Yeah, didn't give two ****s about Quentyn. But at least he wasn't "of the night."

Quentyn truly was awful, and I imagine that's why he only had 4 chapters before being killed off by Martin. There's so many problems with the character, and it seems that Martin realized this and just decided to end this. There's a few other examples of this in the books.

As of right now the character seems to offer absolutely nothing to the story, and even if he does end up adding something significant later on, there's really little reason that the character wasn't introduced by Doran in AFFC "I sent him to bring back Dany, not to hire an army to take Dorne" or whatever. And then Quentyn could have been killed in a "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead" manner after Barristan and Dany talk about how pathetic Quentyn is. That is his entire story: he's just meant to die pathetically. We do not need to be introduced to him in pov format. Dany and Barristan chapters teach us all that we need to know.

As to the actual character: In a story full of bad ass warriors you'd think it'd be nice to have some characters who aren't total bad asses. But unfortunately Quentyn brings nothing to make him likable. This is highlighted by every character who interacts with Quentyn. They all talk about how pitiful Quentyn in and how they pity him. He does not have a single redeeming quality.

His storyline has no suspense. As soon as he's introduced by Doran at the end of AFFC the reader knows that there is no way Quentyn is fixing the Mereen situation and bringing Dany back. She's coming back when she's ready. And if you make the connection that Doran wants Quentyn to marry Dany then the lols intensify. So from the very beginning it's obvious he's on a fool's errand.

Unlike Brienne or Asha's fool's errand however the story itself doesn't add much. Their story was supposed to be more about the journey, and their journeys add a lot to the story by giving relevant information to some pretty key aspects to the main plot: what is happening in the riverlands, and what is going on with the ironborn. Quentyn's does not do this, and at most gives some information that makes you say "oh it's like that? That's kinda neat" Most readers want Dany to finally get to Westeros, they don't care about world building areas which are only slightly relevant to Mereen.

And then he dies and we're left wondering "why did I just read that?"





As kind of an aside: I like Dorne and the Dornish characters but their relevance to the story is questionable. My personal guess is that Dorne was built up in the first book before GRRM decided to have dragons. If there were no dragons in the story then Dorne plays a huge role in the story: giving Dany an army and base of operations to invade Westeros. Once GRRM decided to go the dragon route though... I just don't really see Dorne offering all that much because those dragons just trump everything already.

Yep. And if that's the deconstruction of the fantasy adventure trope, well, Martin did a better version of the same "audience already knows the mission failed" bit with Brienne. And as was noted, even giving Martin the maximum credit reading there, as a reader...

These books are already very long. They don't need filler! Both of those plotlines sucked and should've happened "offscreen"(not as POV chapters) if at all.

Sam's chapters in AFFC on his journey to oldtown are probably my favorite of the whole series. The world exposition plus Aemon's prophecy stuff is ****ing awesome.

I also love Theon's chapters in ADWD. Winterfell seems so ****ing creepy and haunting with the boltons in charge, but people just turning up dead and Theon just wandering around wondering wtf is going on.

I will never trust FlyWF's opinion on anything again after insulting Harry Potter.

TBH I liked Harry Potter a lot more before it became a dumb politics thing, the books are fine examples of young adult fiction. For children.

wth is the Harry Potter politics thing? Harry Potter are books which can be enjoyed by adults and children. No reason why they have to be mutually exclusive. Plenty of examples of franchises loved by adults & children: Star Wars, The Simpsons, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, every superhero thing ever,...

Rowling did manage to write a 7 book series that clearly set up the larger conflict in book 1, then managed to do like 4 self-contained subplots that advanced that conflict, then tied the whole thing off in a satisfying way. She also didn't take 15 ****ing years to get from book 3 to book 6.

im a huge fan of rowling's modern day no magic detective novels she wrote under the name robert galbraith. the cormoran strike novels. if you like the genre, they are great! and bbc just made a tv series. it's good too.

I think GRRM wants to write a sprawling narrative that ties everything up in the end as neatly as actual history does and not like normal fantasy series do.

reading a new harry potter every christmas break was some of the most enjoyable entertainment ever for me.

i bet I'd still love them if I read them today without reading them before.

i never read harry potter or saw the movies til just a few years ago. i loved the books like crazy. i didn't like the movies much.

sorry for the derail

I love the movies that's why I'll never read the books. I even picked some up cheap at garage sales but I can't bring myself to read them cause I'll know I'll start nitpicking the movies

Half of me regrets reading the books after season 2 of GoT. Like dumping a girlfriend for a hotter one but later realizing there is no future with the new one

These are very good, though the most recent one has some weird stuff where Rowling still writes romance like the characters are teenagers, but she has a real good grasp of how to write mystery, introducing the suspects, giving the audience clues, resolving it all neatly.

You can kind of see it in the HP books, the best part of the earlier HP books was Harry and friends getting to the bottom of which teacher was a bad guy and who was behind whatever thing it was that was happening that year. Probably should've been a mystery writer all along.

Ahh, basking in the HP love itt.

Fly is forgiven. I've read each HP book (except the last one) at least 30 times. Those books ****ing saved me as a teenager, man. They all mean something different to me, and they're all special. I love deathly hallows too it just came out after my freshman year of college and i didn't have the time. If I ever met JK Rowling I'd collapse sobbing as an adult for helping me through my formative years, probably.

I could also write a dissertation on why HP and the deathly hallows P1 is one of my favorite mories oat.

if i met jk rowling i'd collapse sobbing too. her stories helped my sick mom and me connect.

This is a really bad line to take. The movies have their issues if you have read the books, sure. But even if you take these issues very seriously the movies still are a wonderful interpretation and visualization of the world in the books.

The books are ****ing fantastic though. Almost every Harry Potter fan has read all the books 5+ times, and numbers like 10+ and 20+ are not uncommon. It's an impressive feat even if the books are small compared to GoT, but they are still 3,5k pages combined. In a time period where lots of people/HP fans don't read books at all.

I also think it will be really fun to read all the things that were left out of the movies.

tl;dr read the ****ing books b8

...

disagree with this. if GRRM realized it was a mistake, he could/would have handled the story off stage and just cut it. that seems like a much simpler solution that bothering to execute the storyline.

(Ie, what is happening with Loras?)

his redeeming quality is that's he's smart + and wants to go home and have a simple life. he has no interest in being a hero. that's the redeeming quality. he's different than all the bad-ass heroes you yourself mentioned are tired of reading out.

As far as I know GRRM didn't get 3 chapters into a Loras pov.

He tried to tame a dragon...

Right, I'm saying that if GRRM realized /thought his Quentyn plot was a mistake, he would ha even given him the Loras treatment (apparently dead at Dragonstone?) and not given him pov chapters

I don't think Loras is dead, but anyways what I meant when I originally wrote that was GRRM realized after writing 2 or 3 chapters of Quentyn material that the character was not good and the plot wasn't going anyways so he just killed him off. He already had the chapters and wasn't going to throw them out.

Still disagree with that. The internal consistency of the tone, content, etc wouldn't be there is he changed course after 2 or 3 completed chapters. As you say you can see the hell coming from far away. It's not like this begins as a hero quest at Dorne, is going fine, then turns for the bad. The whole story is consistent.

For him to have changed course would mean he created a very weird narrative

Martin being bad at self-editing is not some radical idea that needs a lot of support at this stage in the game

I'm curious about this. Is this a book thing? Dude seem to go boom in the show.