Monday, July 18, 2016

The Never Ending Story

A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5)A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Holy crap, I was starting to think I was never going to finish!

So here we mostly get the continuation of the Jon Snow, Tyrion and Daenerys stories. Oh yeah, and fucking Bran the Boring, too. Aside from him, all the others are favorites, so A Dance with Dragons was a pleasure to read.

That doesn't mean it's a great book though. It drags a good deal. It lacks the surprise and epicness of the first three books. A lot of this one and A Feast For Crows felt like housekeeping.

I shouldn't differentiate between those two books. They were both meant to be one, and it's obvious when you read them and see that half the GoT characters are dealt with in book #4 and the others get their due in #5. Tipping the wide-load scales at over a thousand pages a piece, it's readily apparent why the books were split in two. Even so, the reader can't help but feel like something's missing while going through each separately. That's a looong time to put characters on hold in your mind. I feel bad for fans who read Feast back when it came out, what 10 years ago?

But what's here for us in Dance is some good, solid reading. There are slight surprises and unexpected turns here and there. It's a slow-burn page turner, not an up-all-night-cuz-you-can't-stop scorcher.

Before I finish I should like to clarify one thing after bagging on the poor boy earlier. For many a book I've suffered through the insufferable Bran story. Not since the beginning of the first book have I found him remotely interesting. But finally something intriguing does develop in this storyline, eventually. It ties up a loose end elsewhere while adding color to the crippled boy's tale. For that, I'm glad I read A Dance with Dragons.

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