fajrdrako | A Dance with Dragons, Prologue... (Reply)

Like so many people, I ordered A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin from amazon.ca a long, long time ago. And also like many people, I have been waiting impatiently but faithfully since A Feast for Crows came out in 2005. I remember it well. I was in Malta at the time.

Amazon has yet to deliver the book to me. Usually they're very good. Was the demand too much this time?

In any case, I got an electronic copy to tide me over. I fell back into the story just as easily and obsessively as ever - but find myself going slow, not wanting it to all be over too soon. Dying to talk about it (online or otherwise) but reluctant to encounter spoilers.

So it occurred to me that it might be fun to voice my reactions here, chapter by chapter, as I read. It's another way of prolonging the pleasure. It might be a long time till the next book.

So...

A Cavil on Chronology

I love the way GRRM uses alliteration.
Because of the way he wrote the books - giving us essentially a half book (at a length that of double most books) and calling it A Feast for Crows, he did odd things to his own chronology, so now we're more or less backtracking. Which is okay. Parallel not sequential. I can handle that.
So the next volume will be called The Winds of Winter. And it's the second last book, right? Unless GRRM changes his mind and writes more, or ends things there.

The Maps

I love books with good maps. It's another thing I've tempted to blame Tolkien for, but it really didn't start with him: i loved the maps in Winnie the Pooh when I was three years old. And I loved reading atlases as soon as I was old enough to read. So it's all part of a long continuum, and a fine tradition.
Valyria - how intriguing.
The Land of Always Winter has a lovely ring to it.

Prologue

So the viewpoint for the Prologue this time is Varamyr Sixskins. I remember him as an enemy of John Snow's. I'd mostly forgotten him, but his identity and role came back pretty quickly as I read.
Have I said that I love the way Martin puts words together? Who is this horrible old man/wolf/warg, that I should weep for him? Okay, i didn't weep, that's going a little too far, but I could really feel the sense of cold and bitterness and isolation of this person who had died numerous times and was about to die again, in a new and worse way. The tenth death.
Murder, cannibalism, carnivorousness, and betrayal. We're right on track, right away.
And incredible though it may seem, Martin evoked a twinge of pity for this horrible man who once had a brother whom he loved, and who died. And a lingering sense of jealousy, fear and abandonment. And we get such a sense of how, little by little, he lost his humanity - what humanity he had in the first place.
Thistle. Martin has such a way with names. What a great name, for a Wildling woman. And Lump, and his brother... I can picture the whole family: Lump, Bump, Hump, Rump, Stump, Slump the Sister, Frump the Mother, and Grump the Father.
Love the way the wolves Varamyr has lived among have names and personalities.
I love it that his gods are silent. Martin handles religion better than any other fantasy writer I can think of.
So Varamyr plots to kill the woman. And she turns the tables, so to speak. I didn't see that coming.
Some of this seemed very powerful to me. Abomination. And an eerie beauty she had never known in life.
But the real surpise is the knowledge that Jon Snow is a skinchanger. Well, yes. Once he said it, I thought, of course. We've seen it. But had I realized, actually? No. And then it follows that the other Starks are, too - don't they all have psychic connections with their Direwolves?