A Dance With Dragons by George R.R. Martin (2011) 1184 p.
A Dance With Dragons is the fifth and most recent of George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series, so I’m now up to date. I can’t help but wonder what the TV producers will do when they inevitably catch up to Martin in a mere three years’ time, unless they pull a Peter Jackson and decide to stretch some books out into multiple seasons.
A Dance With Dragons was initially meant to be one book, along with A Feast For Crows, but it grew too large and unwieldy to fit in a single volume. Rather than ask his editor to do his job and reduce some of the bloat, Martin split the story into two volumes in the most convoluted way possible – they run chronologically alongside each other, except A Dance With Dragons has all the best characters, and also runs maybe an extra 400 pages chronologically past the end of A Feast For Crows, so some characters from that book start popping up again. Not much, though – there’s only two chapters each from Cersei and Arya, and merely one from Jaime. Martin had some weak excuse about not wanting to cut the big book in half without a momentous climax, but neither of the two new books really has one anyway, apart from the end of Jon’s story in A Dance With Dragons. It’s not a huge issue, but it is irritating that he chose to split the book in the worst way possible.
Anyway. A Dance With Dragons is a better book than A Feast for Crows, simply because it has the better characters in it. Tyrion is on the run and in exile after murdering his father, and has probably the best arc in the book, as he copes for the first time in his life without access to power and wealth and learns what it truly means to be a dwarf. Daenerys is attempting to maintain her control over a city she has conquered in the east, Jon has been named commander of the Night’s Watch, and Stannis is marching south to take Winterfell from the usurpers of the North. The novel flags somewhat towards the end, as the focus largely shifts to Daenerys and the east, while I was always more interested in what was happening in the North – but overall it’s a solid book, probably the best in the series since A Clash of Kings.
There were two aspects of the novel that didn’t sit right with me, apart from its drawn-out conclusion in the far east which didn’t actually conclude anything. The first is Jon being commander of the Night’s Watch; this occurred at the end of A Storm of Swords, but it’s in A Dance With Dragons that we see him actually giving orders and making decisions and uneasily carrying the burden of leadership etc. I just couldn’t buy it. The guy is, what, 17? And he’s in charge of hundreds of men much older and with far more experience? Nope. The second issue I had was an egregious bit of retconning which seemed to stem from Martin deciding that he’d killed off too many of the kings in the War of Five Kings, and deciding to introduce a new claimant without a speck of foreshadowing.
Aside from these flaws, A Dance With Dragons is a solid iteration in an excellent fantasy series. I can’t wait to read The Winds of Winter in 2017.
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January 8, 2013 at 2:42 pm
sunrise089
Thanks for the review. I’m actually reading Feast and Dance SIMULTANEOUSLY using this guide: http://boiledleather.com/post/25902554148/a-new-reader-friendly-combined-reading-order-for-a. It’s a little tedious trying to read on the go, but I suspect it’s going a long way towards making the story a good deal more cohesive.
In terms of character age and Jon’s leadership, I didn’t have a problem with the 17 years old thing, and I actually feel the TV series does the books a disservice in this regard. While the series is hardly historical faction, I found the contrast between the abbreviated/eliminated adolescence in Westeros vs modern culture very interesting. In a society with both a strong coming of age tradition and a hierarchy strictly tied to social class, I had no problems with John’s election. I certainly don’t find it any less believable that Dany taking over her band across the sea at 14 or Robb marching off to war at 16. Plus, while the election chapters wern’t perfectly crafted, they did establish how one faction strongly wanted someone with blood nobility and another someone with vigor and who would get his hands dirty. Jon met that, and (not explicitly shown by Martin) Jon benefited from the connection he forged with the less warlike stewards and builders since he arrived on the wall – while there would inevitably be some voters who would demand an older and wiser Lord Commander, many of the old and wise types were dead due to recent events, while the greener new arrivals had been somewhat sheltered.
You also mention an issue with the new clement to the throne. Do you mean the Dorne chapters? The iron islands ones?
On the question of book publication times vs HBO series times, my understanding is that Storm will already be split into two seasons. And, there’s always a chance the show won’t finish the plot anyways if it ceases being popular. My hope though is HBO, and their money, will make Martin write at a faster pace.
January 8, 2013 at 6:26 pm
Mitch
Shit, if I’d known about that guide in advance – and if I’d known how discombobulated the two books were in advance – I definitely would have used it. It was actually the ~300 page overrun in Dance that confused me the most; if it had ended at the exact same time as Feast and simply shown different characters, it would have been much simpler.
I agree about the abbreviated adolescence thing being interesting, but I reckon the TV series probably did it partly out of not wanting to use super-young actors. The girl who plays Arya is great, but Bran’s actor is indifferent, and if you had a whole cast of teenagers it would be terrible. I also agree about the election chapters, but they were brief in the grand scheme of things, and after all that came and went I had trouble remembering them – another reason it would have been better if Martin had edited a little and kept it down to one book. I moved house recently and was unpacking all my books and flipped through the first novel again, and was amazed to realise it only had about 650 pages. That seemed huge when I was reading it, but every one of those pages was used to good effect and I never felt like Martin was dwelling on irrelevant scenes – something which can’t be said about the more recent entries in the series.
Regarding the new claimant – you’ll know it when you get to it. Let me know what you think; I’ve known other readers who loved it and said it was a great twist, but I thought it was a pretty blatant retcon.
January 8, 2013 at 11:01 pm
sunrise089
Sorry, I’m an idiot. I’ve read chapters with the new claimant, but apparently they made that little of an impact on me…or I’m just not at my sharpest when posting at 2:00am.
I’ve read a bit of the backstory of Feast+Dance and the claim is that before the books were split the plan was to age the characters forward five years, covering the intervening time in an extended prologue. But Martin couldn’t resist expanding that prologue into more than a full book, and so he eventually dropped the timeline jump.
I’m unsure as to whether such a jump would have been a good idea (it would help with your question of Jon’s credibility, letting him grow and season off camera), but I think the implementation of the alternative was messy. Martin decided he needed to get everyone to Dany, and then decided we needed to see their journey in basically real-time. I’ll keep an open mind, but I’ve not found so far that the Iron Islands, Dorne, and Golden Company threads are very satisfying, particularly compared to just having Dany sail west.
In terms specifically of Dany’s new rival, I didn’t mind the character, but I also definitely didn’t feel he was needed – yes his claim is better, but Martin’s never seemed particularly interested in trying the strength of a claim to the likability/suitability of a ruler. The only real development to the story I could envision would be if he gives Dany an excuse to never return to Westeros and instead stay in the east freeing slaves forever. We’ll see I guess.
In any case, I didn’t read it as a retcon until you pointed it out, but I confess I also didn’t notice it foreshadowed at any point before Dance. Speaking of retcons though, you need to change your rating for the books on your Reviews page. You say here that Dance “probably the best in the series since A Clash of Kings,” but you actually rated Storm higher. Not trying to nitpick, I just jumped back to the Reviews page last night when I read this entry to remind myself what you had given the other books, and that’s when I saw the inconsistency.
Finally, one more thought on the book vs show character ages – you’re right of course that the series benefits from higher quality actors by aging the characters. Of course that doesn’t stop them from then casting actors even older than the new ages, which is a pet peeve of mine. One given reason is they didn’t want to run afoul of content standards by having a 13 year old Dany (even played by an older actress) due to all of the sex and nudity required by the role. My wife actually noticed that in the pilot episode, when Dany’s brother is admiring her naked in the court in Pentos. My wife said something to the effect of “she’s very pretty, but there’s no way those are a teenager’s hips.”
Leaving the kids aside, I’m perhaps more annoyed HBO didn’t explicitly age the adult characters, but then cast MUCH older actors for them. Perhaps they wanted make sure the children and adults were obviously of different ages, but I feel they went too far in doing so. Cersei and Catelyn were supposed to be in their early 30s in the books, not their late 30s and late 40s respectively. I acknowledge people probably both grow up and grow old quicker in Westeros than in the modern real world, but I also feel some book scenes benefit from the younger ages of the adults. Cersei is supposed to still be a very beautiful woman, someone who would be a dangerous seductress even without being queen, and someone who views Margaery Tyrell as a legitimate rival and not someone obviously younger and prettier. Catelyn in particular has several scenes where she’s much more mature and seasoned than the folks around her, by virtue of what she’s seen and lost and having had the culture of the north rub off on her, and the contrast between her and say Renly’s knights is less meaningful if Catelyn looks old enough to be their mother.
Anyways, that got long. Thanks again for the review. I have about a third of Feast and half of Dance left, so it will be interesting to see what threads come together than what’s left unsatisfying.