George R.R. Martin: A Feast for Crows (2005)
753 pages
English language
Published Oct. 26, 2005
A Feast for Crows is the fourth of seven planned novels in the epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire by American author George R. R. Martin. The novel was first published on October 17, 2005, in the United Kingdom, with a United States edition following on November 8, 2005.In May 2005, Martin announced that the "sheer size" of his still-unfinished manuscript for A Feast for Crows had led him and his publishers to split the narrative into two books. Rather than divide the text chronologically in half, Martin opted to instead split the material by plot location, resulting in "two novels taking place simultaneously" with different casts of characters. A Feast for Crows was published months later, and focuses mainly on southern Westeros. The concurrent novel A Dance with Dragons, which focuses on other locations such as the North, the Wall and Essos, was teased to be …
A Feast for Crows is the fourth of seven planned novels in the epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire by American author George R. R. Martin. The novel was first published on October 17, 2005, in the United Kingdom, with a United States edition following on November 8, 2005.In May 2005, Martin announced that the "sheer size" of his still-unfinished manuscript for A Feast for Crows had led him and his publishers to split the narrative into two books. Rather than divide the text chronologically in half, Martin opted to instead split the material by plot location, resulting in "two novels taking place simultaneously" with different casts of characters. A Feast for Crows was published months later, and focuses mainly on southern Westeros. The concurrent novel A Dance with Dragons, which focuses on other locations such as the North, the Wall and Essos, was teased to be published the following year, but was delayed and not released until six years later on July 12, 2011. Martin also noted that the A Song of Ice and Fire series would now likely total seven novels.A Feast for Crows was the first novel in the series to debut at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list, a feat among fantasy writers only previously achieved by Robert Jordan and Neil Gaiman. In 2006 the novel was nominated for the Hugo Award, the Locus Award, and the British Fantasy Society Award. It has since been adapted, along with A Dance With Dragons, for television as the fifth season of Game of Thrones, though elements of the novel appeared in the series' fourth and sixth seasons.
"We want neither clean hands nor beautiful souls, neither virtue nor terror. We want superior forms of corruption."
The best bits are when a 'lowborn' (a dispossessed) gets the change to point out to a 'highborn' (a privileged) 'this is what happens to us when you lot play your game of thrones'. So universal and timeless.
Now, on with the merciless critique:
Endless lists and descriptions of things that seem to have no relevance for the scene in question, or anywhere else in the book for that matter. Then into the action, which has to be explained by flashback of events that happened in the past, some times interlaced so much with the 'present' that you don't know if you are in the room described or in the fields years ago.
Then the chapter stops in the middle of the action, or in the middle of a conversation, to leave you in a 'cliffhanger'.
The next chapter that will relate to that character will be a few chapters …
The best bits are when a 'lowborn' (a dispossessed) gets the change to point out to a 'highborn' (a privileged) 'this is what happens to us when you lot play your game of thrones'. So universal and timeless.
Now, on with the merciless critique:
Endless lists and descriptions of things that seem to have no relevance for the scene in question, or anywhere else in the book for that matter. Then into the action, which has to be explained by flashback of events that happened in the past, some times interlaced so much with the 'present' that you don't know if you are in the room described or in the fields years ago.
Then the chapter stops in the middle of the action, or in the middle of a conversation, to leave you in a 'cliffhanger'.
The next chapter that will relate to that character will be a few chapters afterwards (or maybe a book later) and will invariably start again with a lengthy description of places, clothes and food, only to start off new action or dialogue months after that cliffhanger, about which you will find out (or not) in between paragraphs relating to current and past events.
However: an accurate depiction of how politics work in real life. Once you get used and over those shortcomings, I see it as a kind of 1984 only set in the past in order to explain how politics - and all human relations for that matter - work. From what I know of History, it is well applicable to nowadays politics and also all the way back to the time humankind settled down to plant food efficiently so that some privileged could spend time doing other, more fun, less useful things, while generally living a lot better.
