krameriffic said:
Does it really irritate anyone else when he spends like 5 chapters hyping up a battle (in this case Stannis' battle for Winterfell) and then he doesn't actually write the battle from anybody's perspective? He just has a letter show up afterwards declaring its outcome? What kind of bullshit is that?
A two paragraph note from that douchebag Ramsay is NOT how you fucking conclude Stannis' epic journey through the course of the last few books. He spends hundreds of pages hyping him up, talking about the siege at Storm's End and the Battle of the Blackwater and how he smashed the Wildlings north of the Wall, and he fucking dies off screen for us to learn about it from a FUCKING LETTER FROM RAMSAY BOLTON?
1) Stannis might not be dead yet.
2) Even if he is, what makes you think we will not hear how he died later on? Asha or Theon could be alive and we might get flashbacks of the event.
First of all, whenever things aren't first hand in his books, especially given his penchant for reviving characters previously thought to be dead like Catelyn, Davos, Brienne and possibly Gregor
It's not reviving if they were never dead (with the exception of Catelyn)...
And how does he follow it up? With the egregiously stupid and utterly unbelievable murder of Jon Snow at the Wall.
It's not unbelievable at all. The Night's Watch basically has tons of those stupid, biased rasists who don't have any logical reason to hate the wildlings, at least not a majority of them. And... really, are you forgetting that most of the NW is filled with rapers, murderers and other (ex-)low-life scum? Not really that far-fetched that they would take to solving something they don't like with a knife, like they probably did in their past lives. And don't forget what happened to the PREVIOUS Lord Commander, who made much less drastic decisions than Jon, yet paid with his life for it.
I get that they were setting up a growing discomfort of the Night's Watch with his decisions as Lord Commander, but Bowen Marsh stabbing him to death just does not jive. Getting killed by the Queen's men, maybe, but I don't see that happening with the friendship he has kindled with all the Wildlings he has there.
Why would the Queen's men have ANY reason to kill Jon? If anything, THAT would've been incredibly stupid and unbelievable.
It's just such a pathetically unfitting conclusion to his story with no merit whatsoever. If his questionable decisions were his downfall, he should have died on his ranging to Hardholme, alone and freezing north of the Wall, not betrayed by his sworn brothers. Robb's death at the Red Wedding was shocking, but not completely unpredictable. Knowing the Frey's, it seemed a fitting response to his slight, a thematic lesson in the frivolities of youth and the downfalls they can bring upon a person.
Are you kidding me? Martin even goes as far as to having Melisandre bring up the knives in the dark time & time again, yet Jon does nothing to prepare the possibility of it, blind of the growing unrest & contempt for his decisions. The betrayal was really easy to foresee, I just wasn't sure if Martin would go through with it and it happened in a situation where (at least) I was getting pumped up about Jon kicking Ramsay's ass and wasn't even thinking about any possible betrayals at that moment, which made the even that much more shocking (for me).
Also speaking of the north, why did he bother to set up Davos' journey to find Bran, something that seemed likely to fit in with Stannis and Jon's plans for the north, but then just forget about it? What is the point of Davos doing anything now that Stannis and Jon are dead? What, was he smoking crack up his ass?
Davos isn't going to find Bran, he's going to find Rickon. It's important regardless of Jon & Stannis, since he's the only known (real) Stark to be alive by other than just one or two characters. Even if Stannis & Jon die, there are still people in the North who want the Southern people the fuck out of Winterfell, having a true heir to Winterfell would certainly help their cause.
And why doesn't he follow up on Davos after setting up his search? Maybe because nothing happens during his trip to the island where Rickon is? You bitch about Martin having some pointless chapters and then suggest he should have added more chapters about people travelling from point A to point B?
And why do we spend so little time with Bran, a character of clearly great importance to the plot, and he gets like 2 chapters in the whole book. Wouldn't want to have too much intrigue in your book, Martin, or people might compare it to the masterpiece that was A Storm of Swords.
Because there's only so much greenseer training you can have in the book? Same reason why Arya doesn't get too many chapters. It could go overboard really fast if Bran's chapters were all just about somewhat confusing visions of the past (or present) that most people don't have the knowledge to decipher them with. It's more interesting to read about the progress they've made in their training (i.e. Arya successfully assassinating that one guy with her clever plan, Bran "reaching out" to Theon) than reading more about the actual training.
The book started off on a very high note and I had high hopes for where he was going with Tyrion and Jon and Bran and Daenerys, but they all went nowhere fast.
How do they not go anywhere? Tyrion goes from not giving a shit about anything & being almost suicidal to being in a somewhat influential position (possibly somewhat in control of the Second Sons) and interested in doing something with his life again (well... revenge, at least). Jon acts as the Lord Commander, makes A LOT of hard decisions (takes wildlings in, mans other castles with them, takes a loan he knows the Night's Watch probably has no way of repaying, deals with Stannis etc.) and makes the decision to see that Ramsay doesn't wreck havok at the Wall. Bran doesn't have that many chapters in the book, true, but enough happens in the chapters he DOES have (and, actually, even in non-Bran chapters) that I don't see why you are complaining. Dany tries to rule Meereen, her dragons kill people, her enemies try to negotiate with her and when she doesn't give in to their demands, they declare war against her, she gets married and so on and so on. Plenty happens. You just think you know better than Martin how Dany's story should advance (or where it's leading) and don't like that she's not in Westeros yet.
His rationale for Daenerys twiddling her thumbs in Merreen for the entire course of the book was so flimsy it was painful, like a man with no bones in his arms trying to serve you coffee. Did she get hit in the head with a very large rock at some point without us knowing about it and simply forget that her goal was taking back THE SEVEN KINGDOMS OF WESTEROS and not trying to civilize a bunch of retard slavers on the other side of the planet who are of utterly no consequence whatsoever to the overarching plot of the book?
And you know the slaves have no consequence... how? Has the final book been released already? Are you one of those people who think Westeros is the sole important place in ASOIAF? If all that happens in Essos leads to, say, Dany demolishing slavery on the continent (it could happen if she wins against the Slavers), is that not a big enough event to justify her being there? The books have ALWAYS had two sides, Westeros & Essos, even if the Others have seemed like the Big Bad Threat that's the most important one of them all. But Dany's chapters have had a strong Essos & anti-slavery focus. Even if her ultimate goal is the Iron Throne, it doesn't mean that what she does in Essos has of no consequence to the world of ASOIAF.
And (one of the) the point(s) of ADWD's Dany chapters was that Dany lacked experience as a ruler, it was underlined in ASOS when she didn't really know what the hell she was supposed to do with the people who thought of her as their Queen (if she doesn't know what to do with a bunch of ex-slaves & the like, how on earth would she know what to do with a kingdom, let alone seven of them?). She hadn't been trained for it like Viserys and Aegon had/have been. She was just the expendable little girl no one gave a shit about as anything else but a bargaining chip. Now she is in control of Meereen and she knows she doesn't know one thing about actually being a Queen. That leads to her making bad decisions and trying to approach the situation in Meereen the wrong way. By the end of ADWD, she realizes what she needs to do, or at least seems to realize.
Barristan should have slapped that bitch silly and reminded her what she was in this gig for: the Iron Throne, not Slaver's Bay.
Thousands of people think of her as their Queen (or "mother"), are you saying she should've just abandoned them all? How is that, AT ALL, like Daenerys? Or good story-telling, for that matter? That's not something Barristan would've wanted either. If you think so then you obviously have no understanding of the kind of character Barristan is.
We only had precious few moments spent in King's Landing and the Riverlands, but I still don't understand what the point is of Brienne (why is she still alive again? nevermind) and Jaime and Catelyn's little outlaw cakewalk.
Why is Brienne alive? Because her "fate" is (currently) tied to Jaime's. And she's had plenty of "use" in past books. She was one of the catalysts that begun the change in Jaime in ASOS, she could be used to show the state of Westeros in AFFC in addition to showing & hinting some other things (Clegane's alive, other people are, of course, searching for Sansa and are possibly having better luck with it than Brienne etc.).
King's Landing & Riverlands aren't focused on for the simple reason that they were the focus in AFFC already and ADWD only starts to add those chapters in when the story has reached the point in ADWD.
Instead of dedicating a few choice chapters to Littlefinger and Sansa, two characters in a very intriguing position at the end of AFFC (and fuck knows they were the only ones who did anything in that book) Martin just forgets about them ENTIRELY.
Heh, Sansa's role in AFFC is pretty much the TINIEST part of AFFC. Read the book again if you think otherwise, plenty of other characters do so much more than Sansa and have a bigger role in what AFFC is about. Brienne for one.
Instead, he sends Jaime and Brienne out on a wild goose chase of extremely questionable pertinence to the plot of the story. How are the outlaws in the Riverlands ever going to matter? Why did he bring Catelyn back from the dead? She has appeared in all of two chapters since then and done NOTHING whatsoever.
Catelyn has been doing nothing? Uhh... Killing countless Freys and other people responsible (more or less directly) of her son's death is not "nothing", and they could come to play with an even bigger role in the future, at least as far as solving the situation in Riverlands goes.
More than anything, the book suffers from being unfocused and having a plot that meanders around for a thousand pages (just like AFFC).
Unfocused? This isn't true at all. There's a clear focus in almost everything in ADWD. Dany is trying to rule Meereen but is failing in it, Tyrion is climbing up from a deep hole of depression and getting back into the game he had no passion for anymore after ACOK/ASOS, Jon is only starting as a LC and later on is trying to do things to ensure they'd have a stronger Wall for when the Others end up attacking it, Theon goes from being the miserable broken rat into being Theon again and so on with the other characters.
And AFFC isn't that way at all either, other than maybe Brienne's chapters but those were really interesting & helpful in fleshing out Westeros.
The only things that actually happen don't feel like they matter for one of two reasons. First, nothing that happens in Slaver's Bay COULD EVER matter short of Daenerys and the dragons dying or packing their bags and heading to Westeros with nary a backward glance (neither of which actually happens).
Like I said before, this is only true if you have the misconception that Westeros is all that matters.
None of these things felt like they concluded a self-contained story arc within the book except maybe Stannis (and I still don't buy that he's dead).
Jon, Dany, Tyrion, Theon, Aegon/Connington and Quentyn all had quite clear story arcs within the book and Bran, Arya, Sansa, Cersei & Jaime were continuing theirs that have been set up before. And given that this is just one big story, I don't see why it seems so important to you to force Martin to add self-contained story arcs for every character in every book. Life doesn't always work that way, neither should books (or any storytelling mediums)
