Dance with Dragons (no spoilers)

[Yichimet]

Ok, give me reassurance, ye kindly ones who have finished it already. I am about 300 pages in and fucking SLOGGING through it. He seems to have lost something here, namely, an actual plot, when he blew up the number of characters who had POVs. Tell me I should keep reading this when I have a 30 book pile-up of to-reads sitting on the buffet in my living room. Tell me it's worth it.

[Abric]

It's a good book - but in comparison to the last it is not better. He stated that this book and the previous were pretty much written together, but was just too big. I think he (or his editor) put the majority of the more "action" stuff in the previous. This one is more of a ... set up, I guess. There is quite a bit of action and story progression (thank god for that), but if you had to choose one of the books in the series to take with you into a bomb shelter... Dance with Dragons would not be that choice.

Still 50 times better than the Wheel of Time books, though.

[Greebo]

Also it does pick up toward the end.

[Yemana]

he blew up the number of characters who had POVs.

"WHAT???" says the woman in the middle of the first book.

[Yichimet]

Sorry to confuse. Many of the characters who have POV chapters in the early books do not by the end (take that as you will), but also, by the time he gets to the fourth/fifth books, we have something like 25 characters with POVs (compared to the, what, 8 or so in the beginning?). It's kind of maddening. I understand why he does it but FUCK it's an 1100 page book! JUST CUT SOME SHIT DUDE. YOU WILL BE OK AND SO WILL YOUR WORDS.

Anyway. I'll slog through. I'm just falling behind on work reading is all. I guess this is all due to the little munchkin anyway. Babies steal leisure time, like little hourglass-munching gremlins or something.

[Yemana]

by the time he gets to the fourth/fifth books, we have something like 25 characters with POVs (compared to the, what, 8 or so in the beginning?).

Crap. The very first thing I said to Greebs after reading the first few chapters was "...man, there sure are a lot of people to keep track of in this book." Oh well!

[Yrzuli]

Abric and I had a similar conversation on Sunday, because I'm still holding his copy hostage... as a I sludge my way through the second half of the book.

My biggest complaint with the additional POVs is his newfound obsession with renaming people in their POV header. Yes, he did it in the last book to absolutely surprise you, but now it seems to be a game. "What should I call this character now, to further perplex my audience?"

I'm pushing through... though not immediately. I just got my copies of Double Dexter and Ed King, which both have long waiting lists behind me. DD is so far feeling more like one of the early Dexter novels, which makes me happy as Dexter Is Delicious was just mediocre.

[Duskheron]

It picks up right at the end (you can literally hear a virtual whip crack over Martin's head at some point as it's a fairly sudden change of pace). Also, and I don't consider this a spoiler, by the end of the book some of the POVs disappear, in typical Martin fashion. In fact, I believe this book solidified for me "what" the series is about.

[Thalevia]

This one and the previous one specifically were split into two camps of POV's. So people who featured heavily previously are missing POV's in Dance because of the way it was split by him and the editor when the original manuscript was way way way to long.

I haven't started it yet myself because I have certain people I just don't give a fuck about and have a habit of skipping their chapters.

[Yichimet]

In a bunch of his interviews he said he was going to skip ahead 5 years story time after the end of the 3rd book and pick up from there, and frankly, I don't know why he didn't. There's nothing in Feast that couldn't be summed up in flashbacks. But c'est la vie.

[Cristok]

I have one chapter left and the epilogue and I can't bear to finish it.

I love this series. I don't want to finish this book without having another. It is certainly worth the read in my opinion. Ive savored it but Im sure it can be run through pretty quick. Read it and weep my friend.

[Tinkitz]

You really, really should finish it.

[Viktor]

Actually I would say this is one of the worst in the series, if not the worst. Considering it had two of my favorite characters as leads that is saying alot too. Also Abric has let his opinion run away from him, this series is not better than the Wheel of Time. Any chance it had to be got crapped away in the last few books.