You missed out the rolling of the pastry, cooking in the oven for a few hours and conversations with the kitchen staff while waiting.
It’s just another “quick and bad shortcut” of the series. Sure, let Arya kill Walder Frey, quick and quiet like an actual Faceless man.
Or just kind of BUNG IN THAT BIT WITH FREY PIE as well. No need. Not even for the fans either, as it just doesn’t make sense.
Same as Stannis fighting his way through a permanent storm to sacrifice his only child to attempt succeed. Then 20 people steal all the supplies from an army of several thousand which can’t seem to post a guard. Within an episode of him being called “The greatest military strategist in westoros” (or something).
Sure, get rid of Dorne. Nobody gave a crap. You’ve failed to do anything with it in the tv series apart from Oberyn.
So my complaint is not just about shortcuts, is BAD shortcuts. Might as well have dropped Stannis as well…
I thought the last two books were good reads. A lot of setup for later, but it gets pretty deep into the extraordinarily complex ASoIaF universe, which is a big part of why I love the series. It doesn’t all have to be action and plot movement. I think these books will see their reputation grow as some of the foreshadowing and setup comes to fruition in books 6 and 7.
Which, barring GRRM’s untimely death, I think will be written. (And I think it’s reasonable to presume that he has extensive notes that would allow someone else to finish the series for him if he does die early.) But he’s past retirement age, and only recently has become something of a mainstream celebrity outside of hard sci-fi circles. It’s only natural that his writing has slowed down a lot under those circumstances. I’m willing to cut the old fellow some slack, but I understand why a lot of his fans are upset.
I do think the long period of time since the last book, and the incredibly successful TV show, will cause a lot of people to have expectations that simply can’t be met, let alone exceeded, leading to a lot of disappointed fans. But I don’t expect a huge drop off in quality, and I think the delay is evidence of that. He knows how the story will end, and he could have phoned in the last two books. But he is maintaining his standards even in the face of significant fan backlash and deadlines being missed by years.
I’m still kind of wishfully thinking that the reason TWoW is taking so long is that he’s going to finish the entire story, split the resulting content into two books, wipe his hands of the series and have them both published within a year of each other. But realistically, I highly doubt that’s the case. We might be looking at another decade (or more) before the series is complete. Which would put it at over 30 years since it began. In comparison, Patrick O’Brian wrote 20 books in the Aubrey/Maturin series over a similar time span.
I imagine a huge part of GRRM’s process is just trying to keep the story straight, like trying to remember some obscure character mentioned once 3 books ago. His series is remarkably consistent in that respect. The only error I can remember is some mention of Lord X naming his brother his heir, while a different part mentions his son is the heir.
I would say that the last two books were good REreads. I didn’t appreciate them at first. New characters. Too much Ironborn, gloomvikings that they are, none of the favourite characters in the first one. I call that one Feast for Editors. Second one had lots of spacefilling (How much cyvasse? Where do whores go?).
However on second read, there was so much depth in there, that you miss a lot of the refererences… I even missed that it was Mance and co in Winterfell on the first read…
Here’s the thing that bothered me the most about GOT season six. Jon Snow gets raised from the dead*…and nobody cares!*
Sure, this is a world where magic does exist. Dragons, dire wolves, wildfire, etc. But outright resurrections are exquisitely rare. The only other character who’s been resurrected is Beric Dondarrion of the Brotherhood Without Banners, but he’s so fringe that hardly anyone knows about him. There’s also The Mountain, although it can be argued that he was only mostly dead, and again, his re-animation isn’t well known outside Cersei’s inner circle. Lady Stoneheart doesn’t exist in the TV series.
That leaves the White Walkers and their zombies, something you’d think the Night Watch would be very, very concerned about. But, no – after Melisandre rezzes Jon Snow, none of them seem to really care one way or the other. You’d also think the Northern houses would be quite impressed, but like the Watch, they’re all just kinda “meh” about it.