On A Feast for Crows

Another week, another Song of Ice and Fire book down. I’ve been enjoying my trek across the literary world of Westeros as much as I’ve liked the show, but I was a little scared to get to the fourth book, A Feast for Crows.

Everyone from Unreality commenters to Amazon reviews seemed to indicate that after A Storm of Swords, things go a bit downhill in Crows and its quasi-sequel A Dance with Dragons. What could have possibly gone so wrong to have sparked this sort of discomfort among fans?

The main issue with these next two books was told to me beforehand, but George RR Martin waits until the end of the novel to explain, which I would imagine confused a great deal of readers when the book was new.

He says that the book he wanted to write was simply too long, and he couldn’t fit it all together. And if something is too long for George “900 page minimum” Martin, you know it was pretty hefty. But that’s fine. That happens with stories some time. Pick a good break point and release two separate books, right?

Well, that’s not what Martin had in mind. Rather, he decided that he should tell the complete stories of only half the characters. He cherrypicked through the major characters and decided that ones like Cersei, Jaime, Arya, Sam and Sansa would be in this book, while Bran, Jon, Tyrion, Stannis and Daenerys would be in the next.

An  Ice and Fire book without Tyrion and Varys? Come on!

The problems with this format should be obvious. What it would indicate is that there will be literally almost no crossover between the characters in this book and the ones in the other. The series is known for splitting its cast up, but telegraphing ahead of time that “you will never see Tyrion in the book” is a poor way to organize a story. A main issue with Martin’s books is that the characters can often seem very disconnected from one another, and this split only serves to amplify that to an annoying degree.

But it’s not the format that’s the only problem, it’s the content as well. If these stories were separate but still as riveting as the past books for the respective characters involved, that would probably work. I can only speak for A Feast for Crows so far, but it just is not the case. The books are light on action and major, significant events, and heavy on rounding out the world which may be already a bit too big for its own good.

Martin also broke from the usual by introducing what I’ll call “sub-POVs” which are lesser than the “main POVs” we see of the characters we all know and love. Soon enough in the book, you learn that when a chapter is not titled by a character you know, and instead something like “The Reaver,” or “The Priest” or “The Princess,” that you’re about to be in for a boring, often pointless section.

These unnamed POVs do have names, but they’re entirely relegated to two camps, Dorne and Pyke. Each plot feels like its own little substory that has naught to do with anything else going on, nor do the stories feature any characters we’ve seen before, save a few.

The Pyke story focuses on the Ironmen trying to pick a new king which is a terribly dull affair. Only later does the plotline evolve significantly when the Iron Islands start to lay siege to the Tyrell’s home turf of Highgarden. The Dorne story is even worse, switching viewpoints between a guard captain, a Kingsguard member and a Dornish princess. The story here has something to do with Cersei’s daughter Myrcella and Dorne trying to make a power play against the crown. Pieces are shuffled around, but nothing comes of it, and hilariously, I don’t think the Lannisters had any idea what was going on down there the entire time.

I also find it exceedingly strange that Theon has simply disappeared completely from the last two books.

These plots just didn’t seem necessary, and if they were, they should have picked a singular character and stuck with them for the duration instead of jumping around into the heads of different people, something Martin has never done up until this point. These two plotlines felt mostly like filler, extra pieces shoved into the story when Martin realized his half a book wasn’t long enough.

Elsewhere, even among the main characters, the book is missing the sort of defining, astonishing moments that were scattered all throughout a Storm of Swords. No truly major characters die, and the subcharacters that do are offed outside of the narrative.

It’s revealed that the Hound died of his wounds after Arya left him in the last book, which is an oddly handled departure for a character that seemed like he was on a road to redemption. Beric Dondarrion finally meets his final end, but it’s not explained how that came about. The Mountain dies rotting from Dornish poison offscreen. Even the Onion Knight, Ser Davos is said to have been killed and mutilated, though it’s never shown. I imagine that the next book will have some further explanation for a few of these, but it was just strange to have a book merely talk about these character’s deaths rather than actually having us be present for them. And outside of these, there are no gasp moments like we found when Martin offed Eddard Stark, Renly Baratheon, Robb Stark, Joffrey, Tywin or Lysa Arryn.

So what do we have? A lot of scheming and traveling, that’s about it. Outside of the Dornish and Pyke plotlines, the book focuses on Kings Landing, namely how badly Cersei is screwing everything out now that she finally has the power to do whatever she wants. Tywin is dead, Tyrion has fled and the king is a little boy who will sign anything you put in front of him. How hard can it be to rule the realm?

Pretty damn hard apparently, as Cersei spends the first half the book assembling a new small council full of people she can trust, meaning no one that the Tyrells want there. Though she suspects they may have had something to do with Joffrey’s death, it’s never outright revealed, and she’s merely content with trying to foil Maergary at every turn. Cersei screws Kingsguard members (who aren’t her brother) and has a quasi-lesbian fling with her new friend, a hot Myrish noble who helps her with her schemes.

“Well, you’re not a relative or male, but you’ll do.”

Cersei’s biggest mistake is allowing the Faith to rearm themselves. The Sword and Stars used to be an ancient order who carried out the justice of the gods, and Cersei thinks she’s solving a bunch of problems by allowing the group to reassemble to declare war on Stannis, forgive the crown’s debt and get their riff raff out of the city.

Unfortunately, it ultimately leads to her downfall when she tries to use the new High Septon to accuse Maergary of sleeping around, disgracing herself and Tommen. I wasn’t able to figure out if Maergary HAD slept around by the end, but I don’t think she did. Rather, Cersei bribed a Kingsguard member (with her vagina) to say he slept with the younger queen. But when the Septon tortures him, he sings a different tune, one of Cersei putting him up to the lie and then she becomes imprisoned as well. All of this was an attempt to avoid the completion of a prophecy by a maegi in her youth that said a young, beautiful queen would be her downfall. Now that I’m thinking about it, perhaps it was Daenerys the woman spoke of, not Maergary. Cersei is also trying to avoid being strangled to death by her “little brother,” the witch said, but I have a hunch it might be Jaime, not Tyrion who will end up doing the deed. Isn’t she older than him by a little bit, even if they are twins?

Cersei’s last desperate move is to write Jaime to come and be her champion in a trial by combat. He promptly crumples up the letter and burns it, showing how much his relationship with his sister has deteriorated.
The last book made us love Jaime, but here, like many of the other characters this time around, he just seems sort of aimless and lost. He hangs out at King’s Landing for a while, then heads to Riverrun to broker terms for the Tullys to surrender. He trains in order to swordfight with his left hand, but his skills are never put to the test. Which is well and good because he swore and oath to never raise arms against the Tullys or Starks again, and he’s all about keeping oaths now.

Brienne is attempting to keep her oath to both Jaime and Catelyn by tracking down Sansa Stark, with Arya assumed dead. She probably actually has the most exciting trip of anyone, getting in several skirmishes, and reuniting with several other minor characters including Tyrion’s squire Podrick and Gendry, now looking after a group of orphans with Dondarrion’s brotherhood disbanded.

It’s revealed that the red priest Thoros did indeed save Catelyn Stark using his magical life breathing Lord of Light powers, but after being dead for three days after the wedding, it took its toll on her. Now they call her “Stoneheart” and she goes around the countryside hanging Freys and other outlaws. Eventually she starts to hang Brienne and her little posse when she accuses her of being a bad friend by breaking her promise. To save the lives of her and her friends, Brienne must swear that she’ll hunt down Jaime Lannister as her new mission. It’s quite a pickle, and probably the most breathtaking cliffhanger in the story. As she’s being hung, Brienne blurts out a word we don’t get to hear. My guess is the word is “Yes” and now she’ll have to wrestle with this new mission of killing a man she’s actually come to like. One whom she owes her life to, in fact.

Also, she has half her face bitten off. Martin loves making ugly characters uglier.

Sansa is never found by anyone, rather she simply adopts a new identity as Petyr Baelish’s bastard daughter Alayne Stone. Her story revolves around her trying to soothe the impossible “Sweetrobin,” Lord of the Vale, while Littlefinger schemes. He’s quite a bit better at it than Cersei, and manages to talk all the houses of the Vale into letting him run the show, at least for a while. Near the end he reveals that his ultimate plan is to marry Sansa to a man who is Robert’s heir, and when Robert dies (either naturally, or by more nefarious means), he’ll reveal who Sansa really is. He’ll have the power of the Vale in his pocket and a bunch of knights waiting to sweep through the north to reclaim Winterfell, and who knows what else? As I said at the end of Storm of Swords, I think Baelish is one of the biggest players out there, and I’m really looking forward to seeing the strokes of his master plan continue to unfold.

More disconnected than all the rest, but not entirely from each other are the stories of Arya and Sam. Arya has ended up in Braavos and is trying to become a Faceless Man (err, Faceless Girl) by blending into the city and reporting back to her shadowy masters. She doesn’t do much except paint us a nice picture of Braavos, and at one point kill a Night’s Watch deserter because…he’s an asshole I guess?

The asshole was on a ship with Sam, meant to head to Oldtown on Jon Snow’s command. In the boat are Mance Raider’s baby and Aemon Targaryen who Jon wanted sent away so Melisandre couldn’t use their “kingsblood” to work her dark spells. Of course we never see anything that’s happening in the north, so I couldn’t tell you how that went over. In the end, Sam ends up at Maester Headquarters (whatever it’s called), and meets a young novice named Pate. Strange, because Pate was killed in the introduction to this book.

There are a few mysteries to be found in A Feast of Crows by the end, and that’s one of them. At the beginning, this Pate is killed by an unnamed figure posing as an alchemist, trading faux gold for a master key to the Citadel. I’ve heard a theory that the man is actually Jaquen H’gar, because of the way he’s described, which would be very cool indeed. And now, he’s this Pate fellow, having changed his face again. I can only imagine where that’s going to go. Also interesting is how the maester says that something besides knights killed all the dragons way back when.

But they’re sooo cute!

Elsewhere, I was curious as to what Cersei’s new whisper master Qyburn was doing with all those donated bodies in the black cells. He’s ordered a set of armor reportedly too big for any man to wear, and keeps talking about some great warrior that he can command. My theory is that he’s taken the body of the Mountain (his head is shipped elsewhere) and reinforced it with other humans created one undead super warrior somehow. Seems far fetched, but anything is possible these days.

This next bit might not be a mystery, but I was confused by it. Ser Loras is sent to Dragonstone, and the report back is that he won the battle, but was horrifically injured in the process. But later, it’s said that Dragonstone hasn’t fallen at all. I’m wondering if Loras isn’t injured, and rather is doing something sneaky instead. But this could be less of a mystery and more of me just misreading things instead.

I understand why people were so let down by the this book. You don’t have a winning formula for three straight books and then change it drastically because you don’t want to edit yourself properly. Splitting the books between characters was a bad idea, but it’s the central story that’s worse. We’re introduced to too many characters we simply don’t care about, and the ones we do really don’t have anything interesting to do. I’m worried that the show is going to suffer as well starting in season five when these two books will start to be adapted. Viewers used to an exciting, gripping program likely won’t take kindly to a downshift into a lower, slower gear like we see here. The Song of Ice and Fire series has been full of some of the most memorableliterary moments I’ve ever read, but none of them were in A Feast of Crows. George RR Martin writes an awful lot, but often he doesn’t say very much at all. 

All this said, even a bad book in this series is still a worthwhile read, and it’s always astonishing just how enormous and well thought out this universe is. It makes Lord of the Rings look like well, my book maybe, starring a grand total of three characters.

I’m worried about A Dance with Dragons, as the reviews are even lower than this book and it’s the longest in the series so far. Storm of Swords was lengthy, but you didn’t want it to end. I’m not so sure that’s going to be the case with Dragons.