I’ve finally finished ‘A Dance With Dragons’ and here are a few observations. I have never before read a book I actually liked so slowly – it took me months. Partly that’s because I relegated it to public transportation reading. When I’m at home, no matter how intense the plot, I usually just start reading facebook instead. I might finish the chapter, but then they switch to another story entirely and I find it very easy to put down for awhile.
That’s one of the books weaknesses, but also one of its strengths: the number of different stories going on in different parts of that fascinating world.
In fact, come to think of it, a lot of the things I hate about the series are things I love about the series. I like the way he kills off main characters with reckless abandon, although I hate it, of course, when they are characters I’ve grown fond of and, in view of the fact that characters are dying right, left and center, there are quite a few I am bothered by the fact of their continued breathing.
Probably you know who I mean, and probably you are in agreement, although some of the characters are a bit of a Rohrschach test. I have talked with a few people, mostly women, who don’t hate Jaime Lannister near as much as I do. Sure, he became a much more likable character after he got his arm chopped off, and he did save Brienne from almost certain death in the bear pit, but still….he threw a 4 year old boy out of a window, with clear intent to kill, and I’m not forgiving him for that.
I suspect he might actually be dead, though, but George R.R. Martin had all of book 5 to clear that up, after he rode off out of that village with Brienne who couldn’t have really been Brienne because Brienne was pretty definitely hanged by the neck until dead, and he didn’t.
Of course, people get brought back to life almost as gratuitously as they get killed, so I suspect there’s some weird zombie trickery going on here, as with Catelyn Stark, since she’s the one who had Brienne hanged, and I suspect Jaime rode off to a similar fate.
So, I will have to wait until book 6 (or maybe 7) to find out, and I kind of resent that, but wait I will, and read it as soon as it’s written.
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