Customer Reviews

A Dance with Dragons (Part Two): Book 5 of A Song of Ice and Fire (Unabridged)

Here we go again...

Yhis is the second half of the fifth book in the series of fantasy novels 'A Song of Ice and Fire.' Currently being dramatised on tv as 'Game of Thrones' although they're only in the middle of book two at the time of writing.

This is not a good jumping on point, and new readers should start with A Song of Ice and Fire (1) - A Game of Thrones (Reissue).

The fifth book was, just like the third book, split into two volumes for paperback publication. Thus this particular volume contains the second half of what was in the original hardcover edition. If you've already read that, then don't get this, because you're not getting anything new.

As to this book itself....

Has the same format as before. Maps of the setting at the front. Appendix at the back listing all the very long cast of characters. Chapters in the middle. Each with a different viewpoint character. Of which there are many to choose from.

And there's also an epilogue.

Book five takes place chronologically at the same time as book four. Thus for most of book five the viewpoint characters who appeared in book four don't feature. But you do get to a point in this particular volume the viewpoint characters from book four do start to creep back in.

Some storylines do make interesting progress. Although there's hardly anything in the way of action. There's a fair bit going on in the north. And some interesting developments. But things haven't quite come to a head yet.

And there's a lot going in the east where Daenerys, and several other characters are. And certain events do happen there. But they just move the story along rather than bring it to a conclusion.

Whilst this remains very readable and does have you desperate to know what will happen next, the events in the north and west do tend to be a bit more interesting than those in the east. But there's more of the latter than the former. And all the newer characters who have appeared from the beginning of book four and five onwards don't tend to grab you quite as much as the ones who have been around longer, so you can find yourself wishing the story would get back to them.

However one plotline does get very interesting, and the epilogue only heightens your interest to see where it will go. One cliffhanger from book four is resolved. But that leads to yet another cliffhanger for a character who only makes a frustratingly brief appearance in this one.

The strength of this series has always been that it's war in a fantasy kingdom done the way real wars go. They don't end with daring assaults on the dark lord's fortress, but with the fighting coming to a natural end, then treaties and negotiations. It doesn't quite feel like it's being stretched out for the sake of it though. But that may be a matter of opinion.

At the end is a chapter from the forthcoming sixth book in the series. The release date of which remains to be announced. And you might not want to hold your breath waiting for that.

This is a splendid read. Let's just hope it can all be brought to a satisfying conclusion sooner rather than later.

This is a great read, one of the highlights of the past decade in fantasy fiction for me personally, gripping throughout all the way to the climactic cliff-hangers at the close of the book. I would definitely say that this was worth the wait.

The character arcs of Theon Greyjoy and Stannis especially were real highlights for me as well as the new 'wild card' POV following the exploits of the Young Dragon. George Martin has a way of lulling you in and making you think that you have your opinion set on a character before gradually chipping away at your preconceptions...I won't say any more. All in all this was a very good read and my only bugbear is that there will be another long wait before we can return to Westeros.

On a final note, it is highly disappointing to see the backlash of 1* reviews based on human error and lack of research on the part of purchasers thinking that this is a 'new' book. It clearly states that this is part two of the fifth volume in the product info and has the name 'A Dance with Dragons' blazoned on the cover. Please make a complaint to Amazon regarding the external advertising of this book if you have to, do not besmirch George Martin's content with bad reviews based on your perceptions of Amazon's advertising team.

Verbose doesn't do justice to Martin's writing. I found it captivating intially but by the final three books I was just plowing through them in order to find out how it all ends. What a fool I was!

I read all seven paperbacks in short succession solely as I knew there was no way to hold all the characters in my head. Alas, Martin succeeds in getting himself tied in knots over the plotline and my main recollection of one of the final books is "Daenerys dithers for an entire book".

In summary:

Too many irrelevant characters that do not enhance the storyline one iota;

too much irrelevant detail - do we really need to name every individual at a banquet dinner?

No real story arc within each book - several books (and not just those split into two parts) have no real ending. No mystery build up of a plot, just ended as though his wife called him down to dinner and he prematurely emailed the draft to his publisher, forgetting to write the last chapter.

I hope my seven books are enjoyed by Oxfam where I donated them. Personally I hope they're bought to fuel some old person's fire over winter rather than someone enduring reading through 7 books with a bewilderingly confusing array of characters and there being absolutely no chink of an end in sight.

Maybe like Dallas, it'll all turn out to be a dream, assuming Martin does manage to finish the series....

Am I alone in finding it really irritating just how many people are giving Martin's excellent series low scores either because they expect the complex multi-threaded story-lines wrapped up nice and neat at the end of each book; or because they got confused that the publisher and distributor decided to release what was over 1,000 pages in hardback as two books in paperback?

As far as the actual content is concerned, I have found A Song of Ice and Fire a riveting read - even part 4 which was perhaps the driest read - with no dragons or Others to break the political machinations and multitude of betrayals. I suppose that since Martin's main strength is without a shadow of doubt in his masterful characterisation - the one book where political narrative took centre-stage was always bound to have seemed slower than the rest.

But having thoroughly enjoyed his triumphant return to form in "A Dance with Dragons" (parts 1 and 2 and yes, I was almost caught out too :-)) I now look forward to seeing how Martin manages to draw these myriad of loose threads back to the leaderless Westeros, where I'm guessing we will be reading about the Direwolf and the Dragon (and the half-nose Lion?) fighting side-by-side for the future of humanity. If the concluding two books are going to be as good as what we've had so far, well I don't know about you, but I'm prepared to wait another few years.

Thankfully, I've only been reading this series of books for a few years, which gives me a chance of still being alive when it's finished. If it's finished. As other reviewers are saying, the author is getting on a bit now and if he continues to write at such a slow pace he'll probably go the way of Robert Jordan and die before he finishes the final book.

The shame of this all is that the first books were awesome. The TV series is great, too, and bound to boost book sales. But I'm loathe to recommend those books to anyone as there's no sense that they'll ever get a conclusion. Even the TV series seems doomed, really: as great as it is, they can't release a series a year and actually deliver a conclusion - just five or six years of build up, then a "to be continued..." (in 10 years). It's like stopping a season of 24 half way, then making us wait for Keifer Sutherland's unborn son to grow up so he can star in the second half.

Back to this book: I got it in hardback as the complete volume and gasped at the weight of it - so much so, that I bought it on Kindle too so I could actually read the thing. It was a bit of a plodder. I still like the characters, I still like the richness of the world, but I'm finding it hard to connect with the newcomers and really just want to find out what happens to the people I've got to know through the last few years of reading. As a writer myself, I can appreciate that it takes time to write books - particularly if you're not on it everyday (and Martin has published other books, consulted on the TV series and probably had a life, too). But this doesn't feel like 6 years of real, loving effort. More like a bit of self-indulgence, or maybe a chore - like the pretty average job I make of mowing our lawn, but then I'm not pretending to be a master gardener and I haven't made buckets of cash from cutting grass.

The REAL scary bit is that I bet I buy the next one. And, as much as I don't want to wait for it, I'd hate Martin to do a rush job of it. All this effort deserves a truly storming ending.

I guess it would be impossible to top a storm of swords (both one and two), but the series has slowed down so badly that I almost had to force myself to read them. Too many new characters (who I have no interest in), too bigger picture, too much. It's lost all direction in my opinion and as a massive fan, I'm upset that characters that I invested so much time in have simply dropped off the face of the earth. A Dance with dragons 2 is better than A Dance with Dragons 1, but only slightly due to the cliff hangers towards the end. Fingers crossed the last book brings it all together. The series has become very flabby, like movies of late. They don't all need to be 3 hour epics, some times less is more.

This is a more general overall review of the series rather than a review of book 5 alone.

WARNING: IT MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

when I first got book 1 about 6 months ago I thought it was amazing, detailed and clever. the characters were well written and the story gripping. It had just enough magic / monsters in it to be fantasy, but not so much that it over shadowed the story.

I have just finished book 5.

my first thought is GRRM needs to employ an editor... (or sack one)

the series is well written and engaging for the most part, but so often I found myself reading pages of writing about clothing or food. I also found myself reading about so many characters that you lose a bit of interest in them.

the essence of a great story is in here somewhere and if there was less about the Iron Isles (tedious) less about Dorne (goes nowhere fast) and less about Dany (this section should just be a separate book about her travels) and Arya (this goes on and on...) then the characters and plots of real interest (the Lanisters, the Wall and beyond, the White Walkers, little finger and Stannis)

The story heads in too many directions and with so many names its hard to keep up or interested in what they are going to do, I say going as not much ever gets done to a conclusion, except the death of main characters, but even then they come back from the grave.

ultimately I enjoyed it enough, but on closing the last book I could not help feeling a bit frustrated that this series could have been much better and much slicker. Its bloated beyond need and you get the feeling that its not half as fat as its going to get.... its a cash cow.

I just hope the people at HBO feel as I do and trim this down for series 3 onwards.

Series is seriously running out of impetus. Struggling to stay with it but somehow I am just to see how this will eventually come to a close. If you're not hooked at this stage, bail out. It's pretty painful going.

I delayed reading this series because of the negative reviews on amazon regarding this book and its predecessor, A Feast of Crows. I didn't want another unpleasant disappointment after the Wheel of Time, having enthralled me, plunged into dismal depths around book eight. With similar accusations leveled at Martin, I was wary.

After reading the whole lot back to back, I can only surmise that this is due to the lack of attention span of some readers. It was utterly riveting. Yes, the plot grows and grows, but allegations that Martin is losing track of his story are quite simply down to some readers inability to keep up. Tiny aspects of the first book turn out to have significance much later- there is no padding whatsoever, unless you consider richly detailed description to be such.

And despite the vast story and cast (the list of characters in the back of the book takes up dozens of pages by this volume) it's tremendously fast moving thanks to the author's formula of short POV chapters.

I suppose if you left gaps between reading books, you would probably lose track of things. Now I'm left to wait for book six I might end up doing so. But I'm sure if you google it, there'll be synopses somewhere on the net.

This really is a story to immerse yourself in. Utterly tremendous- full of intrigue, treachery, sex and violence, a dash of the supernatural, unpredictability, all wrapped up in a medievil realism and harshness that both enthralls and appalls. But Martin's greatest strength is in his characterization. Everyone is an individual in this book- some are hugely original, some are more traditional fantasy characters. And like all the best fantasy, there is no tedious, unbelievable good versus evil going on. No unfeasible Tolkienism. It's about people struggling through turbulent times. Some characters who commit atrocious acts early on end up earning your sympathy, and some you might like at first might lose your affections in time. And if you want 'goodies' to root for, look elsewhere. This as realistic as fantasy gets- the depth and scope is up there with Robin Hobb and Rothfuss.

It's damn near perfect.

I have really enjoyed the previous Books but the last Book 5 seems desperate and almost farcical with Dwarfs riding pigs and boys morphing into tress whilst hanging in them. I agree with many other readers that the spread of characters which appears to get ever broader looses touch with the original theme. What is it about Martin that he keeps needing to kill off the main male characters, the killing of John Snow provides yet another disjointed twist to the story. It also makes the outcome appear somewhat predictable. I do not feel particularly engaged with the remaining characters and am particularly disappointed with this latest Book.