Review: A Feast for Crows

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A Feast for Crows
George R. R. Martin
Book four in the series A song of Ice and Fire.

The long, very long, awaited fourth installment in Martin's brilliant and bloody fantasy series has finally arrived. Twice at my home even, because for some reason I got two copies sent to me, one from each publishing house. Seem like I am going to have to part with one of them and send it back. Despite having studied quite a bit of literature in university a professional looking review should not be expected of me. No matter what Chandos has spoilt you all with.

Now to the book, I have to to admit to being a huge fan of the series and I opened up the book not almost reverently, but truly reverently and started reading. I have followed the progress of the creation of the novel and knew of the problems Martin has had but even so I was confident that he would deliver yet another fantasy masterwork. He did not. Do not take me wrong here, this is a solid fantasty novel, just not anywhere near the previous installments in the series. I am even going to be as bold as to say that Martin has done a Jordan. Written a book where very little of interest happens and which mostly feels like a transportation to some future goal. It truly feels like the half of a book that it is and that all the chapters with important action haven been left for the next book. I am assuming everyone who reads this review is familiar with what Martin was forced to do and if not go to http://www.georgerrmartin.com/done.html and read what he has to say about it in his own words.

The new points of view feels uninteresting and redundant. To give a point of view to both Cersei and Jaime which mostly portrays the same events feels completely unnescessary and the events on the iron isles could just as easily have been reported by ravens to other characters than from a whole new point of view. The same goes for most of the book, all to much of what happens in this could have been given to us as tidbits from other point of views and to be honest I do think that was Martin's intention from the start. When he figured out that he had to chop his book in half he felt compelled however to flesh it out and wrote new chapters about stuff we really do not need firsthand knowledge of. The very problem Martin tried to avoid by only giving us half of the point of views in A feast for crows the novel suffers greatly from. Namely a feeling of dissatisfaction and a lack of conclusion. Nothing is really resolved, nothing really happens. It feels like you get all the chapters which are supposed to supply a contrast to the sweaty adrenaline drenched and emotional chapters are here gathered in one installment and it does not work.

Enough of my whinings, A feast for crows is still a good fantasy book and all of you who have followed the series should pick it up as soon as possible (if you have not already) it just failed to live up to the extremely high expectations.

Grade: 6 out of 10

[ November 06, 2005, 20:57: Message edited by: joacqin ]

 

Joacqin - Thanks for the nice review. I was waiting to hear what the Martin fans on this board thought about his latest effort, and I read the review with interest. I had heard that his publisher chopped up his narrative and I was curious to see if the decision would prove detrimental to the orginal text. It seems it has...although I see he wants to "take the blame."

 

Thanks for the review, Joacquin. It sounds like what I expected. I finally saw it on a book shelf in NZ but I did not buy it (didn't have a spare $36). Maybe I will get it for Christmas.

 

I really really do *not* agree.

I agree that the chapters in Dorne and on the Iron Islands could have been told without a few chapters but the contents IMO was always interesting. For Dorne I had my reservations during my ready but that last chapter cleared all doubts I had. Same goes for The Iron Islands which also started out slow but they as well turned into a new point of view which had to be told.

As for the other new POV's

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Minor spoiler coming up (the new POV)
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Cercei and Brienne

These really shone, Brienne started out slow as well, but what can you expect after the cataclysmic events of A Storm of Swords. Cercei was absolutely brilliant and she most likely is responsible for triggering a *huge* change in westeros.

I think that this book was welcome change of pace in this series after the riviting Clash of Kings and Storm of Swords. Sure there are many issues unsolved but there have been many revelations as well, especially during the Sam chapter with Aemon.

It's to bad I cannot post spoilers here because it would ruin the book for many. I may write my own review though.

[ November 07, 2005, 15:16: Message edited by: Apeman ]

 

Agreed, for something as brilliant as the Song, i definitely want biiig spoiler warning, if there's dire need of one at all.


As i understand it, the first half of the book had been released and describes half the characters within a certain timeframe, while the other half will take the same time and present the other half of them.
As it is, i cannot see how it could not be interesting with a fair amount of development. It should be easy to include the more interesting and varied character aspects into the first half, no?


On another note, it must've been hard to do, to cut the world in half, with no real connection between them. A thousand pages will pass while hearing nothing of the Wall?
I cant say i understand the advantage of this approach.

 

What!! 36 dollars, for a book? Jesus bloody Christ, I'd get it on eBay if something if I were you...

 

Finaly bought the book and read it. I have to agree with the review, more or less. The pace is definitely changed, seems somewhat streched at times. It does provide a better insight on Dorne and Iron Islands, so it helps understand them better.
It is quite a change from the first three books, i especialy felt so with Brienne.

Especialy now that i've read it, i cannot see why Martin should choose to release it as he did. All the more exotic and interesting chapters were left out. Jon is barely seen, three chapters or Arya, none of Tyrion, Daernys, Bran,...


Following, not really a spoiler though ...

Do you think the Hound is dead for good now?

 

He had no choice. The first editions were much longer (too long), so the company decided he had to split the book.
He felt that splitting all the story lines in the middle was awkward, so he divided the book into the southern and northern parts.

I think that the second half will come out fairly soon.

 

IIRC, sometime midtime next year.

Splitting itself is understandable. Most of the folks probably wouldnt mind an even thicker tome than Storm (which seems to have been split as well as in one book), but releasing them is supposed to be a nightmare (or so i hear).

The thing i'm wondering about is the manner of the split. As you said, there's two ways to do it, either cut the story in half, or cut the land in half. We've seen what the land-in-half looks like. I dont see how time-in-half couldnt be better.
The whole story is already progressing steadily, without any major points at which the previous books end.
It's just forced, IMO.

 

I'm about 2/3 of the way through, and it's great. I think the split is good. I struggle to keep track of the half dozen storylines in the book as it is. If he threw in Jon, Daenerys, Tyrion etc, I wouldn't have a hope in hell of working out what was going on.

 

Well, I have finished the book now and I thought it was great. I liked seeing things from Jaime and Cersei's points of view and I don't remember any bits when it seemed like they were both covering the same events. Also, it does look like the Iron Islanders are going to become more important so I think that it was good to get some chapters devoted to them, otherwise they would have just come across as mindless barbarian vikings.

 

Me neither. Their stories are important, especially the part about Cerseis prophecy. And I laughed out loud about what happens to her in the end. Somehow I believe Tyrion's behind all this.

Well, they are, more or less. That's the only thing what bugs me: the real world similarities. The ironborn are like the vikings, Bravoos is like Venice, and so on. The term 'bravo' for the street thugs was directly drawn from italian history.

[ January 07, 2006, 00:23: Message edited by: Fabius Maximus ]

 

Luckily for me, I'm too ignorant to have noticed that so it doesn't bother me.