I am about halfway through right now, so I won’t be returning to this thread for a while, but I figured there had to be a few people who gave finished and are dying to talk about it, so have at it.
Im not even as far in as you! Enjoying it so far though.
I’ve been reading the Westeros forums. They have these prophecies all figured out.
He… probably is not dead.
The prince that was promised should be born in “smoke and salt, beneath a bleeding star”. Old Maester Aemon pointed out that dragons are hermaphrodites, so the constant use of the masculine pronoun was actually a mistranslation. Dany, born again in fire under the bleeding star of the comet, would be the obvious choice. She comes well-equipped, zoologically, to fight back against the cold.
And yet, when our man pulled a Caesar at the end of the book, his attackers were crying (salt) and his wound was smoking. And the man who was torn apart just previous had a sigil of “five pointed stars”. Dude’s head was broken open. Under a bleeding star, see? With Ser Beric as precedent, I’ve a feeling our favorite boy will be right as rain short enough.
This is to say: I have this strange hunch Dany will not survive book six. She has done her part in the birthing, and like any other mother in that brutal world is no longer necessary thereafter. She is no longer needed. The promised prince is a different person, we can now assume, which means the dragons can be tamed by Tyrion with help of the Ironman’s horn. Given her recent education, could even be Arya does her in. Dany is no longer needed, and she’s been pissing people off. As it happens, people in that part of the world have a way to get their murderous prayers answered.
Yeah, I don’t believe he’s dead either. GRRM is going to pull another “dead on the last page of this chapter” “alive on the first page of the next” switcheroo.
I’m not in agreement with you on the prophesies though. I don’t think Jon is the one, I still think it’s Danerys. The dragon has three heads - and we’ve got 3 Targeryen princess running around right now. Who the third head was going to be always puzzled me - now that we have Aerys, we know. Dany’s still the one. She woke the dragons from the stone with her fire, how do you get around that?
I’m about 1/4 through, and on page 239 Martin pissed me off.
That person has been dead D-E-A-D dead since before the story began. With no hints, no foreshadowing, no clues, Martin pulled him out of a pocket. That’s not playing fair. We’ll see where it goes from here, but I am not pleased.
The dragon waking from stone refers to the young pup in the south, fostered by a man who’s contracted greyscale.
The man will burn. That’s how they seem to treat the disease. (I haven’t read this anywhere else yet, but I still doubt I’m the first to notice.)
I’ve finished it. I’m not real thrilled.
I didn’t get a sense of forward progress from this book. A lot of flailing about, a lot of death and near-death. Too many POVs.
And the near-death is beginning to get on my nerves–Asha and Tyrion were dead, until the next chapter (two chapters later, for Asha); sometimes he revives them, sometimes, as with Quentyn, he lets them stay dead. That’s beginning to me to feel less like cliff-hangers and more like cheap trickery.
I don’t see how Jon isn’t dead, and if he’s brought back to life in the next book, that’ll be extremely cheap trickery.
Well, I’m going to reread it: I was travelling and getting my reading done in hotel rooms along the way; now that I’m home and settled maybe I’ll find the second time through that I’ve missed something. Right now I feel that this book is not so much a drop in quality as a plummet.
Me neither. Same problem as the last book, really. He’s still moving pieces around. This is, quite literally, the second half of Feast for Crows, and it has the exact same sorts of problems as Feast.
Easy to see why he originally had a five year gap in the chronology.
And I genuinely think we’re in for another “Whoops, that’s not actually the protagonist!” moment. Just about every single major prophecy so far has an easy-to-understand literal meaning that turns out to be ridiculously incorrect. It’s the impossible-to-predict figurative meaning that ends up being true. Over and over again, prophecy does a stupid bait & switch. Look at the steam and smoke thing with JS, or the dragon being born from stone and fire. This dragon is the magically appearing prince Aegon, a character out of nowhere, impossible to predict. He showed up for no real reason, except to have the prophecy refer to him. Always before, we had another contender that seemed obviously to fit the bill. Figurative vs literal, again, and literal meaning always loses. The Dunk & Egg stories, too, really hammer home the unreliability of literal readings of prophecy.
The dreams and such referring to Dany refer to her far too directly, far too literally, to be true. That means the prophecies aren’t about her. That means, I believe, that she’s expendable.
And for some reason it took 11 bloody years, waiting for two books in which little enough happens, just to find out… that literal readings are useless. Thanks, George. I mean, it’s not a terrible book. But I didn’t care much for it.
I’m about a third of the way through…why was my busiest week in 5 years this week???
I’m enjoying it but I haven’t heard from a lot of my favorite characters…I miss the “Women of Westeros” and hope some of them show up soon I havent heard from Arya or Sansa and there has been no news of Cersei or Margery…I fear they may not-- there was that thing I didn’t totally “get” at the end of Feast about how he only got to half the characters and would get to the other half in the next book…I read the previous books one right after another so I forget what happens in which book but I don’t recall major characters missing from Feast.
We saw no chapters with Jon, Davos, Bran, Tyrion or Daenerys&Co as the pov character in Feast.
I just finished it and I have to agree with what others have said, lots of shuffling around but very little actual progression. I wouldn’t mind it much if the next book was coming out in the foreseeable future, but now we’re in for another 4-5 year wait. 
I was going to go check. I can’t believe I didn’t pick up on the missing characters back then but it probably goes back to reading the first four books back to back on my Kindle like they were just one really long book.
Just finished it. So the kids at the end are Varys’s “little birds”? I’m sorry to see Uncle K go, though…although maybe this means that Cersei will finally get what she deserves. Isn’t there SOME kind of qualification for becoming a member of the Kingsguard? Like…breathing? Being alive? I find it extremely unlikely that anyone would accept a non-identified person as a Kingsguard, even if named by the king himself (especially a king who’s all of…what? Seven? Eight?). You’d think that at least Kevan would have asked for some verification of who he was.
Everyone must think it’s The Mountain, alive and well. How many 8 foot tall men can go in and of Qyburn’s dungeon?
My guess would be they just don’t care. The Lannisters and the Tyrells need Cersai to be “proven” innocent.
Still, this isn’t just some guy who got knighted. This is a stranger (or, worse, a disgraced-maester-reanimated corpse of what was, in life, a rabid murderer/rapist/mutilator) who has been inducted into the king’s own bodyguard.
Yeah I h ave to agree with you there, Frank
I don’t know if this is true with all his character, but I feel i happens to a lot of the “dead” and actual dead people…if the death is seen from their own POV it is a fake out (in SoS Caetlyn, only to come back as Lady Stonefacce, in FfC Brieane, but she shouts something, Theon but he is now Reek.) So since we saw Jon’s death form his POV he is probably not dead.
Now as to all the different “Prince who was Promised” theories, i have a rather unique one. The prophesy says “born in salt and fire” right, and everyone espouses their own interprutations to support their candidate… Daenarys, Jon or now Young Griff (Aegon)…What if it is a translation error, like the “no pronoun” thing, or the addition of the Daenerys prophesy “The dragon will have 3 heads”. I think the 3 Targaryen kids together make the “Prince who was Promised”
I am also surprised no one has taken the line about Ned getting a girl pregnant from the island of Sisterton at the beginning of Roberts Rebellion, and started more discussion of Jon parentage. I believe, like most people, that he is the son of Lyanna and Rhaegar. But now GRRM is trying to throw us off this with this line; Pg 132…“Jon Snow she named him, after Arryn” . Seriously he exoects us to believe she stayed with Ned up to Winterfell, then down to the Trident (where he and Jon Arryn married the Tully sister) then to Battle of the Bells, then back to the battle of the Red Fork, then to the Sack of Kings Landing, then to the Tower of Joy, where Ned slew Arthur Dayne, and then down to Starfall (when he went to return Dayne’s sowrd) where Jon was born. (we know Jon was an infant their because he and the young lord of Starfall, Edric Dayne, shared a wet nurse). That’s a loooong friggin journey for a pregnant women (or a newborn) during a time of war. I know GRRM isn’t saying that child begot on Sisterton is our JOn Snow, but it looks like he put that chapter their hoping someone would pick up and run with the false lead.
Yeah too many useless one (and the changing of the names of them was annoying as heck), and not enough of others…No Sansa, only 3 Bran(seriously he was not in FfC), only 2-3 for Jamie (was it 3??), No Brieanne, 3-4 Arya, only 2 Victarrion, and no Sam??? ( please don’t take my numbers as gospel, I have’nt sat down with a pen and paper and counted yet). But a whole bunch of Quentyn Martell, who just ends up dead by the end…what a waste. And a bunch of useless Theon ( or whtever who choose to call each chapter…seriousl, did any of the Theon POV have the same name…maybe there were 2 titled “Reek”)
Now for the one thing I want to ask all GRRM fans out there…stop gong to all the personal apperances he does during the year…many of them he gets paid for and when hordes turn out he is encouraged by the publisher and his managment to do more…and more…and more…and less… and less…and less…writing on the next book actually gets done. Lets start a boycott of all GRRM personal appearances until a rough draft is handed to the publisher…I bet if we did that, a whole lot less then 6 years would pass
On the Prince Who Was Promised / Azor Ahai things my pet theory is that prophecy in ASOIAF is no more accurate than prophecy in real life. And if there is or will be one of these people it’s only because people knew of the prophecy and made it so.
All justice in Westeros derives from the king; who are they going to go to about it? Jaime is probably the only one who might have veto rights for appointing a Kingsguard and even then I doubt it and he isn’t in contact with them anyway. It’s either accept Robert Strong or start a rebellion. And no one’s going to start a rebellion over that.
And does anyone else find it odd that Qyburn apparently named his creation after Robert Baratheon? Or so I assume anyway.
The last king decided fire would be the champion of house Targaryen, a giant armored headless golem is actually a step up.
This book makes me mad.
“Moving the pieces” were exactly the words I thought about. Considering Daenerys’ situation didn’t evolve at all, except her enemies managed to move from “on their way” to “outside the gates”, having that many chapters with her and Barristan seemed ridiculous.
Tyrion too had so many close-to-doing-something-anything-important moments that were completely spoiled, his presence in the book could summarily be removed and we’d have lost nothing. (Well, except for his dashing good looks, wit and the angst he felt about killing the father he’s spent the last four books getting his hate on for.)
Jon Connington is a poor-man’s Jorah Mormont. Heck, Jorah Mormont is currently a poor man’s Jorah Mormont. (Although he’ll end up looking badass for the final seasons in the TV show, of course.) While Lena Heady gets to look forward to having rotten fruit thrown at her while she walks through dogshit, naked. Jaime wanders around the land, performing righteous deeds and ignoring all his problems of any consequence. (Note to Jaime: the monarch from whom you’re deriving your money, power, army and children is currently in prison, dumbass.)
And Jon Snow does the worst Caesar interpretation in the history of books. Seriously. You were specifically warned about “daggers in the dark.” Even Shakespeare couldn’t have made it more obvious and he wrote a fucking play about it.
Refreshingly, Stannis is also a dumbass. Marching on an entrenched enemy who’s waiting for you after you get the prize?
The only character who comes out of this looking even remotely good is Aegon, because he decided “let’s not trust sellswords to march on the biggest economic interest conflict on the continent!”
I can only hope that this was all just pieces Martin needed to move to start progressing the story again or get the timeline right. I mean, yes, we needed to know where Tyrion went after disappearing like your friends when you need help moving, but did we really need his 50-page soliquoy about meeting a sexually repressed fellow dwarf who enjoyed tilting on a pig for a living? Did we really need three repeats of Jon Snow forcing through his will to let the Wildlings through the Wall?
I think Martin was correct to realize that he couldn’t simply skip over 5 years in the narrative… but where he made his mistake was in not adjusting his plans when he started writing down what he hadn’t planned to. He forgot to add in any Big Moments.
It seems like all his Big Moments were planned for the next books, but without adding any payoff moments in these books, everything just falls flat. It’s all buildup… and then it ends. That’s not a way to write a book, and he’s published enough to know that by now. It would’ve worked fine as part of a supermassive epic saga that the publisher split into multiple books… but even then, other authors known for writing such things managed to find intermediate climax points.
Also, Dany and Jon somehow caught Stark syndrome, with all the bullheaded idealism that accompanies it. Understandable, for Jon. But it’s a regression for Dany; she grew up out of her passivity entire books ago – suddenly going back to that seems entirely contrived. Meereenese knot, the hell; had she actually stayed fantasy-Alexander she might’ve spared me some of the endless pages of Orientalism, at least.
I think this is what dissatisfies me about it. I was hoping to at least have Cersei’s trial happen in this book. Instead, we just got her Walk of Shame. We at least got a glimpse of Frankengregor, though. And the reveal of Aegon (which, if anything, should have been a Big Moment) wasn’t even a Big Moment. It was practically an aside from Tyrion.
“Moving the pieces” is a good phrase. Everyone kind of shuffled around without anything actually happening in the big picture. Tyrion still isn’t actually with Danaerys, Victarion hasn’t gotten to Meereen yet, Cersei hasn’t been tried yet, Brienne shows up for all of a single scene, with no dialogue that I remember (and we don’t know if her story about finding Sansa is a ruse to lure Jaime into an ambush or not), all the Wall stuff is hopelessly stalled (and I don’t really know how the attack on Jon advances anything)…I liked the book because, hell, IT’S OUT! But I’m not terribly impressed by it. He has two books left to wrap things up, and I don’t know if he can do it without turning those two books into even MORE of doorstops than this one was.