A Feast for Crows - disappointed

[Brys]

It depends how long it takes for A Dance with Dragons to be published.
What worries me though is that the next book won't be as good - my favourite parts of this book were by far the Jaime and Cersei chapters, but everything seems to be suggesting we won't be seeing them at all in the next book, or at least not have any chapters from their perspective. And he set up a huge cliffhanger, which would be horrible if it's left unresolved in Dance with Dragons. Of the characters we're supposed to see in aDwD, the only ones that I'm really looking forward to are Tyrion and Jon Snow (except for possibly Stannis - but he did nothing in this book, and I don't hold out hope of chapters from his host being particularly good) - Daenerys seems to be popular with many people, but I didn't enjoy her chapters that much in the previous ones, and other than these three, the characters will be peripheral if the characters in AFFC won't be in a Dance with Dragons.

I think that the best thing for the publishers to have done would have been to wait for A Dance with Dragons to be complete, and publish AFFC and Dance with Dragons together, two volumes of the same book, as they did with A Storm of Swords in the UK.

 

[monkeydude]

Well, now that I've given up on actually reading a story, I've been enjoying the book more. George is very good at writing individual scenes, so I'm enjoying it on that basis, though it would be better if the novel was obviously plot-driven like most novels.

The Iron Lands always felt like a back-story distraction at the best of times. I've wondered before if a lot of Point of View characters wouldn't have worked better as individual background books that could have been released, after the main series was finished, so we could explore different perspectives of the story from them. But...I guess better to give George benefit of the doubt and let him finish, the review everything from there.

I hoipe that last idea was sarcastic.

 

[Boaz]

Should we all hold judgement until the entire series is done?

For the overall story and the resultant feelings and perspectives, yes. But with every unsatisfactory installment in the series, the whole story suffers accordingly.

Should we all hold judgement until the entire series is done?

For each individual book, no. If a story is divided into individual parts for consumer consumption, then each part should be able to stand on it's own merits and not on the merits of the series alone.

 

[Jinglehopper]

I too am disappointed with AFFC. It did seem that nothing happened.

Each POV gave what I can only assume is essential information. The Brienne chapters were the most adventuring, yet I agree with some above posters that nothing of much consequence happened in them, especially if the last one ended the way I think it did. Overall, it seemed the most exciting parts of the book happened off screen (like Loras storming Dragonstone).

Sidenote: I read Jordan's latest directly after AFFC. I think it's time everyone gave him another chance, Book 11 is his best in long while. And to the above poster who said Jordan's book 4 was worse than AFFC, I think books 4,5,6 of WoT were the best ones. Martin's 4th is arguably his worst.
Seems Jordan may not be the hack we've all painted him out to be, myself included.

 

[direghost]

I actually liked FfC's more than I thought I would. For so long, there has been a disconnect between Dany and Westeros. Now in 2 or possibly 3 different POV's, the foundations are laid to combine the two stories. The ironmen have set themselves up as enemies of Dany, Dorne is revealed to be an ally, and even Littlefinger possibly alludes to Dany, meaning that she's part of his plans.
It is something of a set-up, but after killing so many characters at the end of SoS, there needed to be a breather or all of the humans would be dead before the Others managed to cross the wall.

 

[Tyranus]

Well you can always think of it this way: The next one won't have all those Southron chapter to stand in the way of all the POV's we have been looking forward to.

 

[Raven]

A couple of observations:

First, I think that AFFC is really mislabelled as being part 4 of a series. Having read and reread the book, my sense of it is that it is really more like book 1 of a new trilogy that happens to follow on from the first three. A lot of the things people complain about, such as the introduction of new characters and areas, or exposition, or what have you, seem to be 'setup' such as you would expect to find in a book like that.

The main plots from the first three books ended in ASOS. That's why the gap existed originally. The War of Five Kings was over, Dany had been through the fire both literally and metaphorically and was building a realm, and Jon was elected Lord Commander. AFFC, ADWD and the final two books will deal with the next stage: Dany's involvement in Westeros politics and the war with the Others. Really, I see the line between ASOS and AFFC as being as significant as, say, the line between the Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies in Hobb. Had the gap remained, it would have been more significant yet.

Another point to make is related to this: George has definitely chenged the structure he's using to tell the tale. Most of the 'new' POVs are 'minor' POVs, that will crop up once or twice to tell their part of the story and then depart. Not every new POV in AFFC is intended to be on a par with the introduction of, say, Jaime or Davos. He is no longer telling the tale in a 'strict' multiple POV structure, where the only way to drop a POV is to kill the character.

I like this, because I think it's freshened things up. It works well for some of the things George is doing here, too. A Doran POV would not have worked, for example, but he had to have someone tell the Dornish story. So we get it from a series of more minor characters, none of whom knows all and none of whom are guaranteed to survive until the end of that part of the story, even.

As for the split, the book had to be split. AFFC was published first because that was the part of the story that was closest to being finished. Also, ADWD, we're told, will probably finish months in Westeros-time after AFFC does.

 

[Brian G Turner]

First, I think that AFFC is really mislabelled as being part 4 of a series. Having read and reread the book, my sense of it is that it is really more like book 1 of a new trilogy

I agree - I posted a review here which mentioned that it felt like a prologue:
http://www.chronicles-network.com/forum/8956-a-feast-for-crows-george-r-r-martin.html

Although my expectations were initially disappointed, I ended up quite enjoying AFFC.