A Dance With Dragons (contains spoilers)

[milly balgeary]

Oh snap! Lev!

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2081774,00.html

But the real power of Martin's work arises from his extraordinary skill as a plotter. A Dance with Dragons follows, by my count, 11 major story lines, as well as assorted minor ones, each with its own rhythm, written in its own voice, and each playing off all the others. Martin will never win a Pulitzer or a National Book Award, but his skill as a crafter of narrative exceeds that of almost any literary novelist writing today. Throughout the book I was reminded of Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad (which did win a Pulitzer), as well as Anthony Powell's (similarly floridly titled) A Dance to the Music of Time. But even Powell can't twist a plot like Martin. A Dance with Dragons is a big book, topping out at 1,016 pages, but it turns on a dime. Reading a novel is a little like commanding a battle: you're always reconnoitering, trying to guess where the author will go next, what's a feint and where the action is really heading. I don't know when I have ever been as comprehensively and pleasurably outgeneraled as I am when I read Martin. He raises and raises the stakes, long past when any other writer would have walked away from the table, and just when you think he's done, he goes all in. There is, apparently, no piece he will not sacrifice, no character that you (and one suspects, he) love so much that he will not orchestrate that character's doom.

[davy]

prim, stilted Stannis Baratheon — he's the Al Gore of Westeros — is pursuing his claim to the throne;

Hahaha. This is a great article! It was Lev's review of Feast for Crows that got me into all this mess in the first place.

[dieblucasdie]

Amazon done charged my card from the pre-order and says it'll be here tomorrow.  I'm kinda bummed that so many of the reviews have spoiled that a major, beloved character dies at the end.  I've been avoiding reviews as much as possible and this is still the third or fourth time I've seen that.

I mean, given that Arya's not in this book, and that Jon and Dany are presumably too important to the series' endgame to kill off... that baaaaasically leaves one person.  Hope I'm wrong though.

[Greg Nog]

ned starck

[DCDave]

Amazon done charged my card from the pre-order and says it'll be here tomorrow.  I'm kinda bummed that so many of the reviews have spoiled that a major, beloved character dies at the end.  I've been avoiding reviews as much as possible and this is still the third or fourth time I've seen that.

I mean, given that Arya's not in this book, and that Jon and Dany are presumably too important to the series' endgame to kill off... that baaaaasically leaves one person.  Hope I'm wrong though.

Snape kills Dumbledore

[Ah_Pook]

major characters die in every book though, it cant really come as a big surprise at this point.

also i was real excited that this was coming out until i remembered that i never finished feast for crows. so now i guess i should get on that.

[davy]

I'll be in a refresher course all night tonight:

http://towerofthehand.com/books/104/

[milly balgeary]

prim, stilted Stannis Baratheon — he's the Al Gore of Westeros — is pursuing his claim to the throne;

Hahaha. This is a great article! It was Lev's review of Feast for Crows that got me into all this mess in the first place.

You read his novel? I actually really liked the Magicians!

[milly balgeary]

I took the day off tomorrow. I emailed my boss and said, "I have a rendezvous with artwork". He didn't ask questions. !

I'm gonna get the Kindle ed, which should be available at midnight. i have read NO spoilers. I hope Gregor Clegane shows up in some fashion so I can be properly terrified!

[Antero]

There is no way that either Clegane is dead yet.

[dieblucasdie]

Seems pretty obvious that Qyburn turned Gregor into some sort of unnatural monstrosity.  "Your champion is ready.".  I do think The Hound might actually be dead, though, given what became of his helm.  Maybe not though!

[milly balgeary]

There is no way that either Clegane is dead yet.

His Wiki sez

Oberyn's poison resulted in a long, agonizing death by mortification. Insensible and dying, he was brought to the dungeons below King's Landing by Qyburn, who was allowed to experiment on him before his purported death.[15] An enormous skull said to be Gregor's was sent to Dorne as recompense for the deaths of Elia, Aegon, and Oberyn.[16]

Please please please be alive Gregor!

[charlie]

Seems pretty obvious that Qyburn turned Gregor into some sort of unnatural monstrosity.  "Your champion is ready.".  I do think The Hound might actually be dead, though, given what became of his helm.  Maybe not though!

I read a pretty convincing case somewhere that Sandor is actually one of the monks that Brienne runs into in book 4, after leaving his hound persona behind with the helmet.  Definitely stoked for this, but I think I should give books 2-4 a re-read before diving in.

[elpollodiablo]

I just finished Storm of Swords. I think I'll probably hang back a couple of months before starting the next.

[milly balgeary]

...and so the dance begins!

[jebreject]

why did i just read this thread

[elpollodiablo]

Yeah no shit. Or even the Grossman thing at the top. I'm not militantly anti-spoiler or anything but the Tyrion spoiler in there was sort of obnoxious considering I was right at the end of book 3 when I read it.

[milly balgeary]

The way I figure it, the last book has been out 6 years. That's more than adequate time to have read it many times over, and the one before it, came out 5 years before that. That's 11 years since Storm of Swords came out. If you slept on reading these books, you shouldn't be clicking on a thread for A Dance With Dragons. I have changed the title to reflect your issues, however.

[davy]

So, not wanting to be the dummy who slept on reserving a copy, I went into my neighborhood Borders last night after work and walked up to the two youngsters at the desk. "Hey guys -- I was wondering if you all were doing anything special for A Dance with Dragons tomorrow?"

--blank stares--

"I mean, like, taking down names or something..."

"Oh, it's a new book?"

"...yeah."

[dieblucasdie]

That's kind of surprising, given the show and all. 

I should really get an ebook reader.  I can't believe milly's had it for ten hours and I'm sitting here waiting for UPS to show up like I'm Amish or something.

I guess I shouldn't click on this thread again until I'm done with the book?  It'll be basically impossible to discuss it as we go along, since we'll all be at different points.

[davy]

I was thinking the same thing.

I'm not even going to start DwD until I'm done reading the chapter summaries of Feast for Crows. I've almost entirely forgotten what happened in that book.

[milly balgeary]

Really great. The first bit re-introduced me to martins spiny sentences and dark voice. So much of these books is actually horror rather than fantasy. It's good to be a gangsta in westeros again.

[milly balgeary]

I was thinking the same thing.

I'm not even going to start DwD until I'm done reading the chapter summaries of Feast for Crows. I've almost entirely forgotten what happened in that book.

Not sure how much feast matters. This seems more like a direct sequel to book 3. I do believe dance started as the bigger half of feast and they were meant to be simultaneous events once the books were separated and feast was published. I can't remember feast too well but mostly this doesn't seem to matter. I think your plan might be in vain because many of the feast characters don't have chapters as such.

[dieblucasdie]

Well, but there is a lot of secondhand information that Cersei gets in Feast (the Davos stuff, the Tyrion stuff, the Bronn stuff) that I assume we'll get firsthand accounts of in Dance.  And, just from that review up top, seems like the Dorne stuff and the Iron Islands stuff is important to the Dany plotline in Dance.

To hear Martin tell it, at first he'd planned on a 3 or 4 year time-jump between Swords and the next book (presumably so the dragons would be grown, Bran and Arya would be older, and Dany would have ruled that city for a few years), but found himself writing long expository passages about what happened during that time anyway, and so decided to write early chapters picking up right where Swords left off.  This made the book way too long and unwieldy, so he split off half the characters' chapters and made Feast.  It's my understanding that the finished Dance covers the same time period as Feast, plus a little extra.

[davy]

Yeah, that's my understanding, too.