For several weeks after George R. R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons was released, I debated over how to proceed with reading it. Should I go back over all the preceding books that I hadn’t read in five years? Or should I read it side by side with A Feast for Crows, attempting to match chapter to chapter in chronological order? Ultimately, I decided to just dive right in, with some help from the wiki to refresh particular names or details.
Structure:
The fifth book in the series was the result of a publishing fiasco where the sequel to A Storm of Swords was split into two books due to its unwieldy size. Rather than dividing it chronologically, the volumes were split by region and character, with Feast covering southern Westeros and Dance focusing on the events in the North and the Eastern Continent. Unfortunately this resulted in a rather lackluster fourth novel that consisted of mostly fruitless plotting and intrigue and devoted the bulk of POV chapters to unrelatable or uninteresting characters like Cersei, Brienne, Sansa, and the Greyjoys.
A Dance with Dragons, then, was welcomed for bringing back everyone’s favorite characters and returning to the centers of the action. Almost immediately, however, the split structure caused confusion. In the last book, Samwell Tarly was on a boat headed to Oldtown, and Maester Aemon had died on the way, yet here they both were, still at the Wall! Of course, this is before they’ve left for Oldtown, and after a couple of Jon chapters they do leave and the plot catches up.
Characters:
But this is only one of the problems with the chronology and pacing. The first couple of books had a small number of POV characters, with the narrative cycling regularly between them so that one never had to wonder for too long what would happen to one of the characters next. Here, there are 18 of them, with some being introduced near the very end. We get one Arya chapter more than halfway through the book, followed by another nearly twenty chapters later, while Bran completely disappears for the second half. We are led to assume that either the timeline jumps back and forth unevenly as the chapters progress, or that key characters are spending most of the book sitting around and doing nothing worthwhile.
Of course, this is also an inevitable result of the fact that GRRM is still introducing new characters and plotlines at a point where he should really be thinking about starting to wrap up the existing ones. It’s one thing when these are obviously crucial elements that have been foreshadowed from the start, like Bran’s quest for the three-eyed crow. But there is nothing in the previous books to indicate that the Jon Connington/Aegon storyline was planned; it just comes out of nowhere to make things even more complicated. As for Quentyn Martell, it seems a bit silly to introduce a brand new character, and an utterly bland and uninteresting one at that, only to have him killed off at the end without having affected the plot in any significant way.
Speaking of the characters, I was not particularly thrilled to see Victarion rear his head and take on an even more important role. Aside from the fact that his story now seems to be yet another major plotline, I just really can’t stand the Ironmen in general. Their whole backward and murderous culture is a boil on the backside of Westeros and could sink into the sea as far as I’m concerned. Despite the lengths GRRM goes to portray him as complex and honorable, he’s still a one-dimensional barbarian. Asha is interesting, but a bit forced and unrealistic in her role as “strong and likable female character”. Not only does she seem to be the only woman on the Iron Islands with any degree of independence or power, but her even temper and compassionate nature set her leagues away from the rest of her clan.
Style:
I don’t recall if this was a problem in earlier books, but one of the most grating things that had me cringing not far into the book was the overreliance on repeating certain phrases ad nauseum for “dramatic” effect. For a series that prides itself on realism and complexity, this kind of simplistic dialogue device is really jarring. Especially annoying was that GRRM chose to make the best POV characters the worst offenders in this sense. There were times when I wanted to throw the book across the room after reading yet another “Where whores go” or “Reek, it rhymes with…” Yes, I get it already – Tyrion is obviously affected by the act of killing his father, and Theon is psychologically destroyed and suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. Stop insulting your audience’s intelligence and exercise some restraint.
Setting:
A Dance with Dragons spends the most time of any of the other books on the Eastern Continent, both in the Free Cities and in Slaver’s Bay to the far east. When the first season of the TV series introduced the Dothraki, some critics leveled charges of racism at the portrayal of the “savages”; now GRRM seems to run into almost the opposite problem of Orientalism when portraying the cultures outside Westeros. This brings up the interesting topic of analogizing GRRM’s fictional world to our own. Westeros is obviously based on Medieval Europe, and GRRM heavily researched medieval weaponry, cities, and conflicts such as the War of the Roses and the Albigensian Crusades to attain the level of realism that the series has been praised for. With other civilizations like Quarth, Mereen, and Volantis, he seems to have taken more imaginative liberties in describing the diverse, exotic, and decadent cultures.
It is tempting to neatly map the geography of GRRM’s world onto ours. Westeros is Western Europe; Dorne and the Free Cities are the Mediterranean; and Essos – a long continent with a large stretch of grassy steppes (the Dothraki Sea) in the middle and ancient exotic civilizations to the east – seems to be a perfect fit for Asia. Much of what we know about Old Valyria is similar to the Roman Empire, and Volantis in particular seems to retain many of the characteristics of the Roman Republic. This would suggest the Ghiscari cities as analogous to China, but I think they more closely resemble medieval depictions of India or Southeast Asia, with elements of the ancient Muslim world.
Obviously, a major theme of the book is slavery, and it is interesting to note the contrast between the monarchical but slave-free society in Westeros and the democratic societies in the East where slavery flourishes. But in fact, this makes sense from a political theory angle: in order for all men to be subjects to their lords and king, all men must be nominally free. On the other hand, in a society ruled by competing factions of wealthy nobles and property owners, there is no overarching authority to guarantee basic rights to the lower classes. Of course, as pointed out at times in the book, this distinction is largely theoretical, as many slaves in Volantis and Quarth lead far better lives than “free” servants and peasants in Westeros (another historical analogy with serfdom). A fascinating discussion on the fan forums centers on whether the slave societies presented are even possible, as Volantis has a slave to freeman ratio of 5:1. Then again, the unsustainability of such an arrangement may be exactly what is coming to the forefront in the events of the book.
Plot:
Overall, I think this installment does little to advance the major plot. Daenarys now seems farther away from consolidating power in Mereen and departing for Westeros than at the beginning, though at least she’s learned to ride her dragon. Westeros is still embroiled in plotting and recuperating, with no major battles having taken place. The alliance between the Wildlings and the Night’s Watch is a significant development, though it’s thrown into doubt by the last Jon chapter. Bran finally finding the three-eyed crow and learning about his powers is a major event, but it does little to reveal the nature of the supernatural events taking place or how the prophecies will be resolved. As for Jon Connington and little Aegon’s campaign, it came completely out of nowhere, so it is hard to estimate how big a role it will play in the coming conflict. However, it does throw into question one of the central fan theories regarding Jon Snow’s parentage and the role he would ultimately fulfill when Daenarys invaded.
Overall, despite all the criticisms above, I still found A Dance with Dragons to be a page-turner, even if it was a bit of a disappointment in terms of the things I had hoped to see resolved. The prologue especially was, in my opinion, one of the single best chapters in the series so far. At this point, I would not be surprised if GRRM ends up needing to extend the series again to wrap up all the loose ends, but hopefully The Winds of Winter will prove me wrong.
