Hey dragon, wake up!
I finished A Dance With Dragons last week and I am not thrilled about it, mostly because I don't have more books to read and it will be years until the next installment, which is awful considering the number of cliffhangers in it. I don't feel like the previous books left this much hanging, but I'm not sure if that's because I was able to pick up the next installment right away, or because the loose threads weren't so incomplete. I have this impression that in previous books, a lot of plots came to natural breaks, where they weren't finished but they settled enough to hold you until the next book.
It's interesting to read the speculation on forums and such; I'm of the "Jon is not dead" camp, mostly because we've spent too much time on him and there are too many open plot threads to just kill him off. The argument that he is dead seems to be based mostly on the "we haven't had a major protagonist death in a while, and too many characters have been coming back to life anyway, so someone needs to die." That's a thought, but then again, Ned kind of had to die for the story to happen. His death was the catalyst for a lot of what came after. It feels like Ned, and Robert, were the only things keeping the Seven Kingdoms together, and now that they're both dead, everything just goes tits up.
At this juncture, I don't really know what function Jon's death would serve plot-wise, especially with all those unanswered questions around him. I certainly see why he needed to be stabbed, though-the plot seems to be pointing at the fact that Jon needed to be off the Wall, but with his honor intact. Mission accomplished.
Also, how obvious does Martin want to be? The prevailing theory seems to be that his parents are Rhaegar and Lyanna, because they only drop like umpteen billion hints in that direction, with the occasional "well, Ned was totally into this chick" to try and throw some doubt into it. But at this point nothing else makes sense. His parentage is a big secret, so to just have it be some random nobody we know little to nothing about would be such a waste of everybody's time.
So is Jon one of the three heads of the dragon? Sure, why not, we seem to have three Targaryens running around now. Which I totally did not see coming, way to throw a well-timed wrench into the works there.
But for the other characters... wasn't digging Daenerys' story until "OMG DRAGON" which is kind of when it became awesome and people starting actually doing stuff. I ♥ Barristan Selmy, oddly enough. Didn't dig Tyrion's parts so much, probably because it fell into the "character having stuff happen to them instead of them doing stuff" thing I hate so much. I feel like Tyrion hasn't really been given much to do since Clash of Kings, and just when he starts taking some action his part of the book ends. It was incredibly unsatisfying.
Um... reverend_dave was right, Arya is Batman.
It's interesting to read the speculation on forums and such; I'm of the "Jon is not dead" camp, mostly because we've spent too much time on him and there are too many open plot threads to just kill him off. The argument that he is dead seems to be based mostly on the "we haven't had a major protagonist death in a while, and too many characters have been coming back to life anyway, so someone needs to die." That's a thought, but then again, Ned kind of had to die for the story to happen. His death was the catalyst for a lot of what came after. It feels like Ned, and Robert, were the only things keeping the Seven Kingdoms together, and now that they're both dead, everything just goes tits up.
At this juncture, I don't really know what function Jon's death would serve plot-wise, especially with all those unanswered questions around him. I certainly see why he needed to be stabbed, though-the plot seems to be pointing at the fact that Jon needed to be off the Wall, but with his honor intact. Mission accomplished.
Also, how obvious does Martin want to be? The prevailing theory seems to be that his parents are Rhaegar and Lyanna, because they only drop like umpteen billion hints in that direction, with the occasional "well, Ned was totally into this chick" to try and throw some doubt into it. But at this point nothing else makes sense. His parentage is a big secret, so to just have it be some random nobody we know little to nothing about would be such a waste of everybody's time.
So is Jon one of the three heads of the dragon? Sure, why not, we seem to have three Targaryens running around now. Which I totally did not see coming, way to throw a well-timed wrench into the works there.
But for the other characters... wasn't digging Daenerys' story until "OMG DRAGON" which is kind of when it became awesome and people starting actually doing stuff. I ♥ Barristan Selmy, oddly enough. Didn't dig Tyrion's parts so much, probably because it fell into the "character having stuff happen to them instead of them doing stuff" thing I hate so much. I feel like Tyrion hasn't really been given much to do since Clash of Kings, and just when he starts taking some action his part of the book ends. It was incredibly unsatisfying.
Um... reverend_dave was right, Arya is Batman.