A Dance With Dragons by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’ve been tempted, as I made my way through the extant books, to stop and write about them, but the idea of reviewing ten year old novels is always a little off-putting, so I’ve saved all my thoughts for the end. This is more of a gloss on the whole Song of Ice and Fire series, and not a blow by blow review of book 5.
When I started reading A Game of Thrones, I knew essentially nothing about it. I never read fantasy… I may never have read a single fantasy novel into adulthood. Even my science fiction phase ended when I was 14 or 15, and that, sadly, was before the books came out. I work in the tech industry, and there was some buzz in the backchannels when the TV series came out, discussions among fans of the book, but I didn’t dive in and pay attention. I also don’t subscribe to HBO, so I never saw any of the series. I didn’t even intend to start reading the books when I did. I just had a tire that wouldn’t hold its pressure.
The wheel shop I went to was recommended by Yelp, and pretty busy, and I was told it would take around an hour and a half to finish up my car. So I was stuck in Campbell with no car, about a mile from a major shopping center, and I decided to walk over and have some lunch, and maybe browse at the bookstore. I hadn’t been in a physical bookstore in a year or so, and I remembered right away why they are dying. Maybe they have the book you want, maybe they don’t. If they don’t, you can browse, but you have no way of knowing if the book you’re looking at is even half decent, unless you’re two-fisting it with your cellphone reading reviews. They do have a sort of magic, because of all the books everywhere, any of which you could pick up and read and get lost in, but that’s no different than, say, the kindle store… just prettier and… paper-smellier?
Anyway, I walked out of the bookstore with the paperback re-release of A Game of Thrones, and sat down in a cafe and ate a sandwich and read the prologue, in which some magical fantasy shit happens, and had some pretty hard buyer’s remorse. But I had nothing else to do, so when I got back to the tire place, I picked the book up again, and started reading the the book proper, and for a long time, the magical fantasy elements of the prologue are buried beneath a realistic, medieval kingdom, and I found that a lot more to my satisfaction.
I read the rest of the book pretty quickly after that, and generally, I felt the same about the two contrasting environments presented… the politics of the seven kingdoms I enjoyed, the big magical ending, I didn’t. And… boy, I guess there’s no way to avoid this… the only character I liked in the book died 3/4s of the way through. I didn’t like it. But it turns out it’s basically par for the course.
I read the second book on my honeymoon, along with a bundle of all the books found in-game in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The two are a fantastic complement. Dragons, feudalism, swords and magic. And I enjoyed the second book, but by the end of it, the feeling that would pervade the rest of the series had set in.
As I finished the books, I found myself withdrawing from the characters. As soon as I found myself getting attached to a character, they were hauled up on a noose or impaled on a sword or burned to death. So I stopped caring about the characters. The series became grim, and I started taking longer and longer breaks between sessions. At the end of A Dance With Dragons, when I was within striking distance of the epilogue, I took four days off from it entirely, because I knew that I was in the killing chapters, and more characters were going to lose their lives. But eventually I did power through.
There’s a lot to talk about… the books tell such a convoluted story that there’s no sane way to even summarize what’s happened. There are political conflicts, ideological conflicts, religious conflicts, and one looming magical conflict. All of them are in flight, none near conclusion. In some of them, there’s nothing more than a looming menace. So I think I’m going to leave my thoughts on the story with this: I don’t know how this can be finished up in two more books.
As for the writing, it’s a little easier to find things to say. I’ve been turned off of beloved and imaginative books before by bad writing. Strong ideas and strong plots don’t overcome clumsy language and bad characterization. But I’ve given these all 4 star ratings, clearly that’s not an issue here. The writing itself, the style… it never soars. It’s not inspiring. There’s nothing I wanted to highlight, or repeat, or rephrase. But it’s solid. It never pulls you out of the story or makes you frown. And the characters are varied and three-dimensional, and since the point of view shifts, you find yourself sympathizing with and understanding even some pretty brutal characters.
So when the next one comes out? I’m going to read it. I expect to like it. I also expect to feel a sense of dread for most of the book.