Synopsis: A Song of Fire and Ice / Book Five [NOT]

[shannon_a]

This is the place where I was going to write a synopsis of A Dance with Dragon, so I'd know where all the characters were, so that it'd be easier when I pick up the next book, in 2017. But, I find myself just not giving a flying fig, because George R.R. Martin offered up such a disresepectful novel that though I'm sure I will read book 6, it'll only be with a heavy chip on my shoulder.

You know, unless HBO actually manages to keep producing seasons and gets there first, in which case I may decide their version of Westeros is the real one, and screw George R.R. Martin.

Here's what I wrote about A Dance with Dragons over on GoodReads and Xenagia:

A damned waste of a book. Maybe I'll appreciate it more on a second read (if I ever read it a second time), but for now I'm just annoyed. Nothing happens for 600 hundred pages. It took me 5 weeks to plow through this book, mainly due to the fact that nothing compelled me to read on until near the end. 

Even then, half of the events just feel like the status quo being returned after pretending to move away from it, so that *something* could happen in the book. Worse, and this is the point that really irritates me, after wasting all those pages and all that time, Martin drops cliffhangers on us that are sometimes very nearly the same cliffhangers from book 4 or even 3 (written 11 years previous!!). I was the most pissed by Martin revisiting Brienne's cliffhanger from book 4 (which I found the most compelling) with one single page of text that tells us nothing. You wasted 600 pages and you still couldn't finish even this part of the story!?

I think you could have fit everything important in this novel into a hundred pages or so. Making me waste 950 pages of reading time on that causes me to feel very disrespected by the author.

Note to self: Here's a great synopsis-ish. Full of spoilers.

Comments

[catwithclaws.livejournal.com]

you sound like me years ago about Robert Jordan around book 6 or 7 (sometime in college). Except, I think Martin might be worse. I haven't read Martin (Game of Thrones on my to read shelf for 6.5 years now, erk), but I heard some rather scathing hatred of him for Dance of Dragons. Really quite a shame -- as much for him as for his editor who obviously went "yay book will sell crazy, who cares if it's total CRAP? money money money".

:(

[shannon_a]

The problem is that Game of Thrones books #1-3 were so good ... But, yes, I thought of Jordan more than once while reading Dance. I only made it to book #2 of the Wheel of Time, but I'd heard how later books ended up detailing scant days of time.

A real pity, as Sanderson taking over makes me want to read them.