Thoughts on A Dance With Dragons

... the book also known as "George R.R. Martin, hurry the hell up."

It's a propulsive read, a real page-turner, and I read it with a sense of exhilaration. It's nice to see some of these characters back in action again, and - yes - it's much better than the last book.

But its plot lacks an arc. At the end of the novel, the surviving characters are in different locations, basically dealing with the same issues they were at the beginning of the book. One of them *may* have decided to handle her problems a bit differently in the future... but the emphasis is on the "may." Her section closes without revealing what her future course of action will be.

If there was another book waiting, of course, I wouldn't mind that much. But facing another indefinite wait makes me cranky.

It's not that stuff didn't happen. Plenty of stuff happened. But plot didn't really happen, or if it did, it was confined to a few scenes in which a) characters met new Significant Characters, b) characters "leveled up" and c) a character apparently dies.

Speaking of which, if you want your deaths to have power, those corpses need to stay down. Likewise if you want to have a cast of thousands, and keep introducing new characters. Keep those corpses dead. I'll give you the odd shambling corpse, particularly North of the Wall, but this book's subtitle is not "Everybody Loves Zombies!" because we don't.

Now I sounds as though I didn't like the book, and I did. I ate the whole thing. I just felt it lacked arc-ishness.

More on George R.R. Martin's A Dance with Dragons

Meteorologists in Westeros seem to have a fairly easy job. Seasons can last decades, after all, so predicting the weather involves little more than looking out a window and saying, "the next ten years will be kinda like this."

Seeing the number of people who get slaughtered in this series makes me think that the Westeros meteorologists (and SPOILER     this book suggests they do exist     )  could enhance their services by offering a "Vengeance Index." It'd be like a pollen index, only showing the likelihood of your being killed horribly for something that you may (or may not) have done.

Example of the Vengeance Index in action:

Wife: "I'm thinking we should cancel the children's picnic today."

Husband: "Why? Does it look like Rape and Murder?"

Wife: "There's supposed to be showers of Rape and Murder all week."

Husband: "We could always move the picnic inside."

Wife: "I would, but the Vengeance Index is set at 'People Baked Into Pies."

Husband: "Not again."

 

See what I mean? Useful.