(****) I have been a fan of George R R Martin’s epic fantasy
series, A Song of Ice and Fire, since
the publication of the first installment, A
Game of Thrones in 1996. It had everything I wanted from fantasy that had
been missing from Lord of the Rings –
grit, realpolitik, multi-dimensional characters, snappy – often funny – dialogue, and sophisticated plotting. No
longer did people do things simply because ‘it was written’; no longer was the struggle
between good and evil being fought for the sake of the struggle. People had
solid motives for their actions and the line between good and evil was blurred
and continuously shifting. I put up with the two main faults of the books –
elaborate descriptiveness and a boding sense that Martin might lose control of
the plot at some point. The former didn’t improve but the latter didn’t
materialise.
At least not the first three books. Then came the interminable
wait for the fourth installment, and incessant broken promises from Martin as to when
it would appear. We waited five years and then, in 2005, got two novels worth of
half a novel. A Feast for Crows came
in at over 1000 pages but only told half a story. The three characters most of
the readers cared about, Tyrion the Dwarf, Jon the Bastard of the Night Watch and
Daenarys the exiled Queen across the Water, did not feature, and were being
saved up for the next installment which would run in parallel with A Feast for Crows. Instead Martin chose
to: expand storylines about Samwell Tarly, an overweight scribe and would-be intellect,
Brienne a female knight, the battle for succession in the Iron Islands, and
political intrigue in Dorne; and a continue the storylines of Arya and Sansa
Stark and Cersei Lannister. A Feast for
Crows was still a good fantasy novel, but the sheen – the increasing lack
of humour, the persistence of the over-descriptiveness, the missing central
characters the ever expanding sub-plots – had been tarnished. I agreed with the
general thrust of the critical and fan communities – Martin needed to get his
act together quickly for the next installment.
Six years later, in 2011, came A Dance with Dragons, even longer than
its partner. By then I had lost some interest in the series and was studying
for a late degree in English Literature, so reading a 1000+ page-long fantasy novel
for pleasure wasn’t on. My interest was rekindled by the TV series, and having
finished my serious reading this summer, I finally grappled with this latest installment. It took me a month to read, and I would have been lost without the
helpful A Song of Ice and Fire wiki and
the plot summaries of the previous novels on Wikipedia. As before, Martin
introduces new storylines and continues old ones. Of the three main ones, The
Tyrion and Jon story strands were disappointing in resolving little. Tyrion’s
dialogue – one of the big strengths of the earlier books – appears to me to
have become less funny, although it is hard to know whether that’s because my
reading habits have developed in the eleven years since I last read about his
exploits or because Martin is losing his touch. Jon’s pronouncements, on the other
hand, have become positively irritating. It’s as if Martin thinks the signs of
great leadership are to always disagree with your advisers – a trait that he
had previously laid on Daenarys (did she ever take any advice from any of her
trusted advisers?). All we ever get from Jon are alleged pearls of wisdom that
if collected together and used as guidance would cause countries to fall and companies
to go bankrupt. Better is the Daenarys storyline where Martin is far subtler in
showing the problems of ruling a conquered territory. She is advised by many,
some well, some poorly, and the advice she follows doesn’t always work out. I
would guess that one of Martin’s influences are the covert insurgencies in Iraq
and Afghanistan. Of the new storylines, the Dornish prince’s quest for Danearys’s
hand in marriage could easily have been cut without loss, and the emergence of
another Targaryen prince-in-exile failed to ignite my interest. The most
powerful new storyline, of a character called Reek (not actually a new
storyline but if I explain why it spoils the plot), will be familiar to viewers
of the TV series where he was introduced much earlier, but not to readers who
haven’t seen it. Owing much to Tolkien’s Sméagol in LOTR , his strand is by far
the most exciting, sickening and unexpected in the novel. As in previous parts,
some major characters die unexpectedly, and there are a number of surprising
plot twists. A Dance with Dragons
ends less decisively than Cersei’s downfall in A Feast for Crows in part
because Martin’s original plan of ending with two big battles had to be
postponed due to lack of space, and we are left instead with a number of cliff-hangers,
but there is a compensating epilogue – the strongest single part of the novel in
plot terms, and some hope that Martin is now seriously considering pulling
together his far-too-many story strands.
And he has, at last, learnt to cut down on his
ornate descriptiveness. Let's see if The Winds of Winter comes out any more quickly (not a chance).
