ASOIAF- A Dance with Dragons p. 602-707

Today in A Dance with Dragons, Arya and Jaime are back! Plus, things start to come together thematically.

While reading the chapters, I keep asking myself, “How can I make reading this easier?” I know there is a master list somewhere that recombines A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, but that’s not exactly what I mean. Rather, I’m trying to decide how to split the novels up so that it actually feels like things are happening at a faster pace, quite unlike how they feel now.

For example, let’s take Dany’s chapters. Dany has been plagued with a host of problems since conquering Meereen. Not only do most of the populace hate her, but an army made up of all her enemies have surrounded her city effectively trapping her and her army. Now, Dany could potentially due a lot of things here: have a full on battle, high tail it back to Westeros, or let her dragons loose and let them deal with the army. Dany decides the best option would be to marry a noble from Meereen in order to make peace. This is a potentially interesting story line. Dany has always been someone who makes decisions by the seat of her pants. It works for when she’s on the road making her way through hazards and generally being in the thick of it, but when she’s stuck in Meereen, Dany’s quick solutions fall apart in the next chapter. That’s why I’m not too excited about Dany’s marriage. Call me a pessimist, but I’m guessing it’s not going to work out.

In order to make it interesting for myself, I’ve been comparing Dany’s rule to Cersei’s. While both of them are fundamentally different people on opposite sides of the world, both can’t seem to plan long term and actually be efficient rulers. So, my way of reordering the books would bring together most of the thematically similar plot threads into the same books. Cersei, Dany, Jon Snow, the Martells, and anyone else doing the whole court intrigue plot would go into one book, and Arya, Brienne, Jaime, Tyrion, Sam Tarly, and anyone who’s on an emotional or physical journey goes into another. This way we don’t get a random Jaime chapter 600 pages into a book that doesn’t even feature him as a main character just so we can be reminded about everything that’s still happening in Westeros. And don’t try to argue with me on this, I checked the other chapters, this is the only time we see Jaime in all of A Dance with Dragons. It’s starting to get annoying.

I’m saying this now because finally, things are coming to a boil. Not a fast boil, but a simmering, “this is all going to get resolved in The Winds of Winter isn’t?” boil. Stannis is trapped in a snowstorm freezing to death, but the same snowstorm has trapped Roose Bolton’s army in Winterfell causing tempers to flare and knives to get stabby. I guess it evens out.

Also, Arya’s back and realizes that she’s also a warg. So that’s four Stark kids that are magic? I’m guessing that their particular direwolves need to be alive for this to happen because we haven’t heard a peep from Sansa about having strange dreams or being particularly magically. Eh, whatever keeps her busy.