THE DRAGON HAS THREE HEADS
Dany, Pod, Hodor
The prophecies in the House of the Undying are what make it cool. A lot of them are true and do happen but I won't say what cause, y'know, spoilers. And I would've loved to have seen Rhaegar's death as well as Aegon's birth. Oh and Rhaego burning cities. Not to mention the whole THREE BETRAYALS WILL YOU KNOW trout, I mean come the smurf on that is a sodding plot point.
You people just don't appreciate nice things.
I'm sure after you read further you appreciate that chapter more. To me it just seemed like a bunch of nonsense.
Proud to be the Unofficial Secret Illegal Enforcer of Eyes on Final Fantasy!
When I grow up, I want to go toBovineTrump University! - Ralph Wiggum
I just finished reading Clash of Kings. I now understand why not much happened in the show. In 900 pages you would expect much of significance to happen but it really didn't. In fact, many of the more memorable moments this season such as (SPOILER)Arya & Tywin's banter, Cat letting Jamie go, Jamie & Briene's adventures, the zombies marching on the Night's Watch camp were not in this book. It was basically 900 pages of setup. And the ending was very underwhelming. Unlike Game of Thrones, where the individual storylines were more confined to that book and the ending had one of the biggest 'oh smurf' moments of the entire series. It seemed like Martin had a specific story to tell in Game of Thrones, which would end up being part of a larger narrative. By Clash of Kings he's already focused on the end game and doesn't want to give too much away. That leads to boring filler.
There's something about these books, though. I found Martin's writting to be overly descriptive and boring at times yet I couldn't put it down. Is this how people are with Twilight? The POV aspect helps since you get a break between characters and that makes you want to know more. And this works much better in a book than a TV show. However, I'd be super frustrated if I had to wait years for the next installment after reading this one. I bought Storm of Swords the other day but I want to see if I can hold out another year because it's fun to watch the show not knowing what's going to happen. There's other stuff to read in the meantime.
Proud to be the Unofficial Secret Illegal Enforcer of Eyes on Final Fantasy!
When I grow up, I want to go toBovineTrump University! - Ralph Wiggum
You are not the only person to point that out. The series is overall good and worth reading, but to me it's far from the fantasy masterpiece that so many claim it is. And if you thought A Clash of Kings was boring filler, just wait for A Feast for Crows. The book wasn't even supposed to exist until Martin realized he needed some filler for the gap in his planned story after a Storm of Swords. I still haven't even read A Dance with Dragons because I just could not care after reading AFFC and the resulting half-decade wait. But I'll probably get around to it eventually.
I will say that A Storm of Swords is better, and contains some of the action that was put into the second season of the show that you didn't see in A Clash of Kings. But overall, you may be starting to appreciate why I think the show is legitimately better than the books.
I was seriously reading the series up until about a week ago. I got to DoD and I just wikied and read the plot. It's so long, and I was starting to get bored. There's a lot of conversation about things that should happen, but no actual happening.
However, Arya's plot is reeeeally cool and fascinating.
I thought there might a time lapse at some point in the series. You need time for obviously important characters like Bran and Arya to get older, and Dany's dragons need to grow to the point where they can actually do some damage. It will be interesting to see how they approach this in the show.
Proud to be the Unofficial Secret Illegal Enforcer of Eyes on Final Fantasy!
When I grow up, I want to go toBovineTrump University! - Ralph Wiggum
Originally, Martin planned for five years to elapse between A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows. He later found this not to work, so it was eliminated. This is the main reason AFFC took him so long to write. It also means that many of the characters are much younger than they act, and it is the primary reason the characters were aged up for the TV series (the other being that it would have been pretty much impossible to film nude scenes for some of them at their younger ages).
AFFC and ADWD drag at times, but as far as world-building goes, they're arguably the strongest entries in the series. You get to experience what it's actually like to live on Westeros and Essos better than at any point in the past, which is probably exactly why some people don't like them - it's not a very pleasant atmosphere. The pacing of the plot does suffer, however, and this is a fair criticism, but it's fairly obvious they weren't intended to be another A Storm of Swords - they are setting up events that have yet to happen, which is one of the main reasons so many new characters have been introduced.
I disagree slightly. I thought the writing itself was cranked up more to 11, but (SPOILER)Danaerys' chapters were horrible, and Feast and Dance have the same problem - dividing installments geographically undermines one of the strongest aspects of ASoIaF. You spend a few chapters with the sneaking and conniving of King's Landing and then get treated to this exotic cityscape you've never seen before with some incredibly colorful characters. Or you spend time travelling in a bleak wasteland and then you get treated to a little political intrigue. A spoonfull of sugar makes the medicine go down, but in these books it's like trying to shove rock salt down your throat.
Still, I agree with The Man, that there's better world building here than you'll find anywhere else. The backstory with the Great Bastards, The Blackfyre Pretenders, the strange curious Elephants of Volantis, and Lord Rickard Stark's "Southron Ambitions," the settings almost never been more interesting. And there is great buildup, but there's not enough climaxes to justify it being its own installment.
So I solved that on my current re-read by putting them together, but in a unique way. I went with Martin's original vision, with the Dornish and Iron Islands chapters in an extended prologue. It flows and makes you care about the characters more because they're not just distractions from the main characters - there's real crazy ish going down here and you digest the progression of the stories better and makes their twists that much more powerful. My rule was to take their later chapters, along with any other character who's chapter name begins with "The" (except for (SPOILER)arya and theon) and put them in the intermission for events that happen in the middle ((SPOILER)Shield Islands, Quentyn's enlistment, Asha's capture, Aegon's introduction to GC) or at the end ((SPOILER)the meereenese knot). So that way I have two near-full books to enjoy the cast of "main" characters that we all know and love. It restores the pacing and actually makes the story a really powerful, really sad aftermath of the horrible things that happen in A Storm of Swords.
I've always enjoyed Clash of Kings more than other people seemed to have, and this is one of the reasons. I thought a lot of stuff happened. (SPOILER)The Battle on the Blackwater, the Battle of the Fords, the rise and fall of Renly's claim, the descent of Theon, and Tyrion's time to shine. I think Davos being one of my favorite characters might make me biased, but after the lack of climaxes in the last two books, it makes Clash of Kings look far more fast than it really is, I suppose.Originally Posted by Del
I'm finishing up the second half of season 2, but it better get better like everyone says it does, or this statement is sadistically iconoclastic on so many levels.But overall, you may be starting to appreciate why I think the show is legitimately better than the books.
I like the super-descriptiveness. The only times I get bored is when he introduces a brand new POV character. I eventually get into their stories, but for a good while I'm irritated that I'm not reading about someone I already like.
Storm of Swords is the best book, I think. Clash of Kings is definitely all build-up, but things happen in Storm of Swords.
I loved A Feast for Crows. Many people seem to feel it's the worst book, but I enjoyed it very much.
It's not that GRRM wrote it as filler, it's that AFFC and ADWD were supposed to be one book, but at about 1400 pages he realized he needed to split them into two. Rather than split them chronologically, he split them by character. So AFFC is missing some favorites, but those characters go through the same period of time again in ADWD, which is a little boring, but it was still interesting to see what they were up two. When the two books meet back up at around page 750 in ADWD, then things get notably more interesting.
I do tend to refrain from recommending the books to a few of my friends, though, because I don't think they'd appreciate the amount of detail. I do. I read the family trees in the back!
Yeah, GRRM has admitted that it was a bad move not to make the kids all start older, since that time jump didn't work out. It does make it easier to deal with Dany in ADWD, though, as she's definitely a teenage girl.
Not a whole lot of faces I recognise (Mackenzie Crook is the only one I really know), but going by looks alone they all look like good picks to me!