Saturday, January 12, 2008

Books in 2008, #3

#3. A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin

Phew. Nearly 1,000 pages long, brimming with battles and betrayals and bloody stumps, A Feast for Crows sort of reminds me of the second movie in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Two Towers. A lot is happening the entire time, building and building up to something big yet unknown, everybody is off separated and whatnot and then...the credits roll.

Which is understandable, I guess, considering the book is really only half of what it should be. A Dance with Dragons will cover everything happening in the North, at the Wall, and with Dany.

Yet, the experience is undeniably amazing. I'm not going to try to sum up the story so far, or even just the events in A Feast for Crows, because by this point Martin has made the series impossible to describe in just a few sentences. With a cast of thousands, epic isn't even a word I'd use here. Maybe uber-epic?

As usual, there are POVs that I like and ones that bore me for most of the time. Favorites this round were Samwell, Cersei Lannister, Brienne of Tarth, and Arya Stark. I found the Greyjoy chapters to be less gripping despite the kingsmoot. And well, I can't say that Arianne Martell's part in the book felt needed. We'll see.

One character's death really upset me. In a good way. I think. I'm holding out some hope that nothing in Martin's world is final, and that some things are misleading or often falsely reported. We shall see, I guess. Or maybe we won't...

Anyways, there isn't much for me to talk about here. Doing so would involve a lot of spoilers and I just don't feel up to that. Let me conclude that I'm officially joining the droves of fanboys and fangirls eager for A Dance with Dragons to be released.

And now I can return to books that aren't the size of three or four normal ones.

3 comments:

Neil Richard said...

What's "kingsmoot?"

Daniel Ausema said...

It's like an ent-moot. Only with kings... There's actually a restaurant down the road from us here that has 'moot' in its name--I haven't been there, but it seems like a good place to gather and have important discussions.

Game of Thrones restores my broken faith in high fantasy some years ago, so I'll be among all the fanboys and -girls right alongside you.

Paul Abbamondi said...

Yup, what Daniel said. Sort of like a popularity contest amongst wannabe-kings.

AGOT is definitely my favorite of the series so far. Odd that I read it long ago, but so many scenes are still vivid in my head.

I've not tried much of GRRM's short fiction, but I might have to now.