2014 Book 80: A Feast For Crows
Book 80: A Feast For Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 4) by George R.R. Martin, isbn: 9780553582024, Bantam Spectra, 1060 pages, $7.99
The Premise: (from the Goodreads page) After centuries of bitter strife, the seven powers dividing the land have beaten one another into an uneasy truce. But it's not long before the survivors, outlaws, renegades, and carrion eaters of the Seven Kingdoms gather. Now, as the human crows assemble over a banquet of ashes, daring new plots and dangerous new alliances are formed, while surprising faces-some familiar, others only just appearing-emerge from an ominous twilight of past struggles and chaos to take up the challenges of the terrible times ahead. Nobles and commoners, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and sages, are coming together to stake their fortunes...and their lives. For at a feast for crows, many are the guests-but only a few are the survivors.
My Rating: Three stars out of five
My Thoughts: Well, I can't say I wasn't warned that this was the weakest, least satisfying of the series to date. I was warned well in advance that I wouldn't see a hint of certain favorite characters (no Tyrion, no Danaerys, no Jon Snow, no Bran -- all characters I quite enjoy following, although your mileage may vary) and that a good quarter of the chapters would be from the POV of characters who'd been not just peripheral to this point but moreso never introduced before now. None of this came as any surprise, and none of it is really the reason for the three stars (instead of the four stars I believe I've given each preceding volume in the series).
No, the slightly lower grade is based primarily on the fact that most of AFFC is just so damned boring. I'm sorry, George, I know you didn't intend it to be so ... but a lot of this felt like a slog. To put it another way, it felt like the author was using this book to move chess pieces into place, to set up more important events. I know Martin can write compelling political machination chapters that eschew the fantasy elements -- pretty much all of A Game of Thrones fit that mode, and not only sucked me into the world of Westeros but kept me interested for 900+ pages -- but that magic seemed to be missing from a lot of these chapters. And yes, most specifically the chapters in Dorne and on the Iron Islands. In the past, the author has managed to impart information from "off stage" or "not primary character POV" in a more concise manner; I feel like a good amount of the Dorne and Iron Island chapters could have been summarized thusly. It's not that I don't want Martin to introduce new POV characters (I loved the introduction of Davos as a POV character, for instance), it's that I didn't feel compelled by any of their stories. Again, your reader mileage may vary; I know when the cast for season 5 of the tv series was announced recently, a lot of people were very excited to see who would be cast as the Sand Snakes, so clearly those characters, who barely appear in AFFC, are beloved. (And perhaps we see much more of them in A Dance With Dragons, which I have not yet read.)
Of the familiar characters we do get to spend time with in this book, I most enjoyed Arya's journey (and her peripheral encounters with Sam's party) and Jaime's. Those chapters felt the least like they were "marking time, waiting for something bigger to happen," and even there Arya's physical journey is not very long. Jaime's chapters at least have the benefit of resolving certain lingering political plots from the previous book (and pretty satisfactorily). Brienne's chapters were a study in going nowhere fast, although at least one did give us a bit of closure on certain tertiary (at best) characters. I don't think I can talk about the most frustrating part of the Brienne chapters (her final chapter in the book) without spoiling stuff for those who haven't read yet. Those who have probably know exactly what I'm talking about (perhaps I'll add a "behind the cut" to the end of this review, and not copy-paste that part into the Goodreads review).
The other two major POV characters are Sansa and Cersei. I will admit, Sansa grew on me this book, as slow as her chapters were. I'm still not 100% in like with her, but she's definitely less the snivelling rich girl character she was in book one, and that counts as a credit to Martin, that she's had character growth. And I should probably have included Cersei's chapters with Arya's and Jaime's as favorites -- not because I like Cersei, but because it was intriguing to watch someone continue to dig their own grave so thoroughly and so well-shored-up. The choices she makes throughout the book are clearly designed to have the reader thinking "What the hell is wrong with this woman?" The final Cersei chapter in the book is the one that elicited the most emotional reaction from me, although still not at the level of the Beheading or the Red and Purple Weddings.
Overall, I didn't hate the book, but it did feel like a harder/slower/less-satisfying read than previous installments. Hoping A Dance with Dragons will pick the pace back up and not feel so slow, even though character-time-wise it covers the same basic span.
The Premise: (from the Goodreads page) After centuries of bitter strife, the seven powers dividing the land have beaten one another into an uneasy truce. But it's not long before the survivors, outlaws, renegades, and carrion eaters of the Seven Kingdoms gather. Now, as the human crows assemble over a banquet of ashes, daring new plots and dangerous new alliances are formed, while surprising faces-some familiar, others only just appearing-emerge from an ominous twilight of past struggles and chaos to take up the challenges of the terrible times ahead. Nobles and commoners, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and sages, are coming together to stake their fortunes...and their lives. For at a feast for crows, many are the guests-but only a few are the survivors.
My Rating: Three stars out of five
My Thoughts: Well, I can't say I wasn't warned that this was the weakest, least satisfying of the series to date. I was warned well in advance that I wouldn't see a hint of certain favorite characters (no Tyrion, no Danaerys, no Jon Snow, no Bran -- all characters I quite enjoy following, although your mileage may vary) and that a good quarter of the chapters would be from the POV of characters who'd been not just peripheral to this point but moreso never introduced before now. None of this came as any surprise, and none of it is really the reason for the three stars (instead of the four stars I believe I've given each preceding volume in the series).
No, the slightly lower grade is based primarily on the fact that most of AFFC is just so damned boring. I'm sorry, George, I know you didn't intend it to be so ... but a lot of this felt like a slog. To put it another way, it felt like the author was using this book to move chess pieces into place, to set up more important events. I know Martin can write compelling political machination chapters that eschew the fantasy elements -- pretty much all of A Game of Thrones fit that mode, and not only sucked me into the world of Westeros but kept me interested for 900+ pages -- but that magic seemed to be missing from a lot of these chapters. And yes, most specifically the chapters in Dorne and on the Iron Islands. In the past, the author has managed to impart information from "off stage" or "not primary character POV" in a more concise manner; I feel like a good amount of the Dorne and Iron Island chapters could have been summarized thusly. It's not that I don't want Martin to introduce new POV characters (I loved the introduction of Davos as a POV character, for instance), it's that I didn't feel compelled by any of their stories. Again, your reader mileage may vary; I know when the cast for season 5 of the tv series was announced recently, a lot of people were very excited to see who would be cast as the Sand Snakes, so clearly those characters, who barely appear in AFFC, are beloved. (And perhaps we see much more of them in A Dance With Dragons, which I have not yet read.)
Of the familiar characters we do get to spend time with in this book, I most enjoyed Arya's journey (and her peripheral encounters with Sam's party) and Jaime's. Those chapters felt the least like they were "marking time, waiting for something bigger to happen," and even there Arya's physical journey is not very long. Jaime's chapters at least have the benefit of resolving certain lingering political plots from the previous book (and pretty satisfactorily). Brienne's chapters were a study in going nowhere fast, although at least one did give us a bit of closure on certain tertiary (at best) characters. I don't think I can talk about the most frustrating part of the Brienne chapters (her final chapter in the book) without spoiling stuff for those who haven't read yet. Those who have probably know exactly what I'm talking about (perhaps I'll add a "behind the cut" to the end of this review, and not copy-paste that part into the Goodreads review).
The other two major POV characters are Sansa and Cersei. I will admit, Sansa grew on me this book, as slow as her chapters were. I'm still not 100% in like with her, but she's definitely less the snivelling rich girl character she was in book one, and that counts as a credit to Martin, that she's had character growth. And I should probably have included Cersei's chapters with Arya's and Jaime's as favorites -- not because I like Cersei, but because it was intriguing to watch someone continue to dig their own grave so thoroughly and so well-shored-up. The choices she makes throughout the book are clearly designed to have the reader thinking "What the hell is wrong with this woman?" The final Cersei chapter in the book is the one that elicited the most emotional reaction from me, although still not at the level of the Beheading or the Red and Purple Weddings.
Overall, I didn't hate the book, but it did feel like a harder/slower/less-satisfying read than previous installments. Hoping A Dance with Dragons will pick the pace back up and not feel so slow, even though character-time-wise it covers the same basic span.