Song of Ice and Fire Book Thread (SPOILERS)

[Threash]

What was Bowen Marsh hoping to accomplish anyways? The nightwatch is outnumbered a few hundred to a few thousand by now and the wildlings aren't just going to march back over the wall just because Jon got Ceasered.

[Merusk]

My thought was that the whole, "Onward, to Winterfell!" was just a bridge too far.  Everything else could be hung on defending the realm form a bigger threat, even if they disagreed with it.  The moment John decided to get involved in the political struggle directly by deliberately breaking his oath, the rest of the brothers couldn't take anymore.

Needed more Bran.

Bran does get things moving.

[murdoc]

I also concur that Lard Lord Manderly is awesome.  I hope they don’t kill him.  I really want to see him fuck over the Boltons to death somehow.  But still, the fact that he killed several important Freys and then fed them to everybody at the wedding was spectacular.

Wow, it totally went over my head that he did that. I'll have to reread those chapters. That IS pretty badass.

[Threash]

The best part is that he enjoyed eating them as much as everyone else.  Then got drunk and requested the song of the Rat King.

[Cheddar]

Finished the series a couple weeks ago.

Book 5 pissed me off, what with Dany's wedding. 

[Sjofn]

I find it surprising anyone gave a shit about Dany ever, really. I have always found her chapters annoying and meandering and while I understand why it's important she exist, important she be a PoV, I hated her chapters almost universally. Until this book, for some reason. YES, I would've prefered she get moving or whatever, but seeing her actually struggle with being a ruler, seeing her be more than a hot mary sue who's totally going to ride in with DRAGONS and KICK EVERYONE'S ASS and then EVERYTHING WILL BE AWESOME because for some reason it's good the CRAZY INBRED ROYAL LINE get back in power was definitely an improvement in my eyes.

But then, I also found the shit with the Wall and Jon Snow horrifically boring and was glad Jon got stabbed, however red herring-y not-really-dead that winds up being.

[Ruvaldt]

I agree, Sjofn.  I never liked Dany's chapters before, but in this book they actually hooked me.  I found myself looking forward to her chapters as time went on, and I've never felt that way before.

Like many others, I thought Davos and Barristan's chapters were the highlights of the book.  Tyrion's chapters were a disappointment; Martin seems to have descended into caricature there.  He'd better have something spectacularly awesome planned after all of that nonsense.

I liked the book.  Looking forward to more, but I sure hope he doesn't go all wargy with Jon.  I didn't enjoy his chapters in this book, and if he goes in that direction I'll like his chapters in the next book even less.  It's a shame too because his stuff with the wildlings was a highlight of books 2 and 3.  Does anyone else find the wolf stuff tedious?  I've honestly never cared for it, regardless of the characters it involves.

[Threash]

Apparently "the battle of ice" and "the battle of fire" were supposed to be in this book but got pushed back to the next.  No wonder it seems like nothing happened.

[Threash]

Was Theon castrated? they seemed to imply it several times but i'm not convinced.

[Merusk]

I never got that.  He'd have moaned about it more than his fingers, considering he was fucking anything that he could get his hands on.

[Ruvaldt]

I do remember it being implied, but I can't remember where exactly.  I've lent out my copy or I'd look it up.

Edit: I did a little looking in an ASoIF forum and found a quote that pointed me in that direction.

Ramsay rose, the firelight shining on his face. "Reek, get over here. Get her ready for me."
For a moment he did not understand. "I... do you mean... m'lord, I have no... I..."
"With your mouth," Lord Ramsay said. (p. 499)

And then Ramsay Bolton descended further into cartoonish super-villainy.  Theon also mentions losing "that other thing" in an earlier chapter.

[DLRiley]

I think impotent is probably the word. Though he could have had some skin removed from off the top.

[Paelos]

Finished it yesterday.

Parts that I liked: Jon's stuff didn't bother me at all, and I liked the interplay in the north between Stannis and the Watch trying to balance out not taking a part. Yall seem to take a fairly dim view of it, but I think it's very true for anybody who has ever tried to lead in a situation where you have extremely limited resources and almost no real help.

I like Arya's stuff, although it was too brief. This was the first time as a character she didn't annoy the hell out of me by not doing anything. She is moving in a direction, and there will be blood.

Tyrion's stuff. He's still smart-assed trying to escape all kinds of different obstacles, but the "where whores go" stuff was really contrived. Tyrion wouldn't give a shit what his father's dying words were. The fact he spends so much time dwelling on it makes no sense. Adding another dwarf doesn't bother me, but I don't love it either. The detail about keeping the pipes of Casterly Rock flowing was brilliant.

What I didn't like: Dany's plotline, as stated, changes total direction as she just whines and whines and whines. Several offers come up for her to just GTFO and leave but she doesn't. You are running a country, just walk away. Why she gives a damn about these people makes absolutely no sense. They hate her, they want her gone, but she insists that for some reason they need and love her?

I didn't get the love for the Davos stuff. It just seemed odd and out of place to me. I also thought the Bran stuff was really boring. Oh he's in the wilds. Oh he found a tree people. Oh he's a tree now or something. Mystical tree bullshit. Whatever.

What I hated: Ramsay Bolton is ridiculous. Nobody is like this except in GRRM's bizarro world where the cruelest most unrealistic people live on in unchecked retardery. Far be it from Roose to actually deal with this fucker he knows is systematically murdering his line. No, no, let's promote him! It'll make for great story telling having a completely unchecked unredeemable evil-bad running around in the North.

Asha. Don't fucking care. The whole iron men line for that matter. It's stupid, it's pointless, and it has zero to do with what we know is happening. Who gives a fuck about her? Every chapter with her was a slog, even moreso because it involved Theon and Ramsay. They just sail around being pointless.

I want more Dany getting the hell out of that stupid slaver continent. I want Jon to go all zombie-Jon and kick ass. I want Aegon to start fucking people up. I want Cersei to get boiled in oil. I want Tyrion to come back and start the boiling pot. I want Arya to knife everyone who has it coming. I never want to hear about Sansa again. I want the Ironborn to go full Styx and just Sail Away. I want Jaime to just get over himself and run off with the Maid of Tarth. I want Varys to titter as he's getting burned alive. I want Tommen to take his kittens and escape to kitten land where nobody will bother him.

[Ruvaldt]

What I didn't like: Dany's plotline, as stated, changes total direction as she just whines and whines and whines. Several offers come up for her to just GTFO and leave but she doesn't. You are running a country, just walk away. Why she gives a damn about these people makes absolutely no sense. They hate her, they want her gone, but she insists that for some reason they need and love her?

I actually got the sense that the vast majority (former slaves) were in favor of her rule, but the previously ruling elite were against her.  Also, the reason she's so hellbent on staying is her feeling of responsibility for those freed slaves' current situations.  Once she saw the rise of Cleon and destruction of the ruling council that she established in Astapor, and the subsequent fall of Cleon/Astapor, she felt a personal responsibility for the care of those she liberated.  I think that she should leave the continent too, but I absolutely understand her justification for staying.

[Threash]

The whole point of her staying in Mereen was that she wanted to rule one city, if she fails miserably at that how can she go and conquer a whole kingdom?

[Paelos]

The whole point of her staying in Mereen was that she wanted to rule one city, if she fails miserably at that how can she go and conquer a whole kingdom?

Massive cultural differences? It's one thing to rule a people you know rather than as a foreign devil they will never accept.

[Threash]

She's never even been to westeros.

[Ruvaldt]

She clearly wants to go though.

No, she refused to leave the city because she felt responsible for the people there and didn't have enough boats to take them all with her when they offered her a way out.  She wanted to create a lasting peace that would stand up once she left.  I don't think she views Meereen as training wheels for Westeros, or at least I haven't seen anything in the books to make me think that way.  It is also clear that the majority of her subjects loved her, and that she cared for them.  Just look at what she did with the refugee camps outside Meereen when they were suffering from the bloody flux.

[Murgos]

I just finished this last night.  I'm not sure what I think of it yet plot wise.  I didn't expect that to happen to Jon, at least not that severely.  But I guess GRRM had painted himself into a corner and needed to get out of it.  I suppose the best way for Jon to get out of his vows is that he's dead, though not permanently.

As far as the weather thing on the last page goes, you guys are aware that seasons come mostly from axial tilt and not orbit right?  Otherwise winter would happen on both sides of the equator at the same time.  I'm pretty sure you can have an erratic wobble (or really, periodic but over a grand period with numerous minor oscillations) and a regular year.

[Samwise]

I'm not sure if you can have a "wobble" in the axis like that, can you?  A rotating body will tend to continue rotating around a fixed axis; for the axis to change the direction of rotation has to change, which requires the application of torque.  Maybe one of our resident astrophysicists will pop up to correct me.

Alternatively, maybe a wizard did it.   

[Chimpy]

It is fucking fantasy, the world can do whatever it wants.

Maybe their sun is manic-depressive but its mood swings are on a galactic timescale.

[Draegan]

Its fucking magic, duh.

[RhyssaFireheart]

    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
        Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)
        English physicist & science fiction author (1917 - )

[Murgos]

I'm not sure if you can have a "wobble" in the axis like that, can you?  A rotating body will tend to continue rotating around a fixed axis; for the axis to change the direction of rotation has to change, which requires the application of torque.  Maybe one of our resident astrophysicists will pop up to correct me.

Alternatively, maybe a wizard did it.  

If you hit a top or a gyroscope it will wobble for a bit and eventually sort itself out (a damped oscillation).  For a planet that could take a few thousand millennia.

e:  Anyway, I think I like the book in it's component parts but dislike it when taken as a whole.  It pretty much exists because GRRM screwed up 10 years ago and stuck an overly honorable Jon Snow on the Wall and a bunch of way too young dragons with a way too young Dany in the middle of nowhere.

I'm pretty sure that what just happened was the reset button got pressed on those two characters and they popped back about two books worth of plot development personally while  advancing their characters (and the rest of the Starks) and the rest of the world and now they get to start again.

In Dany's case this is literally what happened.  She is back with Drogo's Khalasar out in the Dothraki sea again but is older and has a fully grown dragon.

[Samwise]

That I can buy.  Maybe a moon or something smashed into the planet at some point?  That would make for a neat bit of backstory.

[Ingmar]

I'm not sure if you can have a "wobble" in the axis like that, can you?  A rotating body will tend to continue rotating around a fixed axis; for the axis to change the direction of rotation has to change, which requires the application of torque.  Maybe one of our resident astrophysicists will pop up to correct me.

Alternatively, maybe a wizard did it.  

If you hit a top or a gyroscope it will wobble for a bit and eventually sort itself out (a damped oscillation).  For a planet that could take a few thousand millennia.

e:  Anyway, I think I like the book in it's component parts but dislike it when taken as a whole.  It pretty much exists because GRRM screwed up 10 years ago and stuck an overly honorable Jon Snow on the Wall and a bunch of way too young dragons with a way too young Dany in the middle of nowhere.

I'm pretty sure that what just happened was the reset button got pressed on those two characters and they popped back about two books worth of plot development personally while  advancing their characters (and the rest of the Starks) and the rest of the world and now they get to start again.

In Dany's case this is literally what happened.  She is back with Drogo's Khalasar out in the Dothraki sea again but is older and has a fully grown dragon.

The original plan he had was to just stick a 5 year gap here instead of having 2 books, which I don't know why he thought he could do given the various cliffhangers at the end of Book 3.

[naum]

[Sand]

Finished the first three books in the last week and a half. (Staying home from work really increases your reading!  )
On Book Four now. LOVING the whole series thus far.

[Sand]

Half way through book 5 now.

[Khaldun]

Well, I dunno, it's not like there's a dragon trainer around to help her out. For all she knows, dragons just automatically listen to whomever they've imprinted upon.

In retrospect, I find myself annoyed by the guns-on-the-mantlepiece that don't get fired in this book--and I think that's evidence for Martin developing a worsening version of Jordan's Syndrome. Lord Manderley, for example. I get what he did at the feast, but I honestly expected that he was going to poison them all. Which would have been fine--it wouldn't have gotten Stannis out of freezing to death if Martin also actually wants to pull that trigger, in fact, it would have made the whole situation more ironic. I'm also sort of sick of the 'can-you-top-this' violence and sex. He can keep 'topping' himself by superior *storytelling*--the Red Wedding was what it was because it made enormous narrative sense, not because it was a yet-more-extreme description of grotesquerie.

[Paelos]

[Speedy Cerviche]

I agree it's fairly annoying that the major events of the book were basically never resolved. We follow Stannis all over the north through POV chapters with Jon,  the Greyjoys and a little bit of Davos/Melisandre, all building up the confrontation with the Boltons and what do we get? To be continued.... Same thing in Meereen, city is sieged the whole book, a number of important characters and military forces converge on the city, and the book ends just as its' all coming together for a bigass battle (Barristan will be forced to sally now that the Yunkai are flinging plague inside, his plans were all ready anyways).

I'm not exactly sure if Dany will return to Mereen right away in the next book, or what she will immediately do with her new Khalasar, but I'm guessing at some point she flys over to Asshai and learns more about r'hllor, ancient wisdom, shadows, dragonlore, and other arcane. This fullfills the part of the prophecy "to go west you must go east" and that shadow priestess has been trying to get her over there for a while. Regarding her semi-feral dragons, at some point that issue will most likely be solved by her getting her hands on that dragon horn victarion brought over to Mereen since she's presumably immune to the side effect of it charring the blower's lungs and other vital organs. She's being setup to basically become Queen of the world at this point since a bunch of the free cities are sliding into her pocket. I presume she will eventually subdue slaver bay, a slave rebellion is being set up in Qarth, Pentos is in play with that sellsword captain who's promising his loyalty to whomever can deliver it to him, you gotta assume some shit's gonna go down in Bravos with the sealord sick, the bankers on the move in Westeros, and an important POV character there.

[naum]

Do we need the spoiler tags? I thought the thread was already pre-spoiler-ized…

[Paelos]

Honestly, I want her dead. It'll never happen, but I would really enjoy Arya killing her.

[WayAbvPar]

I just want of her dragons to fry her and eat her.