lemore really?
jon snow: first of all, no way he's actually dead. not sure what will happen, but srsly, no way he's dead. i enjoyed some of his stuff (the wildlings, especially val!, alys karstark, dolorous edd, jon's increasing warginess) but i hated that he sent away all of his friends. and i think i started glazing over at some points because i'm not sure why he was so obsessed with rescuing those people from hardhome or whatever it was called. oh, but him hanging janos slynt was basically orgasmic.
barristan the bamf: i love him! i did already and his POV stuff just kept the love going. the little tidbit about ashara dayne was interesting. mostly i dread his eventual death (because he's too much of a good guy to live, plus he's old-ish) very hard. i hope when he does bite the dust it's heroic. none of the major characters (except maybe syrio, assuming he's dead, or maybe the red viper, but neither of them were really major anyway) have gone out in a blaze of glory. ned, cat, robb, drogo, robert, etc etc. when barristan dies he'd better take a dozen freys/lannisters/whatever down with him.
quentyn: speaking of shitty deaths! i didn't really think his plan with the dragons stood a chance, but i was sad that he died so soon; i found him charming. plus i am just generally fond of the dornish so i wanted to see that alliance come together. and from more of an external perspective, unless drink or the big dude are going to be big characters in TWOW, it seems like his storyline was kind of pointless tbh. kind of wondering if he was the meereenese knot grrm struggled with, and he eventually just said "fuck it, i'll kill him off." :/
dorne: is areo the only actual POV we got from dorne? i think it was just that one chapter. anyway, very very excited that the sand snakes are being released into the wild, so to speak. i hope we get POVs from some or all of them in the next book, especially nymeria. i can't wait 'till the martells find out aegon is alive.
jaime: i don't remember anything in his chapter other than brienne's brief appearance, tbh. i hope she has a plan and isn't actually planning to just lead jaime into a trap. i can't imagine she'd do that but who knows? the only other jaime thing of interest to me is that he ignored cersei's letter, which pleases me because she's awful and jaime is awesome and the jaime/cersei shippers who swore he'd go to her were wrongggg! mwahaha. don't die in TWOW please jaime, kthx.
cersei: eh. still mostly hate her. lots of people seem to have important feminist feelings about her walk of atonement but considering the general craziness of the faith i didn't think it was particularly shocking or out of left field, idk. also, i love tommen and his kittens.
reek/theon: loooved his chapters. ramsay is a scary nasty mothefucker. theon is still horrible for taking down winterfell, but he was always vaguely pathetic and the shit he went through at ramsay's hands helps make up for it. fucking loved that fake arya was jeyne poole, i can't believe grrm brought her back! too bad she hasn't appeared on the tv show; i wonder if they'll try and work her into next season. it doesn't really matter that it's someone we know, tho, so they may not bother. i love that theon helped her escape. i'd love it if somehow he and jon teamed up to avenge robb but it'll never happen. anyway, i like how the chapter names -- as well as the text itself -- showed reek slowly becoming theon again. i hope alfie allen is a good enough actor to pull this off if we get 6 seasons or whatever.
asha: is still pretty awesome. glad to see she's been reunited with theon. the stuff with stannis (who's not dead, i think ramsay lied) and the snowstorm was fucking awful.
victarion: ooh, wow, don't care.
arya: baby bamf! looooved her chapters. the faceless man stuff is fascinating to me. i keep waiting for her to meet up with jaqen again, but in the meantime i'm loving her training. i wonder what major character she'll eventually end up being sent to assassinate. also, i wonder how they'll do this for the tv show...i can't imagine them recasting maisie. maybe they could do like they did with george on dead like me when she saw her family; we generally see her as herself and only see her looking different when she's viewed through someone else's eyes or in a mirror, etc.
bran: i usually find his stuff boring (tho i love meera reed!) but the children of the forest and him learning to be a greenseer was kind of cool. i assume when theon was in the godswood and heard bran's name it's because bran was in the tree or whatever the hell goes on. pretty sure warging into hodor is a no-no so i'm interested to see if he gets in trouble from his tree teacher dude. also coldhands is still defs benjen, right?
davos: glad he's alive and going to find -- i think? -- rickon. the manderly fam is pretty fucking rad, especially wylla, omg. ♥ also i missed that there was frey pie, WHOOPS. also: vom.
melisandre: i liked getting her POV. i like that she seems well-meaning. i really like that she kept davos's other son with her for his safety. is mel/jon going to be a thing?
the prologue: was kind of awesome. i didn't really recall having heard about varamyr before but i found him fascinating.
the epilogue: had me screaming!!! i wouldn't call varys one of my favorite characters, but i've always thought he was by far one of the most interesting, so his extremely fucking badass reappearance at the end made me super-happy, especially after the end of dany's last chapter had left me so underwhelmed. shit in KL is getting so real!!!
other things:
- so the heads of the dragon will presumably be dany/aegon/jon (because R + L still = J)? i back it. also: threesome!? :P
- very much dnw zombie!gregor, ack. D:
- the hound was mentioned several times for no real reason. i take this as further proof that he's alive, and that grrm wants to make sure we haven't forgotten about him.
- i kind of missed sansa.
- i never figure this shit out, but i knew that abel was mance instantly and i was shocked when i saw some people talking about that being a cool surprise. srsly?
- i remain convinced that the real horn of winter is the one jon gave to sam.
- wild-ass theory: there's going to be a plague and it's going to kill a fuckton of people, leaving shireen one of the few survivors...and the eventual queen.
- i want to know how loras is doing.
- it'd better not be six years 'till the next one.
also, about the tv show: love the brienne casting. happy peter dinklage got his emmy nod. if maggie smith doesn't play the queen of thorns, it'll wake the dragon.
billy was pretty excited about the movie but decided he'd wait for dvd to see it.
in even geekier news, i read a dance with dragons so
i guess i'll divide this by character?
dany: i'm an unrepentant dany stan, but this book was the first time i wasn't especially into her storyline. i hated that she married that dude (tho i understand why she did), i didn't really get the daario thing, and i hated that she had her dragons chained up underground. i also didn't really like her ending; so she's in a faceoff with some random dothrakis? do we know the khal? eh. that being said, my favorite scene in the entire book (minus possibly one other one) was when drogon re-appeared. her being all fucking alpha dragon and screaming at him and then flying the fuck out of there had me screaming in joy. bad.ass!
tyrion: didn't love his storyline either, but there were things i liked. the bridge with the stone men will be awesome/scary on tv if we get that far. i love that he's with jorah now. penny is darling and so she'll probably die soon. i had it in my head that young griff was edric storm, then realized he was too old. loved that aegon survived. love that he seems to be so much like rhaegar. (love that jon connington had such an obvious giant mancrush on rhaegar, too.) don't care where whores go, but if we don't eventually see tysha after all this talk about her i'll be annoyed. also: who is septa lemore really?
jon snow: first of all, no way he's actually dead. not sure what will happen, but srsly, no way he's dead. i enjoyed some of his stuff (the wildlings, especially val!, alys karstark, dolorous edd, jon's increasing warginess) but i hated that he sent away all of his friends. and i think i started glazing over at some points because i'm not sure why he was so obsessed with rescuing those people from hardhome or whatever it was called. oh, but him hanging janos slynt was basically orgasmic.
barristan the bamf: i love him! i did already and his POV stuff just kept the love going. the little tidbit about ashara dayne was interesting. mostly i dread his eventual death (because he's too much of a good guy to live, plus he's old-ish) very hard. i hope when he does bite the dust it's heroic. none of the major characters (except maybe syrio, assuming he's dead, or maybe the red viper, but neither of them were really major anyway) have gone out in a blaze of glory. ned, cat, robb, drogo, robert, etc etc. when barristan dies he'd better take a dozen freys/lannisters/whatever down with him.
quentyn: speaking of shitty deaths! i didn't really think his plan with the dragons stood a chance, but i was sad that he died so soon; i found him charming. plus i am just generally fond of the dornish so i wanted to see that alliance come together. and from more of an external perspective, unless drink or the big dude are going to be big characters in TWOW, it seems like his storyline was kind of pointless tbh. kind of wondering if he was the meereenese knot grrm struggled with, and he eventually just said "fuck it, i'll kill him off." :/
dorne: is areo the only actual POV we got from dorne? i think it was just that one chapter. anyway, very very excited that the sand snakes are being released into the wild, so to speak. i hope we get POVs from some or all of them in the next book, especially nymeria. i can't wait 'till the martells find out aegon is alive.
jaime: i don't remember anything in his chapter other than brienne's brief appearance, tbh. i hope she has a plan and isn't actually planning to just lead jaime into a trap. i can't imagine she'd do that but who knows? the only other jaime thing of interest to me is that he ignored cersei's letter, which pleases me because she's awful and jaime is awesome and the jaime/cersei shippers who swore he'd go to her were wrongggg! mwahaha. don't die in TWOW please jaime, kthx.
cersei: eh. still mostly hate her. lots of people seem to have important feminist feelings about her walk of atonement but considering the general craziness of the faith i didn't think it was particularly shocking or out of left field, idk. also, i love tommen and his kittens.
reek/theon: loooved his chapters. ramsay is a scary nasty mothefucker. theon is still horrible for taking down winterfell, but he was always vaguely pathetic and the shit he went through at ramsay's hands helps make up for it. fucking loved that fake arya was jeyne poole, i can't believe grrm brought her back! too bad she hasn't appeared on the tv show; i wonder if they'll try and work her into next season. it doesn't really matter that it's someone we know, tho, so they may not bother. i love that theon helped her escape. i'd love it if somehow he and jon teamed up to avenge robb but it'll never happen. anyway, i like how the chapter names -- as well as the text itself -- showed reek slowly becoming theon again. i hope alfie allen is a good enough actor to pull this off if we get 6 seasons or whatever.
asha: is still pretty awesome. glad to see she's been reunited with theon. the stuff with stannis (who's not dead, i think ramsay lied) and the snowstorm was fucking awful.
victarion: ooh, wow, don't care.
arya: baby bamf! looooved her chapters. the faceless man stuff is fascinating to me. i keep waiting for her to meet up with jaqen again, but in the meantime i'm loving her training. i wonder what major character she'll eventually end up being sent to assassinate. also, i wonder how they'll do this for the tv show...i can't imagine them recasting maisie. maybe they could do like they did with george on dead like me when she saw her family; we generally see her as herself and only see her looking different when she's viewed through someone else's eyes or in a mirror, etc.
bran: i usually find his stuff boring (tho i love meera reed!) but the children of the forest and him learning to be a greenseer was kind of cool. i assume when theon was in the godswood and heard bran's name it's because bran was in the tree or whatever the hell goes on. pretty sure warging into hodor is a no-no so i'm interested to see if he gets in trouble from his tree teacher dude. also coldhands is still defs benjen, right?
davos: glad he's alive and going to find -- i think? -- rickon. the manderly fam is pretty fucking rad, especially wylla, omg. ♥ also i missed that there was frey pie, WHOOPS. also: vom.
melisandre: i liked getting her POV. i like that she seems well-meaning. i really like that she kept davos's other son with her for his safety. is mel/jon going to be a thing?
the prologue: was kind of awesome. i didn't really recall having heard about varamyr before but i found him fascinating.
the epilogue: had me screaming!!! i wouldn't call varys one of my favorite characters, but i've always thought he was by far one of the most interesting, so his extremely fucking badass reappearance at the end made me super-happy, especially after the end of dany's last chapter had left me so underwhelmed. shit in KL is getting so real!!!
other things:
- so the heads of the dragon will presumably be dany/aegon/jon (because R + L still = J)? i back it. also: threesome!? :P
- very much dnw zombie!gregor, ack. D:
- the hound was mentioned several times for no real reason. i take this as further proof that he's alive, and that grrm wants to make sure we haven't forgotten about him.
- i kind of missed sansa.
- i never figure this shit out, but i knew that abel was mance instantly and i was shocked when i saw some people talking about that being a cool surprise. srsly?
- i remain convinced that the real horn of winter is the one jon gave to sam.
- wild-ass theory: there's going to be a plague and it's going to kill a fuckton of people, leaving shireen one of the few survivors...and the eventual queen.
- i want to know how loras is doing.
- it'd better not be six years 'till the next one.
also, about the tv show: love the brienne casting. happy peter dinklage got his emmy nod. if maggie smith doesn't play the queen of thorns, it'll wake the dragon.