A Dance with Dragons

[sawyl]

Having only finished A Feast for Crows a couple of weeks ago, I haven't had to wait for GRRM's A Dance with Dragons (as John Scalzi notes, Martin's no slouch as a writer: on a per-word basis he's every bit as productive as the next man, it's just that he chooses to release his words in huge chunks). Which meant that I had all the characters fresh in my mind and I that I was in a good position to compare the old with the new — short verdict: I preferred Dragons to Crows but with hindsight I can see why Crows needed to be the way it is.

The book basically splits into two main sections. The first follows the main characters omitted from the previous book as their narratives unfold in parallel to those in A Feast for Crows. This means that we get a chance to follow Bran and the two Reeds on their journey north of the wall to find the three-eyed crow in the company of Coldhands; to see how Jon Snow in his role as Lord Commander of the Night's Watch; to see where Tyrion escape to after murdering his father; and to see what Daenerys and her dragons have been upto in the former slaver city of Meereen.

The second part of the book continues to focus on the main characters from the first, but it also starts to pull in the threads of some of the characters from A Feast for Crows and A Storm of Swords into the central narrative. Thus Victarion Greyjoy reappears, as to Asha and Theon — the latter having been tempered by his long imprisonment and torture at the hands of Roose Bolton's heir. Cersei Lannister finds herself humbled at the hands of the High Septon, Jaime makes a brief and extremely tantalising appearance that gives a bare handful of hints as to the fate of Brianne of Tarth, while the Dornish factions continue to scheme their way towards the Iron Throne.

Most of the point of view characters are familiar from previous novels, but Martin thickens the mix by adding narrators who've previously only been seen from the outside. Consequently we see Barristan Selmy, always outwardly confident and certain as to his course and vocation, beset by doubts about his past behaviour and struggling the new decisions he finds himself forced to make. We also get to see inside the head of Melisandre, whose role thus far has been principally that of an antagonist, as she struggles to interpret her visions in the best way she can — even if we, with readerly omniscience, know that she's wrong about much of it — and as she attempts to disguise the great efforts that underpin her apparently casual sorcery.

But it is the development of Theon Greyjoy's character that really stands out. Having disliked him immensely in his first narrative sections in A Storm of Swords, where he comes across as arrogant and not terribly clever, I found myself wincing at his quite appalling treatment at the hands of Ramsey Bolton — a man with a disturbing enthusiasm for both physical and psychological torture. Whenever he appeared, I found myself wondering this was the moment he was going to slip out from under Ramsey's control or whether the reappearance of his original personality was just a brief interlude before his Stockholm Syndrome reasserted itself.

The long treks undertaken by some of the narrators — especially Tyrion's journey down the River Royne — fill in some previously blank areas of the east with giant turtles, ancient ruins, slaver markets, monkey infested islands, and even areas populated by the living dead — I can't be the only one to be creeped out by Val's comment that greyscale and the grey plague are the same thing, and that anyone affected by greyscale is already dead. While the addition of Griff, who was involved in opposing Robert Baratheon's rebellion, fill in some missing sections of Westeros' history, adding depths to an already colourful and beautifully drawn world.

A Dance with Dragons puts a lot of the events of A Feast for Crows into context and shows why Martin spent so much of the latter ratcheting up the narrative tension. It also seems to mark the point where A Song of Ice and Fire has started to shift from pure exposition and development into something more like a recapitulation and combination of the various individual stories and themes. While I have some suspicions about the cliffhangers — no-one whose dead in A Song of Ice and Fire seems terribly willing to stay dead, so I'm not terribly inclined to believe anything until I've seen the bodies safely burnt — it's definitely left me looking forward to more.