fyp

Sounds like Dids is referring mostly to the Lollys thing, which I thought was written pretty well. Much better than the first Dany & Drogo sex, which was just laughable. Actually all of the sex involving Dany & Drogo was ridiculous.

Not sure if I said it yet, but the Dany chapters in adwd were as bad as her book 1 chapters. She was much more interesting in books 2 & 3.

Most of the chapters in AGOT were much better than ADWD. Her first chapter in AGOT is absolutely incredible I think.

I did like Barristan's chapters though, which is kind of odd.

I never really liked her in book 1. But I saw the tv show first, that probably had something to do with it. I started liking Dany through books 2 & 3. And then this read through of book 5 has brought me back to apathetic state.

Just got to this, having forgot your post. I LOL'd.

Roooooose!

Nice Thats about perfect.

I pictured Roose as the guy who played The Beast in Dune

Hahaha. Can't picture that at all personally but pretty awesome/funny.

Looking forward to the first scene where he addresses a large room and everyone nervously leans in to hear him like the quiet talker from Seinfeld.

Him/Arya scenes should be great and creepy.

After stewing on it and reading other people's reactions, seeing if I missed anything, etc. I'm pretty pessimistic about the series as a whole. The 5th book sucked. I know, while you're reading it you're engaged and turning pages and all that, but when it gets reduced to a one-sentence per chapter summary like was linked for the 4th book Jesus Christ it will be awful.

I mean, I can go further into how utterly worthless everything having to do with Dorne or the Iron Islands have been and various other high level criticisms, but...

(OMG SPOILERZ)

Like, the hook for GRRM books has always been that he isn't afraid to kill his characters, right? He whacks NED!!!!1, etc.

So let's tally it up:

Important Characters Killed:
Ned
Joffrey
Robb
Tywin

Maybe you want to quibble and throw Viserys, Renly, or Robert in there, that's fine. Notice that each of those happened in the first 3 books.

However, check out the list of Characters Who Seem Like They Die But Don't(broken down into subcategories)

Characters we are told died, but it was a trick

Bran
Rickon
Davos(BOY I DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING EPIC TWIST GEORGE)

Characters who do actually die but are resurrected

Catelyn
Gregor(sort of)

POV characters who seem like they suffer mortal wounds at the end of a chapter but they survive

Bran
Brienne(TWICE!)
Asha
Tyrion
Theon

At the end of the day, the biggest surprise in Book 5 is that Martell actually dies from being set on fire, that was really a change in direction for the series. Thankfully we still have 7 other Dornish nobles to ABSOLUTELY NOT CARE ABOUT for the next 2(3? 4?) books. Maybe they can spend some time on Victarion's boat to consolidate the waste of paper?


The point of all of this is that when Ned gets beheaded in the first book, your reaction was "HOLY **** I CAN'T BELIEVE HE KILLED SUCH A MAJOR CHARACTER, NOBODY IS SAFE" and that was totally sweet.

By the end of the 5th book, you're wondering HOW Jon will miraculously survive his predictament, not if he will. There's essentially nobody reading the books who actually thinks he's dead, despite his last POV chapter ending with him getting STABBED TO DEATH. That ****ing sucks, imo.

While I share your concerns about the death of characters, it is not te only good thing about the series, and the series is still a great work of fiction.

I think you're focusing too much on one aspect.

To go back to Dids' complaint about sex, I wasn't really on board with that until a particular sex scene in book 5. Those who have read it know which one I'm talking about. It's like GRRM is submitting a piece for an erotic fiction contest. Jesus.

lol, would be awesome if Jon really died.

He is writing from their POV, chapters have to end when a character loses consciousness.

Not that I disagree with your sentiment but that they all didn't die shouldn't be a surprise.