Finally finished A Dance With Dragons!
Jul. 26th, 2011 11:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lunasarielI'm so behind on fandom news, I think I'm just going to skip my thoughts on Deathly Hallows Part 2 and go straight to A Dance With Dragons, a book six years in the making.
This was, to me, a very meta-y book. Aside from all the throwaway nods to other famous works (the "fart in your general direction" Monty Python thing was my personal favorite), we saw quite a few fan-theories tackled. I think most people had already agreed that fake!Arya was Jeyne Poole, so no big surprises there. Same for FrankenGregor, which, while not explicitly confirmed, has been hinted at enough that it might as well have been. The "Bloodraven = three-eyed crow" twist was something that I wasn't expecting, but makes a lot of sense, now that I think about it. But I was really blindsided by Aegon Targaryen, both as a secret Targaryen, and that baby Aegon survived. I've never really been a big fan of the "secret Targaryen" line of theories, since most of them boil down to "hey, this character is awesome! Targaryens are awesome! Therefore, this character must be a Targaryen!" I can kinda see where the L+R=J fans are coming from, even though it's a theory that I'm not particularly fond of, but those who insist that, say, Tyrion is a secret Targ baby kind of make me headdesk sometimes. But Aegon was pulled off very well, and I'm interested to see more of him. All the more so, because I've always considered the "baby Aegon is alive" theory to be one of the more unlikely ones. One of the few largely consistent rule of fiction is what I like to call NBND: No Body, No Death. If a character is reported to be dead, but no body can be positively identified by the POV character, then they aren't really dead. But we had so many confirmations of little Aegon's death, and from usually reliable sources like Barristan Selmy and Jamie Lannister, that I never really thought to question it. Well played, GRRM, well played indeed!
But more than a meta-y book, this was a *frustrating* book. I know that GRRM knows his stuff, so the fact that he left us hanging with so many characters, especially with characters like Brienne and Sansa, who didn't even appear in ADWD, is most certainly deliberate. And even Cersei, who was left on a cliffhanger at the end of AFFC, didn't get any (real) resolution here.
OK, now I'm done bitching. GRRM just kinda brings out the ranting crazy fangirl in me sometimes. XP
I was extremely glad to see that rumors of Davos' and Mance's deaths were greatly exaggerated. Davos, while not one of my favorites, has blossomed very nicely from a purely necessary vehicle for us to know what's going on with Stannis into a fully-fledged character, and one that I'm always glad to hear from. With Mance, I kind of despaired when I heard "his" last, cowardly words. I know full well that GRRM has a particular way of building up heroes and then breaking them down, but I kind of really wanted Mance to keep on being my Robin Hood, cocky and defiant to the last, so I was beyond glad to see him alive and kicking. His plan to rescue "Arya" was noble and epic and promised a metric ton of swashbuckling, derring-do, camaraderie, and maybe a bit of humor thrown in, so I knew it was ultimately doomed to fail, but at least they achieved their objective. I don't know whether he'll manage to escape or not; I just hope that somebody manages to take Ramsay Snow down, and soon. But until the next book, Mance is alive and awesome and sticking it to the Man and everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.
In a similar vein, I was pleased with Wyman Manderly's backbone, as deeply buried as it is (rim shot). I've always liked him: he cut Robb a square deal, stayed reasonably loyal, and seems to be a basically decent dude. But he's not a hero (which, honestly, is probably a good thing, considering the average life expectancies of ASOIAF's heroes). He just wants to reunite what's left of his family and then eat and drink himself into an early, but happy, grave. His initial treatment of Davos was another of those disappointing moments, like I had with Mance, and like Mance, I was happy to see it disproved later.
Since watching the show, I have become a firm believer in the "Syrio Forel = Jaqen H'gar" theory, since it's presumed that Faceless Men can't alter their body mass all that much, and both Syrio and Jaquen are described as slender Braavosi. Both Syrio and Jaquen have shown up more or less to help Arya out, so I'm thinking that the Faceless Men have a prophecy of their own that required them to recruit Arya, which in turn required her to stay alive. The point of all this is that I found the Arya chapters interesting. I love how the differences in attitudes towards warging have been shown in Jon, Arya, Bran, and what little we saw of Robb and Rickon (Sansa barely got any screentime with Lady, so she doesn't really count). Arya is tied too strongly to Nymeria to entirely forget who she is, which will definitely have some interesting ramifications for her future as a Faceless Man (Faceless Woman?).
About Cersei, I rather agree with Kevan's view of her: she may have been a cold-hearted, paranoid, psychotic bitch, but damn was she fun, and seeing her brought low like this was more than a bit sad. I love to hate her so much, and I'm actually kind of hoping that she's got one last ace up her sleeve, only to go down in a blaze of glory. Now *that* sounds like the Cersei I know and hate!
Most of the book was, of course, focused on Jon, Dany, and Tyrion. I can appreciate Jon's many and varied difficulties (I'm loving Val and her contrast with Queen Selyse, btw!), but my biggest question with him was, if food is already a problem, what are they going to do when winter has already been going on for a year or three? When Ghost started growling and freaking out towards the end, I had some nasty Red Wedding flashbacks, and the rousing cheers and wholehearted support both wildlings and Night's Watch men gave to Jon's noble endeavor, I pretty much knew he was doomed. It remains to be seen whether he actually is dead/will stay dead, though. If Benjen is Coldhands, and all Starks are dormant wargs, then maybe there's something about warg blood that allows one to keep one's identity after death. I dunno...
I feel like most of the book was focused on Dany and the happenings in Meereen and its surrounding cities. I'm having enough trouble keeping track of the myriad characters and tangled politics of Westeros; the addition of the inner workings of Pentos, Meereen, Yunkai, Lys, Qarth, Old Ghis, Astapoor, Volantis, Myr, Meereen itself, and the old gods know who else just made things worse. On top of that, there were no characters I really liked in this particular tangled web, with the definite exception of Barristan Selmy. I'm kind of ambivalent towards Dany herself: I can admire her goals and ideals, but she doesn't strike a spark with me. Strong Belwas is good enough for a secondary character, and always manages to bring a smile to my face, but isn't enough to make up for all of the slimy Meereenese whose names I can't remember. Seriously, it's bad enough trying to remember who everyone is, what family they're from, who their allies are, who their family's allies are, who their former allies were, who their enemies are, and who their family's enemies are in Westeros, but at least they all have vaguely familiar names, like Robert and Margaery. Of course, there's a fair number of Olennas and Lancels there, but given that I'm a native English speaker, these names just click for me better than all the crazy Meereenese names. Sometimes I think Arch had the right idea in just giving up and calling everyone Hazoo. XD That aside, the whole scene where Dany saves Tyrion and Penny (even though she didn't know it was them), Drogon breaks up the fights, and then Dany flies away on his back is unabashedly AWESOME!!! Ranks right up there with the Battle of the Wall and the Battle of the Whispering Woods on the list of most awesome moments.
Re: Tyrion, I have a feeling that his "where do whores go?" quest(ion) is going to lead him interesting places. We're really getting to see the long-term effects that Tywin's revelations had on him, and, as expected, they've made him a much nastier person. I can't see much of the would-be hero who risked Joffrey's wrath to save Sansa from a beating and designed a special saddle so that Bran could ride again in the cynic who slapped Penny and told her that her dog was dead and that she would have to fight or die.
Out of all the new characters/new POVs introduced, I think Griff/Jon Connington has to be my favorite. The little family he'd put together for Aegon, from sweet Lemore to silly Duckfield to the nice old couple who own the boat whose names I can't remember, was incredibly endearing, so of course I started fearing for them immediately. GRRM has trained me so well that whenever something heartwarming or uplifting happens (see Jon rousing the wildlings and the Night's Watch above), I immediately start to worry about how it's going to be ruined. BUUUUUT getting back on topic now! Jon seems like a pretty decent guy, and his insistence that Aegon learn to to real people stuff, like how to cook and fish and dress a wound, in addition to king stuff, like history and religion, reminds me very strongly of Dunk and his reasons for taking Egg on as a squire. And, as it turned out, Dunk was completely right: Egg got a good feeling for how things looked from the other end of the throne room, which allowed him to become enormously effective (not to mention popular) once he took the throne, whereas nobles who grow up in the lap of luxury turn out to be entitled little shits, like Joffrey, or pie-in-the-sky idealists, like Sansa. So +1 Parenting to Jon!
Of course, it doesn't hurt that Jon was in luuuurve with Rhaegar. I'll admit, this wasn't something I picked up on at first. In Essos, my interpretation was that he was with this particular rebellion half for old times' sake, and half to get back the lands and titles that were taken from him. But then he got back to Westeros and was all "OMG RHAEGAR WAS SO PRETTY ELIA WASN'T WORTHY OF HIM", and then I got it. I imagine their relationship to be kinda like that between Tamír's father and his master-at-arms in Lynn Flewelling's Tamír Triad where they kind of had a thing going on, but then one of them moved on and the other...didn't, but still continued to perform his duties as a loyal bannerman, even knowing that his feelings were not returned. Or maybe Rhaegar never returned Jon's feelings at all, but felt kinda bad about it. Yeah, that sounds a lot more like Rhaegar.
ADWD, oddly enough, really cranked up the manlovin'. ASOS and AFFC definitely introduced the femslash element, but ADWD is all about the slash. Rhaegar/Jon is the big one, of course, but Victarion definitely had a couple of "OMG TEH GAYZ EEEW!!!!11!" moments, and I'm pretty sure that the assistant armorer that Tyrion talked to about the the Battle of the Blackwater made a veiled reference to a boyfriend he left behind in Flea Bottom. I'd heard rumors that GRRM was going to include a M/M sex scene, on the level of the Dany/Irri or Cersei/Tanea F/F sex scenes from the last couple of books, but in retrospect, I'm kinda glad he didn't, since his sex scenes tend to be more squicky than sexy.
Speaking of sexy, my latest crazy-and-obviously-untrue-but-wouldn't-it-be-cool-if-it-was theory is that Loras was never wounded on Dragonstone. When Cersei is talking to the septas about the Tyrells, they seem relatively forthcoming with information on Tommen, Jaime, and Margaery, but when Loras is mentioned they all clam up. And if he were grievously injured or dying, he would almost certainly be attended by at least one septon or septa, so one of them might know the real deal. So my theory is that the Tyrells put out the story that his face was terribly burned so they could take some other guy, wrap his head in bandages, and pretend that he couldn't talk while Loras was...doing something else, I guess. My first instinct was that he was racing back to King's Landing so that the Tyrells could reveal him as Margaery's champion at the last second. But it looks like Margaery is going for a regular trial, not a trial by combat, so that theory is almost definitely out. If the Tyrells are planning a(nother) coup, they could have sent Loras out to drum up support in secret, but that wouldn't work for a few reasons: they already pretty much control the court through normal political means, and trying to start another war, so soon after the last one and so close to winter, is just a bad idea. Of course, in my perfect world, Loras would have faked his own maiming/death because, way back in ACOK, he didn't just ride off with Renly's body to bury it, he took it somewhere to get him R'hllored, or possibly Qyburned (it seems to me that Storm's End is a bit far south for wights, especially in the summer), or brought back to life by some other as-of-yet-unrevealed method, and Renly is just waiting for the perfect moment to reveal himself, raise another army, and take the Iron Throne for himself, and Loras is helping him with that. But then I remember that life is not a song and go back to the real world. : \
This was, to me, a very meta-y book. Aside from all the throwaway nods to other famous works (the "fart in your general direction" Monty Python thing was my personal favorite), we saw quite a few fan-theories tackled. I think most people had already agreed that fake!Arya was Jeyne Poole, so no big surprises there. Same for FrankenGregor, which, while not explicitly confirmed, has been hinted at enough that it might as well have been. The "Bloodraven = three-eyed crow" twist was something that I wasn't expecting, but makes a lot of sense, now that I think about it. But I was really blindsided by Aegon Targaryen, both as a secret Targaryen, and that baby Aegon survived. I've never really been a big fan of the "secret Targaryen" line of theories, since most of them boil down to "hey, this character is awesome! Targaryens are awesome! Therefore, this character must be a Targaryen!" I can kinda see where the L+R=J fans are coming from, even though it's a theory that I'm not particularly fond of, but those who insist that, say, Tyrion is a secret Targ baby kind of make me headdesk sometimes. But Aegon was pulled off very well, and I'm interested to see more of him. All the more so, because I've always considered the "baby Aegon is alive" theory to be one of the more unlikely ones. One of the few largely consistent rule of fiction is what I like to call NBND: No Body, No Death. If a character is reported to be dead, but no body can be positively identified by the POV character, then they aren't really dead. But we had so many confirmations of little Aegon's death, and from usually reliable sources like Barristan Selmy and Jamie Lannister, that I never really thought to question it. Well played, GRRM, well played indeed!
But more than a meta-y book, this was a *frustrating* book. I know that GRRM knows his stuff, so the fact that he left us hanging with so many characters, especially with characters like Brienne and Sansa, who didn't even appear in ADWD, is most certainly deliberate. And even Cersei, who was left on a cliffhanger at the end of AFFC, didn't get any (real) resolution here.
OK, now I'm done bitching. GRRM just kinda brings out the ranting crazy fangirl in me sometimes. XP
I was extremely glad to see that rumors of Davos' and Mance's deaths were greatly exaggerated. Davos, while not one of my favorites, has blossomed very nicely from a purely necessary vehicle for us to know what's going on with Stannis into a fully-fledged character, and one that I'm always glad to hear from. With Mance, I kind of despaired when I heard "his" last, cowardly words. I know full well that GRRM has a particular way of building up heroes and then breaking them down, but I kind of really wanted Mance to keep on being my Robin Hood, cocky and defiant to the last, so I was beyond glad to see him alive and kicking. His plan to rescue "Arya" was noble and epic and promised a metric ton of swashbuckling, derring-do, camaraderie, and maybe a bit of humor thrown in, so I knew it was ultimately doomed to fail, but at least they achieved their objective. I don't know whether he'll manage to escape or not; I just hope that somebody manages to take Ramsay Snow down, and soon. But until the next book, Mance is alive and awesome and sticking it to the Man and everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.
In a similar vein, I was pleased with Wyman Manderly's backbone, as deeply buried as it is (rim shot). I've always liked him: he cut Robb a square deal, stayed reasonably loyal, and seems to be a basically decent dude. But he's not a hero (which, honestly, is probably a good thing, considering the average life expectancies of ASOIAF's heroes). He just wants to reunite what's left of his family and then eat and drink himself into an early, but happy, grave. His initial treatment of Davos was another of those disappointing moments, like I had with Mance, and like Mance, I was happy to see it disproved later.
Since watching the show, I have become a firm believer in the "Syrio Forel = Jaqen H'gar" theory, since it's presumed that Faceless Men can't alter their body mass all that much, and both Syrio and Jaquen are described as slender Braavosi. Both Syrio and Jaquen have shown up more or less to help Arya out, so I'm thinking that the Faceless Men have a prophecy of their own that required them to recruit Arya, which in turn required her to stay alive. The point of all this is that I found the Arya chapters interesting. I love how the differences in attitudes towards warging have been shown in Jon, Arya, Bran, and what little we saw of Robb and Rickon (Sansa barely got any screentime with Lady, so she doesn't really count). Arya is tied too strongly to Nymeria to entirely forget who she is, which will definitely have some interesting ramifications for her future as a Faceless Man (Faceless Woman?).
About Cersei, I rather agree with Kevan's view of her: she may have been a cold-hearted, paranoid, psychotic bitch, but damn was she fun, and seeing her brought low like this was more than a bit sad. I love to hate her so much, and I'm actually kind of hoping that she's got one last ace up her sleeve, only to go down in a blaze of glory. Now *that* sounds like the Cersei I know and hate!
Most of the book was, of course, focused on Jon, Dany, and Tyrion. I can appreciate Jon's many and varied difficulties (I'm loving Val and her contrast with Queen Selyse, btw!), but my biggest question with him was, if food is already a problem, what are they going to do when winter has already been going on for a year or three? When Ghost started growling and freaking out towards the end, I had some nasty Red Wedding flashbacks, and the rousing cheers and wholehearted support both wildlings and Night's Watch men gave to Jon's noble endeavor, I pretty much knew he was doomed. It remains to be seen whether he actually is dead/will stay dead, though. If Benjen is Coldhands, and all Starks are dormant wargs, then maybe there's something about warg blood that allows one to keep one's identity after death. I dunno...
I feel like most of the book was focused on Dany and the happenings in Meereen and its surrounding cities. I'm having enough trouble keeping track of the myriad characters and tangled politics of Westeros; the addition of the inner workings of Pentos, Meereen, Yunkai, Lys, Qarth, Old Ghis, Astapoor, Volantis, Myr, Meereen itself, and the old gods know who else just made things worse. On top of that, there were no characters I really liked in this particular tangled web, with the definite exception of Barristan Selmy. I'm kind of ambivalent towards Dany herself: I can admire her goals and ideals, but she doesn't strike a spark with me. Strong Belwas is good enough for a secondary character, and always manages to bring a smile to my face, but isn't enough to make up for all of the slimy Meereenese whose names I can't remember. Seriously, it's bad enough trying to remember who everyone is, what family they're from, who their allies are, who their family's allies are, who their former allies were, who their enemies are, and who their family's enemies are in Westeros, but at least they all have vaguely familiar names, like Robert and Margaery. Of course, there's a fair number of Olennas and Lancels there, but given that I'm a native English speaker, these names just click for me better than all the crazy Meereenese names. Sometimes I think Arch had the right idea in just giving up and calling everyone Hazoo. XD That aside, the whole scene where Dany saves Tyrion and Penny (even though she didn't know it was them), Drogon breaks up the fights, and then Dany flies away on his back is unabashedly AWESOME!!! Ranks right up there with the Battle of the Wall and the Battle of the Whispering Woods on the list of most awesome moments.
Re: Tyrion, I have a feeling that his "where do whores go?" quest(ion) is going to lead him interesting places. We're really getting to see the long-term effects that Tywin's revelations had on him, and, as expected, they've made him a much nastier person. I can't see much of the would-be hero who risked Joffrey's wrath to save Sansa from a beating and designed a special saddle so that Bran could ride again in the cynic who slapped Penny and told her that her dog was dead and that she would have to fight or die.
Out of all the new characters/new POVs introduced, I think Griff/Jon Connington has to be my favorite. The little family he'd put together for Aegon, from sweet Lemore to silly Duckfield to the nice old couple who own the boat whose names I can't remember, was incredibly endearing, so of course I started fearing for them immediately. GRRM has trained me so well that whenever something heartwarming or uplifting happens (see Jon rousing the wildlings and the Night's Watch above), I immediately start to worry about how it's going to be ruined. BUUUUUT getting back on topic now! Jon seems like a pretty decent guy, and his insistence that Aegon learn to to real people stuff, like how to cook and fish and dress a wound, in addition to king stuff, like history and religion, reminds me very strongly of Dunk and his reasons for taking Egg on as a squire. And, as it turned out, Dunk was completely right: Egg got a good feeling for how things looked from the other end of the throne room, which allowed him to become enormously effective (not to mention popular) once he took the throne, whereas nobles who grow up in the lap of luxury turn out to be entitled little shits, like Joffrey, or pie-in-the-sky idealists, like Sansa. So +1 Parenting to Jon!
Of course, it doesn't hurt that Jon was in luuuurve with Rhaegar. I'll admit, this wasn't something I picked up on at first. In Essos, my interpretation was that he was with this particular rebellion half for old times' sake, and half to get back the lands and titles that were taken from him. But then he got back to Westeros and was all "OMG RHAEGAR WAS SO PRETTY ELIA WASN'T WORTHY OF HIM", and then I got it. I imagine their relationship to be kinda like that between Tamír's father and his master-at-arms in Lynn Flewelling's Tamír Triad where they kind of had a thing going on, but then one of them moved on and the other...didn't, but still continued to perform his duties as a loyal bannerman, even knowing that his feelings were not returned. Or maybe Rhaegar never returned Jon's feelings at all, but felt kinda bad about it. Yeah, that sounds a lot more like Rhaegar.
ADWD, oddly enough, really cranked up the manlovin'. ASOS and AFFC definitely introduced the femslash element, but ADWD is all about the slash. Rhaegar/Jon is the big one, of course, but Victarion definitely had a couple of "OMG TEH GAYZ EEEW!!!!11!" moments, and I'm pretty sure that the assistant armorer that Tyrion talked to about the the Battle of the Blackwater made a veiled reference to a boyfriend he left behind in Flea Bottom. I'd heard rumors that GRRM was going to include a M/M sex scene, on the level of the Dany/Irri or Cersei/Tanea F/F sex scenes from the last couple of books, but in retrospect, I'm kinda glad he didn't, since his sex scenes tend to be more squicky than sexy.
Speaking of sexy, my latest crazy-and-obviously-untrue-but-wouldn't-it-be-cool-if-it-was theory is that Loras was never wounded on Dragonstone. When Cersei is talking to the septas about the Tyrells, they seem relatively forthcoming with information on Tommen, Jaime, and Margaery, but when Loras is mentioned they all clam up. And if he were grievously injured or dying, he would almost certainly be attended by at least one septon or septa, so one of them might know the real deal. So my theory is that the Tyrells put out the story that his face was terribly burned so they could take some other guy, wrap his head in bandages, and pretend that he couldn't talk while Loras was...doing something else, I guess. My first instinct was that he was racing back to King's Landing so that the Tyrells could reveal him as Margaery's champion at the last second. But it looks like Margaery is going for a regular trial, not a trial by combat, so that theory is almost definitely out. If the Tyrells are planning a(nother) coup, they could have sent Loras out to drum up support in secret, but that wouldn't work for a few reasons: they already pretty much control the court through normal political means, and trying to start another war, so soon after the last one and so close to winter, is just a bad idea. Of course, in my perfect world, Loras would have faked his own maiming/death because, way back in ACOK, he didn't just ride off with Renly's body to bury it, he took it somewhere to get him R'hllored, or possibly Qyburned (it seems to me that Storm's End is a bit far south for wights, especially in the summer), or brought back to life by some other as-of-yet-unrevealed method, and Renly is just waiting for the perfect moment to reveal himself, raise another army, and take the Iron Throne for himself, and Loras is helping him with that. But then I remember that life is not a song and go back to the real world. : \
no subject
Date: 2011-07-30 04:07 am (UTC)I had the exact samereaction to his death -- and was also glad, of course, for the revelation that he wasn't dead after all.
If Benjen is Coldhands, and all Starks are dormant wargs, then maybe there's something about warg blood that allows one to keep one's identity after death. I dunno...
Interesting! I hadn't considered that possibility... but there's clearly something special about the Starklings, so why not.
I'm pretty sure that the assistant armorer that Tyrion talked to about the the Battle of the Blackwater made a veiled reference to a boyfriend he left behind in Flea Bottom.
That's how I read it, too.
my latest crazy-and-obviously-untrue-but-wouldn't-it-be-cool-if-it-was theory is that Loras was never wounded on Dragonstone.
I fully subscribe to this
brand of wishful thinkingtheory, have since the news of Loras at death's door first came up (I even have the icon), and I have to say that the mentions of Loras in this book were just vague and inconsistent enough to make me continue believing in it.no subject
Date: 2011-07-31 09:09 pm (UTC)Inorite? I'll admit, I had kind of an inkling when "Rattleshirt" beat Jon in the training yard, because that did not sound like the Rattleshirt I remember AT ALL, but then again, it's been a little while since I read ASOS, so I just chalked that up to equal parts my fan-memory being faulty and wishful thinking. But then when he unglamored, I felt totally, if undeservedly, vindicated. ^.^
Interesting! I hadn't considered that possibility... but there's clearly something special about the Starklings, so why not.
After reading everybody else's reactions, the much more popular theory that (if he really is dead) he'll live on in Ghost seems a lot more plausible. I guess my mind just goes off on strange tangents sometimes. XD So I guess I'll add this to the "crazy-and-obviously-untrue-but-wouldn't-it-be-cool-if-it-was theory" list!
I fully subscribe to this brand of wishful thinking theory, have since the news of Loras at death's door first came up (I even have the icon), and I have to say that the mentions of Loras in this book were just vague and inconsistent enough to make me continue believing in it.
Truefax! Something is definitely up with Ser Still Pretty.
Wishful thinkingtheories FTW! But then again, ASOAIF is most definitely the kind of series that spawns a new forest of epileptic trees every time a new book comes out, so I guess we'll see where this theory goes, if anywhere.