posted
the thing with AFFC is that everything within it is an appendix to the main story. you could cut it off because it's not an essential organ.
That would be very different if Brienne's story had a point, but just getting her to one significant decision took eight chapters, in AGOT or ASOS, characters were dealing with decisions and events like that every other chapter. Likewise for Jaime. Cersei is the only person who does significant things, but she's so incompetent and twirly moustache evil villain that you're more frustrated with her than worried or invested in what she does. Mainly I just wanted her chapters to be over. Sam's chapters have the same problem as Brienne's, the first interesting thing to happen in his story was at the very very end of his last chapter--that's frustrating. Virtually every POV character in the book felt like half a story. Which is funny because the split was supposed to give us the whole story of half the characters, rather I feel with AFFC that I got half the story for half the characters. Only Arya and Sansa had the same economy of storytelling found in the prior novels, and it's telling that they're the only two POV characters from AGOT in AFFC.
long before AFFC was close to done, I was a big opponent to the idea of a five year gap (originally there was planned to be five years of storytime between ASOS and ADWD for characters to grow and develop and events to mature towards a new crisis, since a sort of stasis was achieved by the events of ASOS), but now I wish it had happened. I really like the idea of the story picking up again, in media res, in the sort of way that AGOT begins, and if there were stories like Brienne's or Martell's that needed to be told, pull a Tolkien and explain it in an appendix.
Posts: 128 | Registered: Aug 2006
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posted
I live all of those books. Brienne is one of my favorite characters, too, and I think she will have a huge influence in what comes.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Last night I dreamed that Catelyn found Arya, and Bran started having dreams about going back to Winterfell. Then Catelyn happened to come across Sansa at the Eyrie for some reason. Both stared at the other, not believing it could be possible. Then everyone went to Winterfell, and Catelyn gave a speech about how they were going to rebuild from the ashes. They started working on it, and eventually Jon returned to Winterfell as well. When Catelyn saw him, she hugged him, and I knew that forgiveness would begin between the two of them. In my dream, there was another son down south who had not yet returned, but I knew he would with time.
It was kind of a fun dream. Posts: 1903 | Registered: Sep 2003
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