A Feast of Crows

A Feast of Crows. More like A Fast of Interesting Characters. Not that there's a lack of named persons in this book, but we only hear from like, four of them. From a cast of hundreds. And not the ones we're really interested in (except you Brienne, you BAMF).

~ BEWARE, spoilerish info below ~

Behold, FoC! Be thrilled by tales of Cersei, sitting in a castle! Or Sansa, sitting in a different castle! And Samwell, sitting in a boat! Are you a Daenerys Targaryen fan? Like Tyrion's whoring and japes? Well fuck you, they're not in it!

GRRM put a blurb at the end of this massive door stopper explaining (apologizing?) that he realized the book he wanted to write would be too long, so he decided to split it up, into this and its followup, A Dance With Dragons. But instead of splitting it chronologically he split it up by character chapters. Meaning we're only hearing from half the characters we're supposed to be hearing from. A Dance With Dragons will apparently tell the side of the other kajillion characters.

But after this one, I don't know if I can handle another open-ended, snail-paced disappointment. Given its title, I pray to the Seven that Daenerys finally gets her ass, and those of her dragons, over to Westeros. Or that white walkers make it past that blasted wall. Or Jaime and Brienne just make babies already. But I feel like GRRM keeps setting up all these grand threads for epic things that could happen -- frozen zombie apocalypse, dragon takeover, nights becoming dark and/or full of terror, winter FINALLY coming -- but doesn't know exactly how to write these things. They're all just sitting there as possibilities. And I honestly don't see how they could all go together anyway. It would be a clash of every fantasy fiction trope imaginable.

What I really want is for the peasants to revolt and set up a democracy. Just draft a magna carta and throw it in front of King Tommen. That kid'll sign anything.

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