November 15, 2005
A Feast for Crows, short review, less spoil-y
Well, every series has a weak link; I've faith Martin will pull things together again by book 6, if not five (given that book 5 is sort of the other half of AFFC).
The main problem is it largely loses narrative velocity. There's a lot of words, but there's not so much with the actual happening, if you grok it. Brienne spends most of the book in a sort of Lippert-esque Walking Scene (MST3K reference, for those not plugged into that particular geek current), which could easily have been trimmed down to just the highlights of it. There wasn't nearly enough of Arya's interesting new vocational training. Some tantalizing hints about the Cleganes. Cersei continuing to display her, um, genius at scheming. Sam the Slayer's starting to get stronger hints of a spine forming from actual bone and cartilage instead of taffy.
All in all, I'd rate it only decent, but nowhere near the quality of the first three. If the series had started off with it, I wouldn't be much interested in finding out where it went from there. In the brief afterword, Martin claims the next one will be out next year; we'll see about that.
posted by Gar @ 11:05 PM
The main problem is it largely loses narrative velocity. There's a lot of words, but there's not so much with the actual happening, if you grok it. Brienne spends most of the book in a sort of Lippert-esque Walking Scene (MST3K reference, for those not plugged into that particular geek current), which could easily have been trimmed down to just the highlights of it. There wasn't nearly enough of Arya's interesting new vocational training. Some tantalizing hints about the Cleganes. Cersei continuing to display her, um, genius at scheming. Sam the Slayer's starting to get stronger hints of a spine forming from actual bone and cartilage instead of taffy.
All in all, I'd rate it only decent, but nowhere near the quality of the first three. If the series had started off with it, I wouldn't be much interested in finding out where it went from there. In the brief afterword, Martin claims the next one will be out next year; we'll see about that.
posted by Gar @ 11:05 PM
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