Today in A Dance with Dragons, I’M DONE! I’M FINALLY DONE! Also, everything gets terrible again, so about average.
After all the plotting and planning, where do we leave off? Right when things start to get interesting, of course. I realize that technically a lot has happened in the last two novels, but I also found a lot of chapters repetitive and frustrating. The fact that the novels were split according to location (which seems like an arbitrary choice) instead of maybe by theme or character connections, increases the frustration I felt while reading the books. Many chapters could have been either edited down to a few paragraphs or deleted completely without affecting the overall plot.
I could have done without Tyrion’s adventures to Meereen, a place he has yet to get to. And I have yet to see the point of Penny, unless she’s also a secret noble just waiting to be revealed. I could have also done without Quentyn Martell’s somewhat pointless chapters. I have to give him points, however, as he’s the only character who has actually reached his intended destination. Out of the four (?) characters on their way to Meereen, Quentyn made it. He may have been burned to death, but at least he made it.
The biggest offender in all this is Dany. I’ve said this before, but it bares repeating: most of Dany’s chapters tend to fall into the same pattern of: Dany has problem; Dany doesn’t know what to do; Dany makes a weak gesture to fix the problem; the same problem comes back to bite Dany in the butt the next chapter. Wash, rinse, repeat. Her flying away on Drogon was a nice change of pace, but ended up causing even more problems. Though, I guess now that she’s had her little spirit walk, she’ll be ready to take back Meereen before her army gets mercilessly slaughter by the Yunkai army.
And at least she’s still alive, unlike Jon Snow. Our poor mope has gotten himself into a pickle getting himself repeatedly stabbed by his own men. I have to wonder why the Night’s Watch (or at least, Bowen Marsh and Yarwyck) decided to pick that moment to betray Jon. Not only are they outnumbered by wildlings that only Jon could control, but they also have Selyse and Melisandre’s men to worry about. Are they going to turn them over to the Boltons? Are they going to throw the wildlings out into the snow? That’s not going to go over too well, and they won’t have Jon to help because he’s, you know, dead.
I can see why they did it. Ramsay’s letter (while not completely true) is still a little worrying. We know that Stannis isn’t dead and since in Asha’s chapter, Theon and Jeyne were caught by the Umbers and brought to Stannis. But the characters don’t. They think that Stannis is defeated and they need to cow-tow to the Boltons in order to not be accused of treason. It’s still a really stupid thing to do and, like all things in this series, will end backfiring really badly, but at least their trying.
Though, I’ve got to say it was one humdinger of an ending. With Kevan Lannister dead, the Seven Kingdoms is in for a long winter, especially with Mace Tyrell as Hand and Cersei still in the picture. I don’t really buy that Cersei has learned anything from her march. Sure, she might be permanently scarred for life, but she wouldn’t be our Cersei if she learned an actually lesson from all her screw ups. Plus, with Jamie and Brienne still missing, we can look forward to even more shenanigans from her.
And thus, we end A Dance with Dragons. It was fun for awhile, but it was also kind of a chore. I’ll be writing my thoughts on the series as a whole next time. See you later.
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