Reviewed by sa090 on
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This is a huge book, the edition I have is 800+ pages and it's disheartening that I couldn't enjoy it much. The majority of it honestly felt pointless most of the time, I don't know how to explain it but there are a lot of events in the book and it still makes me feel like nothing at all was accomplished. Kind of like there are 9 people here who are aiming to do something but this books tells their journey to do that thing without any of them actually getting to do it, any idea how incredibly frustrating that is? Insanely so. The journey is a big part of any fantasy series, I understand and love that about the genre but with 800+ pages, I at the very least, want to reach the final page feeling like a destination of sorts was reached which obviously didn't happen here for me.
The main reason for that is easily the POVs, as mentioned earlier there are 9 POVs here that if I take some of them out nothing would change. Oh no correction, maybe if I actually switched some of them out with someone else I would get some sort of result that I can feel is a little worth my own very long journey in this book. For me personally the two POVs that were boring, felt useless and honestly shouldn't have been here in abundance because they're currently not that relevant are Arya's and Jon's, out of the 69 chapters that made up this book, these two get 18 chapters. That's almost a quarter of the book for two POVs that don't feel worth all of this attention, these two are CLEARLY going somewhere but why all this focus? To get me to sympathize or connect with the characters? That obviously failed because these two are a chore to read about and are currently my least favourite characters, really, if they die in the next book all they're getting out of me is "Good riddance." Bran and Sansa aren't that great either, but at least with them their chapters were tolerable to an extent.
I heard that the upcoming books have even more than 9 POVs and that's completely fine but it really baffles me why other character couldn't have had their own chapters when they were literally more relevant to the happenings of the book, namely Robb Stark. If Martin gave 5-7 chapters of the 18 he gave his two before mentioned siblings (or 5-7 chapters out of the 33 he gave the Stark Children), there would've been a noticeable difference to my perception of the book just for the sole reason that in the book you "hear" that Robb is actually accomplishing things but you can't see any of them in real time because no one that actually had a POV is with him to show that. Another that should've gotten a POV was Stannis, I'm definitely not mentioning spoilers here but he's just the same as Robb, clearly accomplishing things and doing others without me seeing a thing but hearing about it, why Martin took this approach is beyond me but I honestly hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
One more thing I really disliked in the book were the descriptions of things, some were long winded, stretched and kind of unnecessary but I did hear previously and see in GoT of this particular thing about his writing style so while it's kind of a complaint, it's not something I didn't expect at some point. The thing I didn't expect is how he handled rape in the series, I understand that the world he's painting is dark and bloody with terrible characters and good ones but I didn't expect that he'd make some characters treat rape like a favourite past time or rather I didn't expect him to actually mention it enough for me for it to become relevant, there are things that can be implied without being said and to me this was one of them, yes he mentioned it in GoT but it feels like he took it up a notch in this one. The sex scenes remain largely in passing but because there is a visible increase in their number I'm hoping it remains in passing so yeah.
Tyrion is kind of the saving grace of the book, his wit, somewhat sarcastic nature and his actions really make me thankful that he gets that many chapters to himself. Unlike the other characters he's more of a thinker so the fun lies in seeing what he can come up with and he thankfully wasn't idle so while some chapters dragged on a bit I'm still really glad. I did wish that Daeneyrs got more than 5 chapters since she's by far my favourite character but more importantly because she's the only one so far who's not in Westross, you know completely different unknown continent, however the interesting things about her chapters were where it led her and what she saw in that place, so many things seem like they can be taken further than this and I really hope that they will be expanded on in the upcoming books.
The comet in itself was another thing I found to be really interesting, especially how the interpretations differed from one religion to another or from one individual to another but unfortunately it seems to be a plot device more than anything at the moment since after a while it wasn't mentioned anymore which is kind of a bummer because I really wanted to hear more interpretations. The Red one brings an interesting thing to the series as well and I'm not talking about the Lord but rather the new contender for being the Azor Ahai, by far the most interesting thing ever in the series so far and I really hope to see more soon.
In the last two paragraphs I made my intention of continuing with the series very clear but I'm going to be taking a break from it for some time, I hear that the third book is by far the best one for some so I really hope it is for me too since this was just a disappointing experience.
Final rating: 1.5/5
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 30 June, 2017: Finished reading
- 30 June, 2017: Reviewed