REVIEW: A Dance With Dragons

[pinkpolarity]

Haven't posted anywhere in a million years, hopefully this will change.

Warning: Some of this is spoilery.

I like GRRM for his systematic demolishing of fantasy tropes that really, when you think about it (if you think about it) don't make a lot of sense. This remains, IMO, this book's best strength.

Comments

[pinkpolarity]

I love that I get to talk about All The Thoughts with *someone*! (I finally come back to this place, and it seems like everyone else has scarpered too.)

MOTHERFUCK HIS ASS HAD BETTER NOT BE DED! I don't think it is though. He seems pretty clear when he really means that someone is dead-dead-not-coming-back-dead and that was a Brienne-ish fade-to-black. (BTW, I guess from the cameo she did with Jaime that she survived?) GRRM seems to like his fake-out not-deaths. At least, that's what I'm telling myself. I think Melisandre is going to save him. And this is going to be a weird theory, but I've honestly wondered if he's Azor Ahai reborn. I don't think it's Dany, that's just too obvious. I don't know who else it could be, though, and we don't know anything about his birth.

You're not the first person to think Cersei's walk of shame was gratuitous. I really think that was intentional. I don't think he's responding to his critics, I think he might be responding to his *fans*. He's got this rabidly misogynistic fanboy fanbase that thinks Westeros is awesomely grim and nasty and doesn't have any problem with the treatment of women in it. And he's had to marinate in that online presence for ten years now. I think-- I hope-- that with that Cersei chapter he was saying "you wanted that 'bitch cunt' to pay? Well, here, have this. And this. And this. Are you sick to your stomach yet?" If you come away thinking "I wanted her to pay, but christ, not like THAT", I think that was what he wanted. (Ditto with the Theon torture. It's like the anti-'24', the reverse of the glamorization of torture.) I'm reserving judgement until I see where he takes her character in the next book, I hope I'm not disappointed.

Asha's sex scene... I don't remember at all. Help?

I wasn't bothered by what Tyrion said-- the problem with this world is that it's in-character for him to say it like that. That's the Tyrion theme, the thing that he thinks always does him in. What *does* bother me about Tyrion, and what makes me think that GRRM has done some thinking about gross/overt misogyny but has missed the boat on more subtle misogyny, is how the Tysha backstory is still all. about. him. His angst, his pain, what was done to him by doing that to her. She exists only to make the audience say "oh, poor Tyion!" He killed his father to vindicate her, he thinks, but really? He's still a rapist, no matter how you figure it, and even though he's one of my favorite characters, his self-pity is kind of disgusting. (And really, including killing his mother by being born? And misleading people into thinking he killed her-killed her? WTF, Tyrion?)

And yeah, that's my big problem with the book, Nothing. Fucking. Happens. I can almost begin to see the grand pattern, that all of these things are happening for a reason. That it matters that Jon is at the Wall and Dany's prophecy and the Azor Ahai thing and that Arya is learning to be a many-faced assassin and her sister is learning to be a spider/chessmaster/manipulator from the Rahm Emmanuel of Westeros (I can't forget the role Littlefinger played in The Wire and how it's both similar and different!). All of these things are obviously going to mean something someday, but when? And what, he sets up two Helm's Deep or Pellenor Fields level battles, and then just wusses on doing anything with them. One fizzles or has a "to be continued" sign on it, the other happens offscreen with an unreliable narrator. That was seriously disappointing!

Sorry so long, I have so many thoughts about this book!