Can't really believe that? How did you ever actually believe that Westeros was small, given that it took Robert... what, a month to travel from King's Landing to Winterfel?

 

Two months.

It took Catelyn a couple of weeks less when she and Ser Rodrik rode south, mostly because they weren't taking an entire royal entourage with them.

 

You got the sense that Westeros was small? From book 1 I had the concept that this place was freaking huge.

 

They also took a boat, which cut time down too.

With the amount of dicking around in the Riverlands several characters have done - books worth of it - I got the same impression.

 

I imagined it as being roughly the size of Australia, if the continent was rotated counterclockwise 90 degrees or so.

Apparently, a horse can travel 20-30 miles a day. Assuming Catelyn's mad dash from Winterfell to KL took 6 weeks, and assuming that they went an average of 25 miles a day, that's still 1050 miles.

Even giving or taking 200 miles (we don't really know exactly how long her trip took), we can assume that the distance along the Kingsroad from Winterfell to King's Landing is approximately 800~1000 miles long.

That's going by the show, at any rate.

Canonically, she took a boat with Ser Rodrik. Assuming it's a sailboat, good progress is apparently 120+ miles a day, according to my googlefu.

But then the numbers just get flipping huge. So. Yeah.

Anyway, long story short, Westeros is huge.

 

Westeros is meant to be about 5000 miles long by 3000 miles at its widest, I believe.

Also, it's snowing in Bravos. The myths of Asshai talk about a long darkness. Basically, when Winter comes, it doesn't just come for Westeros. So the events at the wall are significant for the whole world.

 

Uh, guys, I've heard a lot of speculation on

Spoiler

Jon's death either fitting all the prophecies of Azor, or being permanent

, but y'all seem to have forgotten the very first section of the book, which clearly detailed that

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skinwalkers don't really die.

Taking into account that Jon, being a Stark, is also

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a skinwalker

, it's entire possible for him to

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have survived. He just has to have shot into something that won't subsume his mind. It's implied that jumping into other people is possible, just frowned upon. It worked with Hodor.

.

Imagine Wun Wun as Lord Commander. :awesome

"ME AM THE SWORD IN THE DARKNESS. ME AM THE WATCHER ON THE WALLS."

 

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The problem with that is that Jon died without ever embracing his warg nature. According to Bryden, 1 in 10 people have the potential to be wargs. Does this mean that all of them live on in animals after their death? I doubt it. I think you have to actually practice it to live on through it.

 

What really killed Martin here was having such a long wait for this book, expectations got raised way too high. After the awesomeness of ASOS and the slight letdown of AFFC, everybody was stoked for a return to form in Dance, but it kinda serves a different purpose. AFFC and ADWD weren't even originally in the plans, Martin was gonna just insert a 5 year gap so all the kiddos could grow up to an age where they could realistically take over the world. But then when he realized he was having to flashback too often, he decided to insert two enormous books of what is essentially filler and set up for the big action of the last (hopefully) two.

So while it kinda sucks, not every book in this series can be as action-packed and awesome as ACOK and ASOS... nobody would be alive to write about, and we'd miss out on a ton of political maneuvering while everybody was fighting. With that being said, I tried to read this book in that light and appreciate it for its purpose, not compare it to the others in the series. And it worked, I loved this book. My thoughts, FWIW:

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First off, Jon. Fuck that surprised me. I'm like 99% sure he's not dead, and think Melisandre's gonna pull the same sort of magic that saved Victarion to pull him back, but fuck. I was ready to see him start whooping some Bolton ass, and then he gets stabbed in the back by his own men. Heavy stuff. I do agree with Taure though, he deserved it and had it coming. Even though he was clearly doing the right thing.

I'm pretty much agreed with the consensus on being pissed at Dany the whole book. I mean, she has these awesome dragons, a species that has been extinct for a century and was once used to take over all of Westeros, and she locks them away. Exact same situation as Harry finding out he can do whatever the fuck he wants with a wand... and fucks around with Ron and Quidditch. It makes me want to tear my hear out. I wanted her to be spending 24 hours a day with her dragons, gaining their trust, teaching them to obey and understanding how they work. Instead she tries to forget about them. Such bullshit. Even though I kinda buy how Drogon killing that kid completely goes against everything she stands for with the whole no life is worth more than another spiel and that might cause her to reevaluate the pros and cons of her pets... it sucks.

Looks like she'll be on her way back to the Dany we know and love next book though. And the whole skipping periods, possible miscarriage deal that happened with the berries is interesting... is she fertile again? The sun set in the east (Quentyn dying, which made me LOL), the ocean is drying (Dothraki sea dying) and mountains are falling (dragons destroying the pyramids). Interesting stuff.

Tyrion was ok, it kinda sucked his character had to wait for Quentyn to die before he could move in to tell Dany what's up. Somebody earlier said it best: Tyrion's at his best when he's plotting, and here he was just kinda biding his time and going with the flow. I hated Penny, and I look forward to her getting eaten by a dragon, but I enjoyed, as always, Tyrion's cleverness and don't-give-a-fuck attitude in the face of terrible obstacles. Hopefully he gets to interact with Dany and Barristan (who I loved) next book.

Theon was awesome, even though I'd previously disliked him, I think he was GRRM's best work this time around. Sick, twisted, and fucked up in every way possible. Just what I as a DLPer love to see. Bran, though, was disappointing, even though he'd been one of my favorites. I wish he'd had like 4-5 more chapters, and actually accomplished something in them. He's still really young I guess... but I think he could do big things.

Probably my least favorite part was the end of the Jaime chapter though. He's far and away my favorite character in the books, and when I saw his same at the top of the chapter I got so stoked. His little politicking was interesting and well-done, and then Brienne shows up (which I thought was lame considering the slightly enormous cliffhanger at the end of AFFC) and he leaves no questions asked and then that's it. Wtf. I'm still angry about that.

Oh and who do y'all think Lemore really is? Seems a little too smart/sexy/well-placed to be a septa. Are there any noble women running around unaccounted for near her age?

P.S. Asha sucked. I don't want to read about how much it's snowing.

TL;DR I want the next book. And more from the Lannister brothers.

 

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Some people are wondering if Lemore is Ashara Dayne.

 

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Yeah I saw that on Westeros, but wasn't it said in Meera's Knight of the Laughing Tree story that she has purple eyes? I feel like Tyrion would mention something like that, especially since he made the point of noticing Aegon's blue/purple-ness. But, on the flipside, pre-ADWD, the whole baby Aegon theory did have Ashara faking her death and taking him across the Narrow Sea to Connington. Since him and Rhaegar were so close (people are speculating Connington's gay too which would make sense), and Rhaegar and Arthur Dayne were best buds too I could see the connection.

I don't think she's Lemore but I do think she'll pop up, especially since Barristan mentioned her a couple times and sounded like they would've had a thing if he wasn't so honorable. Poor guy, she sounds hot.

 

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Who else is gay?

 

Spoiler

Dumbledore.

But nah, I just meant "too" as in emphasizing how devoted Jon was to Rhaegar and how it might make him willing to take in his child. I don't think there are too many other gays hanging around, least of all Rhaegar.

 

Finished the book a while ago and debated rereading it and decided against it. It was a disappointment really.

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I didn't expect much from this book, I thought it would just be aFFC in the north and it was something like that.

There was zero mobility it seemed, the only real thing that changed truly was the introduction of Aegon and Jon's stabbing, everything else floundered.

Dany is neutered immediately,Tyrion isn't much better, he basically goes about asking about whores in the most annoying character monologues of the series. Seriously, everything in italics must either mention his father or whores. Pretty much his only purpose througout is to convince Aegon to go to Westeros.

I didn't find Dany's actions too OOC, in the beginning. Then it just started getting ridiculous. I can see how she could react differently to a set of challenges she couldn't power through but damn, it was difficult to read ger balls get cut off for... what exactly? To stay with the major theme of the novel, namely that life screws everyone over at disturbingly precise intervals? I'm pretty sure she,Tyrion and Jon had the most page-time and it was an utterly tedious. There was no point to it, she just ended where she started,with an epiphany that could have taken place halfway through her arc.

And this is the problem, half of the shit in the book just felt worthless,like air, sweet-smelling air but insubstantial all the same. Cutting the books in two did nothing in terms of story.And it probably allowed GRRM to be far more indulgent than he should have been.

We get a whole bunch of padding and the interesting stuff is never dealt with. Bran was led to the only people in the fucking world who had the full story and we don't get any explanation for The Others or anything. Granted we have a fairly good idea of their abilities and weaknesses but instead of getting into how this all ties together we get some cliched bullshit about the old world dying off.

I did like the stuff going on in the North. The look at the Northern mentality was interesting. Especially (for some reason) the nostalgic references to the Starks. Almost made me miss them... At least I still have Jon, ohwai-

The strange thing about Starks is you can never say they didn't have it coming. Was it an out if proportion response? Yeah. But throughout the whole boo I got the sense it was inevitable in some way, Jon never turkey tried to explain himself to his men it seemed. He talked sure, but it was with the voice of a lord throwing pieces of a plan down to his loyal servants and not the insecure lord commander with enemies all around him that he was. And the last thing he did before getting stabbed was just WTF. I was pretty sure they were going to kill him before then, but damn if he didn't make it easier on them.

I doubt he's dead though, there's always Melisandre.

It's a bit like affc, I skipped half that book and followed this effortlessly and I could probably do the same here and not miss anything major. They both just went OTT with slow moving shit when there was far more interesting stuff. Here's to hoping the next book (when we get it in 2020) won't share the weaknesses of these last two.

 

Spoiler

For me the problem wasn't that it was slow moving. Slow moving is fine by me. I was looking forward to reading about Dany managing the minutiae of her new small kingdom (Queendom?).

The problem was that every single problem solved - at least in the Dany storyline - was a problem that this book introduced. As such, while progress was made within the book (e.g. Dany getting over her case of being a woman), no progress was made for the series.

We didn't get to see Dany slowly manage Mereen into prosperity, or whatever. I would have liked that. It might have been slow paced, but it would have been substantial. But instead, we just saw her dither and then partially regain her nerve. The book introduced a problem (a problem that I had a hard time buying, as up 'til now Dany has been the ballsiest character in the books) and then partially resolved that problem.

And the marriage was the most short-sighted bullshit ever. She acted like she had no choice, but she had loads of choices. Burning everything the fuck down being one of them. Blood and fire. But because she lacked the nerve she's seriously crippled herself by tying herself to Mereen, which was just supposed to be practice for Westeros. She's now blown one of her most precious commodities (her hand in marriage) on practice. Most annoying of all is that she never even considers this.

 

Spoiler

About the marriage thing, I doubt that her husband is going to survive the next book. She wasn't a virgin anyway, so having a marriage doesn't really throw a wedge in her long term plans.

 

GRRM has a reputation for killing characters, but I think at this stage it's undeserved. Maybe after GoT it was true, but now? The only major PoV character that he's killed off remains Ned Stark. The only major non-PoV characters he's killed off are Robb, Tywin and Joffrey.

 

Jesus Taure, spoilers.

And it's not so much that he kills characters, it's just that everyone must get fucked over sooner or later, especially if they were shining early on.