No one who wears a crown is ever safe

I think blogger is randomly deleting drafts I have started. Except not really because there are a ton of really old drafts saved there. There just aren't the ones that I'm sure I started for things like A Feast for Crows. You know, ones that would actually be helpful. What I'm saying is please just pretend this is really great, because I bet that draft-that-was-deleted-but-actually-probably-never-existed was really great, and let's all pretend to live in that world.

You know how I wasn't hyperbolically in love with the first two Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones books but then I read the third one, A Storm of Swords and finally realized that yes, everything here is amazing and I need more pages? Obviously, the fourth book was not going to live up to that. That's not saying it was bad or that I didn't love it or that I'm not going to keep reading. It's just that it would have been quite a feat had it managed to be as good, and then Martin did this thing where he decided that you didn't need to hear from some of your MOST FAVORITE CHARACTERS so this not sustaining that whole best thing evaaaaaaaar was bound to happen. Hell, even Martin knew this and sort of won me over with his last chapter.

"Hey, wait a minute!" some of you may be saying about now. "Wait a minute, wait a minute! Where's Dany and the dragons? Where's Tyrion? We hardly saw Jon Snow. That can't be all of it..." Well, no. There's more to come. Another book as big as this one. I didn't forget to write about the other characters. 

I think the fact that his books are so serious (or at least these books. No idea if other stuff he writes is the same) that this last chapter made me laugh cos wtf? I did not anticipate Martin breaking the fourth wall. He explains that he wrote SOOOOOOO much and realize he couldn't really publish this as one book (Feast was over 800 pages) so he'd have to split them up. And he COULD have just split it in the middle, like a normal person, but instead he decided to focus this first book on the action primarily in and around King's Landing, and the next book would focus on all those other characters. But don't worry! See the next book is pretty much written so he said that should be published the year after this came out and he dates this last chapter 2005. Now, let's just go see when A Dance with Dragons was published...2011. Of course. We're never getting those last books.

So who is in Feast for Crows? Cersei, Jaime, Brienne, Sansa, Arya (at least we get Arya), Samwell AND then a bunch of new characters we've never seen before. Instead of Tyrion or Dany.

OK well not NEVER seen before cos we get Asha and a few other Greyjoys (this super downer Aeron and her uncle Victarion) and then some Dorne folks (Arianne, Arys Oakheart, and Aero, who to the best of my knowledge is unrelated to super downer mentioned above, they just have almost the same name to make things complicated).

I realize I haven't actually talked about the book itself, but as I pointed out last time, I don't think I'll be convincing anyone to read the whole series by this point if you weren't already planning it. You probably should because the story is pretty sweet and the female characters are some of the best ones in the series. Stakes are raised, people are getting what they wanted and it turns out wearing the crown isn't all that awesome, terrible things happen to characters you love and hate. Everything you'd expect.

I will be reading A Dance with Dragons but I'd like to hold off at least until the next book (The Winds of Winter) comes out, because after that I know there will be a looooooooooong wait for the final book. I'm so sorry for fans that have been there since the beginning and have had to work with Martin's schedule getting these things out.

Gif rating:

Title quote from page 203

Martin, George R. R. A Feast for Crows. Bantam, 2005. Kindle