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» Hatrack River Forum » Active Forums » Books, Films, Food and Culture » A Dance With Dragons: 12 July 2011!

   
Author Topic: A Dance With Dragons: 12 July 2011!
Swampjedi
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Announcement

And the readership rejoiced!

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advice for robots
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Whoa.

That makes three books finally being published this year that I've been waiting way too long for.

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Belle
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I don't believe it.

afr, what else are you waiting for?

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Swampjedi
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I'm counting on it getting pushed back - but at least a release is on the table now.

GRRM and his publishers would be stupid to not release at least somewhat near the air date of the HBO series.

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quote:


afr, what else are you waiting for?

Wise Man's Fear, for one. Also the next book in the Locke Lamora series, Republic of Thieves.
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Belle
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Wise Man's Fear is out this week. Me too!
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0Megabyte
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I already have my copy of Wise Man's Fear.

Wow. I can't believe, with all my fanatic looking at Martin's site, that I didn't see this first! I literally check his blog daily, and have for this news. I've done this for the last year...

Anyway. YES! It's finally coming out!

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Kwea
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YES!!!!
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Uprooted
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I think this is enough to make me finally break down and read A Feast for Crows -- although I am also skeptical that the date is hard and fast.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to re-read all of the others, actually. I don't retain details very well and will probably be lost if I jump right in. Sigh.

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Kwea
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quote:
Originally posted by 0Megabyte:
I already have my copy of Wise Man's Fear.

Wow. I can't believe, with all my fanatic looking at Martin's site, that I didn't see this first! I literally check his blog daily, and have for this news. I've done this for the last year...

Anyway. YES! It's finally coming out!

Lyr called it.


I am so psyched! I am half way though WMF already, after buying it yesterday. I had to stop myself from powering thought it. [Big Grin]

I love the Locke Lamora books too, so that is great.


It's already been an expensive year for book for me, as I bought Pathfinder AND Lost Gate last month. Both were by far the best OSC novels in a while, and even my wife, who isn't a fan of that type of book is reading The Lost Gate (and likes it so far).

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Lyrhawn
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2011 for the win!

Sweet. I'm probably going to go back through and reread Storm of Swords in June to get caught up on the relevant story lines. I just knew good things were in the offing!

[Smile]

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Dr Strangelove
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I would be happier if not for the fact that there are till two books to go, and at the current rate... well, lets just say Martin better be taking really really good care of himself.

On a slightly unrelated note, evidently there was only one bookstore in Florida that got signed copies of Wise Mans Fear. It just so happened to be right near where my little sister lives. So she got me one. Woohoo!
The downside of course is that now I have to wait to see her or for her to send it up to me.

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Lyrhawn
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If you read a lot of the background stuff on why these took so long, it wasn't just because he's distracted with other projects. He ran into a lot of unforseen snags. It took him like 5 years to pump out the first three novels, and then 5 years each for the following two. Plus, he already has like a third of Winds of Winter written from chapters he's pushed from Feast and Dance.

He ran into a couple of specific problems that really set him back, and demanded some fundamental re-writes. I think with the last two, we're going to get a writing schedule similar to the first three rather than the latest two. I'm putting money down on Winds of Winter for Fall 2013.

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DDDaysh
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quote:
Originally posted by Dr Strangelove:
I would be happier if not for the fact that there are till two books to go, and at the current rate... well, lets just say Martin better be taking really really good care of himself.


Especially since he's said he doesn't want anyone else finishing them for him... no Brandon Sanderson to save the day on this series!
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0Megabyte
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quote:
Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
If you read a lot of the background stuff on why these took so long, it wasn't just because he's distracted with other projects. He ran into a lot of unforseen snags. It took him like 5 years to pump out the first three novels, and then 5 years each for the following two. Plus, he already has like a third of Winds of Winter written from chapters he's pushed from Feast and Dance.

He ran into a couple of specific problems that really set him back, and demanded some fundamental re-writes. I think with the last two, we're going to get a writing schedule similar to the first three rather than the latest two. I'm putting money down on Winds of Winter for Fall 2013.

Indeed. His specific troubles may not plague Winds of Winter, especially since, hey, Feast and Dance weren't even originally planned as part of the series.

However, speaking of slipping schedules, Lyr... [Wink]

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Lyrhawn
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Spoilerish, but zero specifics.

Heh, yeah, I know. I actually did finish Feast, but I stopped doing blog entries about it. To be honest, I found the entire second half of it pretty damned lackluster. It wasn't because it didn't have my favorite characters in it. I really liked Jaime, Brienne, and at times, Arya. The problem is that they were, for the most part, pretty blah. Brienne just rode around asking questions. Jaime huffed around sulking. And Arya skulked around Braavos becoming a carnie.

Most of the magic in Brienne and Jaime was lost when they separated. I liked some of the changes that Jaime went through, and I loved the stuff with the Blackfish, I wish we could have seen more of him, but all in all, meh. I even liked some of the stuff that was going on with Sansa, but it was sandwiched into a pretty annoying story. It wasn't even the pace that bugged me. The series is always moved at a glacial pace, and that never bugged me because he spent so much time on character development in between.

But when neither the plot nor the characters are moving forward, it's pretty blah. When I go back and re-read Feast after this semester is over (when I read them all, probably), I'll finish off the blog in preparation for my coverage of Dance, but a lot of it will be lamenting how things used to be.

[ March 04, 2011, 04:16 PM: Message edited by: Lyrhawn ]

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Sean Monahan
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quote:
Originally posted by Uprooted:
I'm afraid I'm going to have to re-read all of the others, actually. I don't retain details very well and will probably be lost if I jump right in. Sigh.

Uprooted, if you want to reacquaint yourself with the books without rereading them, this site has some excellent books summaries, chapter by chapter.
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The Black Pearl
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I havebt read FDeast yet. When Dance comes out I'm going to alternate between Feast and Dance. Should be awesome. Or just delirious. Who knows.
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Swampjedi
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quote:
Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
Plus, he already has like a third of Winds of Winter written from chapters he's pushed from Feast and Dance.


Didn't he say this about ADWD too? Or am I misremembering?
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Stone_Wolf_
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I have given up on him at least twice now...and I will not believe it till I see it for Dance, period.

He's old and doesn't take care of himself and my money is on his death before the end of the series.

I agree with Lyr about the lacklusteryness...but hey...Lyr, maybe put up a spoiler alert next time before you discuss stuff that happened for those that didn't read it yet?

Heh, I once told a friend of mine that GRRM prolly wrote this series on a bet with another writer, something like "I bet I can get a best seller by just torturing, killing off and generally making some decent characters suffer."

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Samprimary
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I've mentioned this before, I think, but I won't start reading the series till he's dead or has finished the series.
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0Megabyte
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Honestly, the situation was different, Swampjedi. (Dagobah reference?)

Technically, Feast and Dance were supposed to be a single book. A book that wasn't supposed to exist.

His original plan (well, plan at the time) was to jump from Storm directly to what is to become The Winds of Winter now. He was going to do a three year timeskip, and show us how things had changed.

Then he started writing. And writing. And he realized that so many things happened in between that the skip wasn't working.

So he scrapped what he wrote and started what would become Feast and Dance. As a single book. However, the amount grew so large that he had to split it. He was nearly done with both at the time, and so sent out Feast. However, he was dissatisfied with what he had for Dance, and eventually scrapped the whole thing, or at least most of it, to rewrite the whole section.

Which is probably a good thing. I did personally enjoy Feast, at least more than Lyr here seemed to. But nevertheless, the book just wasn't up to snuff, especially since practically nothing actually happened. Yes, we got some really fun cliffhangers which promise real change. But most of the actual book was just set-up for the interesting stuff later.

If Dance was the same way, no wonder Martin scrapped it, ne?

Anyway, now that Dance is nearly done, presumably that problem is taken care of. Naturally, I'd be surprised if that doesn't mean his plans for Winds has changed at least a bit, but he always knew what he was doing for Winds, anyway. Since he's back into familiar territory, it's probable he'll be able to pull it off. Dance is also apparently a really complicated thing, as he didn't stop at just the point where Feast does. He kept going, adding the other characters back at least a bit. (Which is good, because he totally owes us.) And the middle is always the most complicated, too.

This is not to say that he could very well take another six years to write Wind. It's possible. But I'd rather have to wait for him to get it right than have it be quite like Feast.

The sample chapters I've read, the first for Dany, Jon and Tyrion, are all vastly more interesting than what was in Feast.

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Lyrhawn
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Stone Wolf - Apologies, I didn't really think that counted as spoilers since it was so vague. Clearly Megabyte disagrees with me.

Megabyte - I don't want to say I didn't enjoy it, I did, but, I don't think it was up to the level that previous novels were, especially after the wild ride that Storm of Swords was. And the fact that so damn much of it was set-up for what was going to happen later led to a lot of drag. Previous novels had shorter set-up to action lag times (and even THOSE were still longer than what many are happy with).

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Swampjedi
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0Meg, thanks. That makes a lot more sense than my previous understanding.

Actually, not a Dagobah/Yoda reference, that's just happenstance :-)

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0Megabyte
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Swamp: Sure thing. That's the story as far as I know. There don't seem to be the same roadblocks when it comes to Winter. And that's a funny happenstance, too.

Lyr: Yeah, that's definitely true. And as I said... Feast was pretty much all set up. I can't say what it's setting up for fear of spoilers, but the things it set up do seem very interesting, don't you agree?


SPOILERS BELOW


For example, Brienne meeting with UnCat. I doubt she'll die. She may play a role as a viewpoint character for their whole... thing. Which sounds exciting. Also, religious fanatics in charge in King's Landing. Also, the Iron Islands thing. And the Dornish Prince's plan. Those things seem very interesting. But did we have to go through all the non-events? Did we really need to see Cercei be with that chick?


END SPOILER

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jebus202
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quote:
Originally posted by 0Megabyte:
Honestly, the situation was different, Swampjedi. (Dagobah reference?)

Technically, Feast and Dance were supposed to be a single book. A book that wasn't supposed to exist.

His original plan (well, plan at the time) was to jump from Storm directly to what is to become The Winds of Winter now. He was going to do a three year timeskip, and show us how things had changed.

Then he started writing. And writing. And he realized that so many things happened in between that the skip wasn't working.

So he scrapped what he wrote and started what would become Feast and Dance. As a single book. However, the amount grew so large that he had to split it. He was nearly done with both at the time, and so sent out Feast. However, he was dissatisfied with what he had for Dance, and eventually scrapped the whole thing, or at least most of it, to rewrite the whole section.

Which is probably a good thing. I did personally enjoy Feast, at least more than Lyr here seemed to. But nevertheless, the book just wasn't up to snuff, especially since practically nothing actually happened. Yes, we got some really fun cliffhangers which promise real change. But most of the actual book was just set-up for the interesting stuff later.

If Dance was the same way, no wonder Martin scrapped it, ne?

Anyway, now that Dance is nearly done, presumably that problem is taken care of. Naturally, I'd be surprised if that doesn't mean his plans for Winds has changed at least a bit, but he always knew what he was doing for Winds, anyway. Since he's back into familiar territory, it's probable he'll be able to pull it off. Dance is also apparently a really complicated thing, as he didn't stop at just the point where Feast does. He kept going, adding the other characters back at least a bit. (Which is good, because he totally owes us.) And the middle is always the most complicated, too.

This is not to say that he could very well take another six years to write Wind. It's possible. But I'd rather have to wait for him to get it right than have it be quite like Feast.

The sample chapters I've read, the first for Dany, Jon and Tyrion, are all vastly more interesting than what was in Feast.

The Game of Thrones, upon completion, was intended as the first book in a trilogy. Your faith in the plan he has outlined for the remaining books is the definition of insanity.
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0Megabyte
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Faith? The bulk of that explanation was about how things didn't go as planned, and how each plan came undone! Furthermore, I acknowledged quite clearly that he could very well take another six years to write Wind. (That's even a direct quote, which you also quoted.) Furthermore, I pointed out that I'd prefer that to a book that was inferior. I even said that I expect his plans have changed again at least somewhat, considering he had planned a time-skip where now there is none. Where is faith in this? While I do expect the next book to go faster, I am fully prepared for it not to, and would not be surprised.

Also, the definition of insanity you use is a cliche. And two out of four coming out on a reasonable (of course, who is judging what is reasonable here?) time isn't "the same result over and over" anyway.

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Lyrhawn
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Jebus -

You also have to consider that it only took him 5 years to write the first three books. It took him 10 to write the following two, but this one could just as easily be done in 2 as in 5 or 6.

Storm of Swords is the longest of them all and there was only a year between Clash of Kings and Storm of Swords. None of them had the problems he's described with the Feast/Dragons duology. He also won't be trying to write two different books with interwoven storylines. I think there's just as much evidence to suggest a gap of only a couple of years as there is to bemoan another half decade.

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Stone_Wolf_
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I don't mean to be rude (or at least not overly so) but what is the point of quoting someone's entire post? I mean, I just read it, and if you are trying to direct the reader to something specific from the post to discuss, reading the whole thing all over again wouldn't really do that. Maybe it's just me.
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The Black Pearl
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Because he's too lazy to delete it. Like everyone else.

It's hard to tell why exactly there was suck a delay. The duology, the meereneese knot, just plain laziness, whatever.

But I hope Lyr is right.

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Uprooted
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quote:
Originally posted by Sean Monahan:
Uprooted, if you want to reacquaint yourself with the books without rereading them, this site has some excellent books summaries, chapter by chapter.

Thanks, Sean. Someone put a lot of work into that site.
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Lyrhawn
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Megabyte:

Spoilers.

quote:
Did we really need to see Cercei be with that chick?
I agree with you about UnCat, that whole thing is just bizarre, and if that really ends that way, it'll be highly unsatisfying after all the crap we were put through during Brienne's journey.

As far as Cersei's little romp in the hay, I actually thought that was one of the more interesting bits of character development. Cersei is delightfully detestable throughout pretty much all of the novels. And while that's interesting because we need a bad guy, Cersei frequently provides some of the most interesting characterization from a gender studies point of view. Brienne is often interesting because she's physically a man, but often exhibits an ambivalence with regards to female/male emotional and behavioral norms. She's socially awkward in the extreme.

Cersei on the other hand is the absolute vision of female physicality. But she utterly rejects female gender roles, and instead pointedly adopts male gender roles. She sleeps around, she wants to command armies, and her romp in the hay that you reference was her attempt to actually exert sexual dominance over another woman just like a man would. It's another interesting facet of her fairly twisted pysche. She wants to be Tywin Lannister reborn in a woman's body. Yet in her derangement, she is incapable of accepting the fact that she is not revered by all those around here in anything close to the fashion that Tywin was.

Catelyn is arguably the only "regular" female main character of the novels. Sansa is the ultimate stereotype of a noble woman, and her storyline is often about exploring the naivete that goes into that, but it's also a tale of maturation and growing out of those childish fantasies to figure out what the real world is all about. Arya is similar to Brienne in that she is attracted to male gender roles, but like Sansa she has to learn that the reality of her adventurous dreams isn't nearly as glamorous as she thought it was (though, since she's actually killed people, I'd say she's much further along in her education). But also like Sansa, she's experiencing an identity crisis. Both the sisters are being told to erase their Stark identities, and it remains to be seen how in their fragile emotional state they'll be able to deal with that challenge.

Asha and Daenerys also have gender role issues to deal with, but Asha's for the moment is far less important, and Daenerys seems to be coping with hers quite well. The interesting comparison here between Cersei and Daenerys is that Cersei expects to automatically gain the respect and loyalty of her subjects as the Queen Regent, but Daenerys deliberately stops in Mereen because she knows she needs to earn the skills and respect necessary to be a ruler. She's in Queen Boot Camp while Cersei wants everything handed to her. I just love the parallels in these novels.

These are the kinds of challenges that often fascinate me the most with characters. Of the men of the novel, I think only Jaime Lannister is really dealing with an issue of similar magnitude. His metamorphosis has been probably the most interesting of the last two books. I want to see him really confront some of his past crimes. I look forward to seeing him confront unCat, or even Bran, to see how he reacts, and whether or not he truly repents. Jon to an extent is also dealing with a major change in his new position, but, his is a lot easier to grapple with.

I find with the next novel coming, I'm far, far less interested in actual plot points than I am with what is going to happen with the characters themselves. Really, only Bran's storyline really makes me want to know what is up from a plot perspective. For all the other characters, plot is far less interesting. Though, I expect the plot of Dance to be on par with Storm as far as pacing and interest goes. I think this is Martin's real strength as a writer. Few fantasy/sci-fi novels have me this much more interested in the characters than the plot.

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0Megabyte
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CONTINUED SPOILERS


And in fact, continuing on Cercei, she wasn't even really that sexually interested. At least, she was doing it for reasons other than sexual desire, as you said. And in the end, she wasn't titillated or anything like it. It was certainly a fascinating scene, one that suggested, as always, that Cercei really needs a therapist.

Incidentally, may I posit that I was halfway making a joke? It showed something interesting, yes, but it wasn't something we terribly needed to see. Nevertheless, I am not going to complain about that. I'd complain more about the Brienne chapters.

Your talk of gender roles is very good, and as always I enjoy reading your thoughts on this series.

I really hope Dance is worth the wait. It's a big one, GRRM even mentioned it was near the size of Storm. Let's hope we get some of those things happening, instead of a lot of time prepping them with no payoff.

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