Posts Tagged ‘reviews’

A Dance with Dragons review recap

The book has been out a while, and most people that I know have finished it.  But there are plenty of people out there who are still discovering A Song of Ice and Fire for the first time every day.  Whether it be from the HBO series, or on the recommendation of a friend, there will always be someone discovering Westeros for the first time.  To that end, I thought it would be good to compile some reviews of A Dance with Dragons, especially since the paperback edition will be coming out in July.

‘A Dance With Dragons’ is an impressive continuation of George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series.
(via The L.A. Times)

Martin will never win a Pulitzer or a National Book Award, but his skill as a crafter of narrative exceeds that of almost any literary novelist writing today. Throughout the book I was reminded of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (which did win a Pulitzer), as well as Anthony Powell’s (similarly floridly titled) A Dance to the Music of Time. But even Powell can’t twist a plot like Martin. A Dance with Dragons is a big book, topping out at 1,016 pages, but it turns on a dime.

(via Slate)

A few images recur in the enormously complex fifth installment of Martin’s massively multicharacter epic: the chess-like game cyvasse, small rivers flowing into larger ones, ships and armies battered by terrible storms. These themes suggest that readers should think strategically, be patient as the story grows, and brace for a beating. Martin’s fans, however, are hungry for more action and purpose, their appetites whetted by a six-year wait and the recent HBO adaptation of A Game of Thrones. Dance was originally the second half of 2005′s A Feast for Crows, sometimes criticized for shifting from battles and intrigue to slow trudges through war-torn, corpse-littered Westeros.

(via Publishers Weekly)

A Dance with Dragons is the fifth volume out of a planned seven, and in many ways it’s the best. Martin was marking time a little bit in Feast for Crows, pushing his pawns up the board but leaving his big pieces alone. Now the camera has swung back to the main characters: Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen and Tyrion Lannister, the brilliant, black-witted dwarf whose family has had the firmest grip on power for much of the series, though that’s not saying much.

(via Time)