A Writer's Review of A Dance with Dragons - Happiness is NOT ...

(No spoilers)

George R. R. Martin is a stone cold son of a bitch. A brilliant effing stone-cold son of a bitch. Yes, that means that there's at least one major cliffhanger in A Dance with Dragons and I will be toasting his health every day from now through publication date.

The book was worth the wait. I'm not saying this as one of Martin's new ?I saw it on HBO? fans (though the Game of Thrones series is also fantastic) but as someone who first discovered the Song of Ice and Fire (ASoIaF) books in 2003 or 2004, early enough to have to wait for A Feast for Crows to come out, and then have to endure the long drought inbetween Feast of Crows and A Dance with Dragons.

But if you're a fan of the books, you know that it was worth the wait. The more interesting question is why? What makes these books so compelling, so interesting? Why do people evangelize about them and pass them around and carve up huge chunks of time in order to read them, discuss them, and then drive the author crazy demanding he get back to working on them?

They are epic, and low magic, fantasy. The level of magic in the world grows slowly but steadily from book to book, but the stories are really about people ? interesting people whose motives and perspectives are interesting.

Martin utilizes a shifting perspective throughout ASoIaF, relating the events of each chapter through the lens of a different viewpoint character, written in third person. It's not a common structure ? Heinlein utilized it in some of his later works, and I'm sure you can name others ? but with this large of a cast of characters I can think of no more powerful way to let the reader experience the immediacy of the action.

From one chapter to the next we get the viewpoint of kings and beggars, queens and lost little girls, major characters who are known through the world and characters whose sole purpose is to set an event in motion and then die.

The world is fully realized and populated (although I have to admit that only in the maps in this latest volume have I been able to accurately map the entirety of the 'known world' relatively accurately). My best guess is that Martin maintains several massive spreadsheets of characters with details such as name, house, sigil, words, physical characteristics, alliances, family history, etc., even for characters that appear only in the background or in the course of fleshing out another character. And my guess is that for each of the major characters, he has twenty pages or more of notes.

He also makes use of repetitition quite a bit. Some family's words are repeated over and over. Winter is coming. A Lannister always pays his debts (which, we are reminded, are not their formal words at all). You know nothing, Jon Snow. My name is Reek, it rhymes with __. The dragon has three heads. Very effective at emphasizing points that need to be emphasized, foreshadowing events, and helping to create a poetic mood, one that feels more like Shakespearean fate than like the characters' free will.

Martin uses dreams and visions both for foreshadowing and red herrings. Which is kind of evil, because you never know how much to believe or trust. You know, just like real dreams and visions. And he does it a lot. There are several different devices he uses: 'wolf-dreams', where Starks (and Jon Snow) learn about events through the eyes of their wolves; soothsayers, whose words cannot be either fully trusted or fully dismissed; and red priests and priestesses, who reputedly get their powers through their 'one god' and are able to see truth in the flames of candles or fire, but are prone to misinterpretation.

If Martin overuses any narrative technique, it's the 'is the character dead or not' trope. I've lost count of the characters I thought he killed off that he really hadn't, and have just gotten to the point where unless a viewpoint character has personally witnessed the death of a character, I don't assume. Heck ? even if a viewpoint character does witness the death, I don't assume. Too many chapters (and books) end with at least one character with a large fan base facing almost certain death or destruction, only to have something wildly improbable pop up a few chapters later when that viewpoint rolls around again.

That said, in A Dance with Dragons I:

• Cheered for a character I never thought I'd cheer for
• Cried for a character I never thought I'd cry for
• Was introduced to a character that I saw coming clear back in book one ? that I still think might be a red herring
• Continue to worry about a character I think was going down a really hinky path
• Discovered (in broad strokes) what happened to a character I was very worried about
• Discovered with some satisfaction that I was (almost certainly) right to be skeptical about a certain death in A Feast for Crows
• and now am impatiently waiting for the next installment and praying for George R. R. Martin's good health.

Which may all be part of Martin's plan. After all, if millions of people all over the world are praying for his health to every god in every corner of the world, surely he'll live forever, right?

My recommendation? Starting with A Game of Thrones, buy the books and set time aside to read them. Buy them in paperback, because they are so heavy in hardback that when you read in bed they leave nasty red marks on your chest (or maybe that's just me) or buy them in hardback because you will wear out a paperback copy quickly (I'm on my third copy now of Game of Thrones).

Pass them around to your friends and enemies and acquaintances. Don't let your Machiavellian teenagers read them, though. They'll be far too educational.

Quick parenting note: There is a LOT of graphic violence and sex in this series. We can argue all day as to whether it's gratuitous. I didn't find it so ? I think it fit the world Martin created. But I would not let a teen read this unless he or she is relatively mature, and can handle very dark concepts and difficult truths about the world.

The brutal honesty of these books is their greatest charm, but it can be a bit much for a teenager. Just ask Sansa Stark. I am encouraging Teenager to read them, but only because both his father and I have read them and can discuss them with him, and because he has already had a great deal of exposure to the truths of the world.

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Source: http://amnottheonlyone.blogspot.com/2011/07/writers-review-of-dance-with-dragons.html

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