Two random comments:
1) It is mildly annoying how in fashion black and silver has become in Westeros.
GRRM put a lot of effort into describing the heraldry and colours of the great houses of Westeros and this season this has been thrown out with every one wearing black and silver.
Dany and all her advisors wear black and silver, even though House Targaryen colours are red and black.
Cersei is wearing black and silver instead of Lannister red and gold.
Sansa is wearing black and silver instead of other colours (ok mostly brown) we've seen associated with the North and house Stark.
Everyone is wearing the same thing now. It's weird and dull.
This bothers me, too, but I don't want to get any blowback about how "pissed off" it makes me. It is merely mildly annoying in a "roll your eyes" kind of way. I understand that everyone wearing the colorful outfits of the various houses would be kind of ridiculous (Roose and Ramsay Bolton might not have been so intimidating in the family color of
pink), but in the books literally nobody but the Night's Watch wears black.
Then Martin decided to ignore his editors and we got garbage like Brienne wasting a full book fucking around looking in a place every reader knew was wrong
Did his editor ever make the assertion that Brienne's journey should have been different? If Brienne had gone in the "right" direction (which is? what should be happening with Brienne instead?), we wouldn't have the Septon chapters, which were great.
Theon's chapters were fantastic. Bran's and Davos's were good too. The rest of it really made me question why I still read this series.
The 3 primary ASOIAF characters - Jon, Dany, and Tyrion - have some of the most plodding arcs I've seen in recent fantasy series. It is on par with the middle Wheel of Time books, where it feels like there was no sense of purpose in where GRRM was taking the story. The same things he took 10+ chapters to tell for each of the characters in AFFC/ADWD could have been done in 3-4 chapters in the first three books.
I also got the feeling that he was just adding things without have any sense of how it was going to go down. The Greyjoys, Martells, Aegon, etc are characters I personally find either completely flat (Arianne) or caroony (Euron). So far, with what we know of TWOW, there's no indication that things will improve. And while Martin's writing is easy to read, it's not some stellar prose that makes keeps me invested even as the pacing is slowed to a crawl with no interesting developments.
I loved ASOIAF and, when I read the first three books several years back, I thought this was by far the greatest series I'd ever read. Then Feast came out, followed by Dance, and it has fallen considerably imo. I'm still astounded by how opinions on them have changed to them being accepted more in the last 5 years or so. Many works of fantasy are better, and I personally think the show adaptation is stonger than the books.
One of the reasons that the books are so slow to come out is not just because GRRM types with one finger on an antiquated word processor, not on the weekends (you probably don't work 7 days a week, either), and only at home, etc., but because he writes each POV separately and only compiles them at the end. He might already have Dany's entire arc written to the very last moment, but he still hasn't started with Stannis. It's why he might not see his story is meandering at times. And this is just the stuff that makes the final draft; he infamously writes out various ideas at length before deciding they don't work and discarding them to start over.
Mishandled is the understatement of the century. And yeah NWC is great but Jamie is not a good show character and hasn't been for seasons.
Show Jaime is a fine character, if infuriatingly pussy-whipped, he just doesn't have a patch on Book Jaime.
I hate it says Rhaegar abducted Lyanna when Oberyn told the truth.
https://youtu.be/Pxv9ui8O34M?t=28
You had to post a reminder of how good the show could be!
Please don't make him read the last two books. He could just go to a wiki page and read that instead
New readers (looking at you, Artisan) and re-readers should read a combined AFFC/ADWD version, either a reorganized chapter list like Boiled Leather or you can download A Ball of Beasts if you "prove" that you own the books. It really does improve the pacing to read it as one gigantic book.
