A Dance With Dragons, So Far
Reading A Dance With Dragons. I'm up to Chapter 32 (p. 420). (There are seventy-three chapters--seventy-one, plus a prologue and an epilogue. I counted.)
Observations so far:
-- I'm not as immersed in this book as I'd expected to be. However, this is not a book you WANT to be immersed in. Certain chapters are uncomfortable, even painful and nauseating, to read.
-- Forget agency. Maybe three people in the entire book have it, and one of them is a moral monster who needs to be eaten by the dragons of the title right NOW.
-- It's very much a guy's story. Dany is the only female character who gets a substantial number of POV chapters. One other woman gets three. The rest get one, maybe two.
-- I can't keep the timeline straight. I keep trying to figure out exactly when everything is happening in relation to A Feast For Crows, and I can't do it. I wish that Martin had included a timeline along with the maps.
-- Overall, I'd say that it's a very good story with plenty of detail and excellent attention to canon continuity. It's just that, after six years of waiting, it isn't the story I wanted to read. I wanted a story with winners as well as losers. I can only hope that there will be a breath of hope here and there as the story goes on.
Observations so far:
-- I'm not as immersed in this book as I'd expected to be. However, this is not a book you WANT to be immersed in. Certain chapters are uncomfortable, even painful and nauseating, to read.
-- Forget agency. Maybe three people in the entire book have it, and one of them is a moral monster who needs to be eaten by the dragons of the title right NOW.
-- It's very much a guy's story. Dany is the only female character who gets a substantial number of POV chapters. One other woman gets three. The rest get one, maybe two.
-- I can't keep the timeline straight. I keep trying to figure out exactly when everything is happening in relation to A Feast For Crows, and I can't do it. I wish that Martin had included a timeline along with the maps.
-- Overall, I'd say that it's a very good story with plenty of detail and excellent attention to canon continuity. It's just that, after six years of waiting, it isn't the story I wanted to read. I wanted a story with winners as well as losers. I can only hope that there will be a breath of hope here and there as the story goes on.