[ectogemia]

Haha, seriously?? I was considering starting that trilogy next. What don't you like about it?

If you're looking for a new read and an easy one, i'd recommend the mistborn saga. Bller. If you're looking for extreme reading, start up the malazan series. 10 books, and they only get better and better. What an awesome ass story.

[Korb]

Originally Posted by Ectogemia

I'm just about done with the third book. Holllly shit, this has been a fantastic read so far. I hear the fourth and fifth suck, though. Without spoling anything, can anyone give me some good reasons why I should or should not continue reading?? I'm just not looking to waste any time reading a crappy 1200 page brick :P

I think a lot of the long time series readers ragged on AFFC and DWD mostly because of how long it took the two of them to come out, a combined 11 years since ASoS, and then it felt like nothing was really settled by either of them. Well, you're not supposed to settle things in the middle of a 7 book series. The first 3 have gone in this kind of progression:

AGoT - Introduction
ACoK - Build up
ASoS - BLAM!

And then you get to AFFC and DWD, which were supposed to be one book of build up after a time jump of something like 5 years. GRRM found that he couldn't just explain the events of those 5 years in flashbacks and memories and exposition dialog, so out went the time skip and he just picks it up where it left off. But because it started getting too long between books and he was getting stumped with how best to really proceed with half of it, the one book was split into two, and AFFC was the stuff he was happy with, and he went back to tinkering with the rest.

Obviously by this point, there's a lot going on all over the place, and given how GRRM writes, which is knowing major plot points he wants to hit, and then writing to meet those points, he had to rewrite a lot of it over and over to make sure he not only liked the ending, but liked the journey to that ending as well and made sure it jibed with any of the other related storylines. This is why DWD took so long. He had to untangle the "Meereenese Knot," of plot threads, as he called it on his blog.

What I'm getting at is to not expect "BLAM!" from either of these two books. They both have their moments though, where you're like "oh...oh wow, this changes things" and then you want Winds of Winter in your hands to see where it's all going next, to answer those questions that they've raised.

[Modus]

Originally Posted by Ectogemia

Haha, seriously?? I was considering starting that trilogy next. What don't you like about it?

I read a lot more today, and I'm starting to enjoy it. The style really threw me off at first but now I "get" what he's trying to do. I'm pissed off he termed mages as arcanists though. I was going to do exactly that for my novel..

dammit.

[Melbu Frahma]

Originally Posted by Ectogemia

I'm just about done with the third book. Holllly shit, this has been a fantastic read so far. I hear the fourth and fifth suck, though. Without spoling anything, can anyone give me some good reasons why I should or should not continue reading?? I'm just not looking to waste any time reading a crappy 1200 page brick :P

I wouldn't say they suck - especially not the fourth. I actually would put the fourth above the first in my personal preferences; for me, it wasn't slow at all, and had a lot of interesting things going on.

I will grant you that the fifth one isn't quite as good as the others, at least imho, though. It's hard to put my finger on what's off about it, though; it certainly has all the elements of what made the other four good. If I had to really point to what makes it slow, it's that the first two or so hundred pages feel like a recap from alternate perspectives of the previous book (which Martin readily warned readers would be the case - the beginning of ADoD is occurring simultaneously as AFfC). I think, too, the other thing that made me enjoy it less was that several of the characters show up, tease you with their storylines, and then vanish - two of the more interesting POV characters, one of whom is new, only get two or three chapters apiece. One of them gets his last chapter a third of the way through, and then just vanishes the rest of the book.

The fourth one's definitely worth reading, though, if you ask me. And there's far worse books than the fifth out there; you'll just have to grin and bear it and push through four or five of the chapters.

[Doulifée]

i just found that door stopper in my library a few week ago. i'm not fan of this setting, but so far i'm eating the book at a good pace.

yes, i'm really behind the curve, but my librairy is full of stuff i must read.

[Modus]

I still think the TV adaptation is the most potent guy-geared media ever created. They made me like Theon Greyjoy's character. THEON!

[Flare4War]

Just read them all. Some obviously are going to be more intriguing than others but they are all immaculate writing and well done books.

I thought Dance with Dragons was great, I don't understand why people are spitting at it. It was long, but I thought that was a good thing; especially after such a long wait.

So yeah, I would say just read all of them.

[Melbu Frahma]

Originally Posted by Flare4War

I thought Dance with Dragons was great, I don't understand why people are spitting at it. It was long, but I thought that was a good thing; especially after such a long wait.

I was actually discussing that with a couple of friends who've also read them all. One of them said, for her, the reason why she enjoyed it less than the others was that it felt like very little happened, and little more got resolved, particularly with the characters across the sea. Which I don't agree with, but I can see that point of view - the first third of ADwD was basically a recap of things we already knew happened from AFfC, but from other character's POVs.

Oh, btw, I don't remember if it's already been mentioned in here or not, but if you play Minecraft and love ASoIaF, you owe it to yourself to check out http://westeroscraft.com/.

[Brandon Strader]

This thread should be called Game of Thrones! You guys sound like hipsters, honestly. "Oh we knew about it before it was a cool TV show"

[Native Jovian]

Originally Posted by Melbu Frahma

it felt like very little happened, and little more got resolved, particularly with the characters across the sea.

This. Plus there was the character in Dany's story that looked like it was going to turn out fairly interesting only to turn out completely pointless (you know which one I mean if you've read it). Plus there seemed to be a ton of fake cliffhangers, where a chapter ended on a note that made it seem like that character was in serious danger, only for their next chapter to reveal that nope, it was no big deal, moving right along.

I wouldn't say that Dance with Dragons was bad, but I definitely didn't enjoy it as much as the previous books in the series.