A Feast for Crows

[rusty_halo]

I finished "A Feast for Crows"!

Be warned, massive spoilers follow.

Okay, so I didn't like this one as much as the others. But it had its moments.

• Brienne is totally going to kill Jaime with the sword he gave her. It's called "Oathkeeper," and she's about to make an oath to kill him. Even though they're falling in love. So tragic, so epic, blah blah blah. Dammit, I don't want Jaime to die.
  
  But it makes perfect sense, and also explains Roose Bolton's line "Jaime Lannister sends his regards" right before he killed Robb Stark. The only reason that line was there was to give "Lady Stoneheart" an overwhelming reason to want Jaime dead. Damn.
  
  I could also see Brienne killing Jaime, but "restoring his honor" by writing his page in the White Book and filling in all his good deeds, thus fixing his reputation. Of course, to do that she'd have to be in the Kingsguard--which doesn't seem terribly implausible (Jaime, the Lord Commander, respects her fighting ability, she was on Renly's Kingsguard, plus she's apparently descended from Dunk [of the "Dunk and Egg" stories] who also ended up as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard).
  
  Awww, and how sweet is it that she believes Jaime's trusted her with his honor, and he's replaced Renly in her dreams. Except not so good in the dreams where Renly dies.... *sigh*
  
  
• I really like Brienne. She reminds me of me, as an awkward ugly kid who always got ridiculed. Except she kicks ass at fighting. She's got such a sweet, good heart--I hope she manages to keep it.
  
  
• Dude, what's with all the disfigurement in this book? Poor Brienne. Poor Myrcella. Poor Loras. As if Jaime, Tyrion, Sandor, etc. weren't enough.
  
  
• Okay, we've had two femslash scenes to titillate the boys. Plus lots of het sex scenes with ugly guys and hot women. So now it's time for some hot boys fucking, dammit. (I vote Renly/Loras flashback!)
  
  
• How awesome is it that Jaime is pretty much the hero of this book? Seriously, he's taken over the Tyrion role, in that it's his observations about people that you trust. He's got such insight, and unlike most of the other characters, his goal isn't power for himself, it's to live his life with integrity (but not in a dumbass Stark-like way).
  
  (Well, I guess Brienne is also a hero of this book, since her goal is to rescue a lost kid. Except all she really does is wander around boringly and not really get anywhere.)
  
  Jaime ending the siege at Riverrun was awesome. *is proud* I love that his goal was to do what was inevitable with as little bloodshed as possible. I felt sad that no one believed his generous terms (though I understand why--who would trust the evil, honorless Kingslayer), but I love that he then turned it around and used his rotten reputation to his advantage. ("With a trebuchet." Hee!)
  
  And Edmure is such a fuckwit--he and Brynden both escaped with their lives, despite the fact that they were pretty much walking dead men before Jaime showed up, and they have Jaime to thank for their lives. Yet all Edmure can see is the surface. (How pathetic is it that Catelyn was the smartest one in that family???)
  
  
• [shallowness]I loved Brienne's line about the bath at Harrenhall, that Jaime looked "half a corpse, and half a god." Hee![/shallowness]
  
  
• Jaime ending his vigil over Tywin to go comfort Tommen was also awesome. I want to see more of Daddy Jaime. Awwww. Except you know Tommen is going to die a horrible death, poor darling.
  
  
• Jaime hooking up his squire with Pia. And presenting Pia with the head of the guy who raped her. Everyone else thinks of Pia as just some slut, but Jaime sees that she's a sweet, damaged girl. Awwww. He's such a sweetie. I really enjoy how insightful he is about people, and how basically kind he is underneath.
  
  
• And, of course, Jaime figuring out that Cersei is more Stranger than Maiden was also great. Though his attitude change was sort of obvious from the previous book. Still, yay for character arcs!
  
  
• Cersei! Oh my god, what a stupid cunt. Actually, she was one of my problems with this book--she was such an "Evil Queen" cliche. She all but cackled "Mirror, mirror, on the wall." It was funny to watch her dig herself deeper and deeper, but still. She's a one-dimensional character, so it's hard to get much out of her story.
  
  Also, I suppose I suffer from an excess of empathy. Because seeing all that horrible stuff happen to her from an outside POV would've been awesome--justice for the evil bitch. But seeing it from her point of view just stressed me out. She's such an unpleasant mind to be in, in every way. (And honestly, I did feel bad for her--she has been mistreated because of her gender, and she didn't deserve a forced marriage to Robert. But she'd still be an evil psycho bitch regardless of all that.)
  
  
• Genna (Lannister) Frey is awesome. We definitely need to see more of her. How lame that she's stuck with that dumbass Frey away from all the action.
  
  
• Oh, the irony. The series started with the evil Lannisters unfairly seizing power, and the audience desperately wanting them to get their come-uppance. But now all the nasty Lannisters are dead or out of power (Tywin, Cersei, Joffrey) and the decent Lannisters are in power (Tommen, Jaime, Kevan, Genna). They're totally going to get destroyed, and instead of justified vengeance (like you'd expect from the early books), it's going to be tragic.
  
  
• The entire book was setup for future events (Sansa and Arya's training, Doran's schemes, Qyburn's experiments, Brienne's vow, etc). Very little actually happened in it at all. Lots of build-up, no payoff. Clearly the book suffers for that.
  
  
• How many "dead" characters are we waiting to hear from in the future?
  
  1. Sandor--obviously not dead. (I actually missed this the first read-through. *feels stupid*)
     
  2. UnGregor--sure to be cool when it happens, but all the references in this book with no payoff were kind of disappointing.
     
  3. Theon--have the Boltons finished flaying him yet?
     
  4. Davos--please let him actually be dead. He rivals Catelyn for boringness.
     
  5. Brienne--duh. (You'd have to have zero familiarity with the structure of fiction to actually think Martin would kill her off after an entire book of setup.)
     
  6. Podrick--I LOVE Podrick. Please don't let him be dead. I want to see him reunited with Tyrion. And his "Ser. My Lady." was awesome every single time.
     
  7. Loras--yeah, he's not dead either. I suppose how fucked up he is depends on whether it's all a plot to get Cersei not to choose him as her champion in a trial by battle. It'll be more interesting if he's really fucked up, though. Interesting also how his story parallels Jaime's (and how Jaime sees him as a younger version of himself).
     
  8. Aegon. I think Aegon's actually dead, but we're likely to see an Aegon pretender at some point.
     
  9. I'm pretty sure there's more, but that's all I can think of at the moment. Martin already pulled this "are they dead" trick with Bran and Rickon, and with Jaime, in book two. It's getting old, dude.
• Doran Martell. Okay, I loved that he seemed like a passive wuss, but it turns out he's just as vengeance-minded as all the other Martells, he's just much more clever about it. He wins major points for his final "Blood and fire" line. Kick ass.
  
  BUT--he loses major points because he suffers from Dumbledore syndrome: the tendency to come up with an awesome plan, but fail to tell anyone about it, so that his own allies end up working against him and ruining it. Yeah, his daughter was a fuckwit who would've blabbed, but then, if he was raising his daughter to be Queen of Westeros, maybe he should've put some effort into not raising a fuckwit. Honestly.
  
  
• Sansa. I don't really buy how undisturbed she was at the prospect of killing Robert Arryn. Doesn't seem like the lackwit-but-redeemed-by-her-kind-heart Sansa of earlier books. I don't know, I just don't get her, and none of her character development really makes sense to me. She's always someone's pawn, so it's hard to see what is her own internal belief versus what is her just following wherever she's led. She continues on the path of idiocy, following Littlefinger, the man who helped destroy her family. Honestly, Sansa. *shakes head*
  
  
• Sam and Gilly. Okay, Mr. Martin, now you're just getting gratuitous with the "ugly guy gets hot chick" routine. It's time for some sex scenes from a woman's point of view. And not unsatisfying lesbian sex scenes written for the enjoyment of men, dammit.
  
  
• Everything Maester Aemon said was golden. "Egg, I dreamed I was old" might've been the best line of the book. We didn't get nearly enough of him, and I'm so sad he never got to talk to Danaerys.
  
  
• This book descended into fantasy cliche much more than the others. (With Sam, with Cersei, etc.) There wasn't really much subversion of the tropes this time around. Disappointing.