A Feast for Crows, the fourth novel in George R R Martin's masterful series A Song of Fire and Ice, arrived today. It's been a long wait .. and, in a sense, that wait continues because Martin cut this book in half to speed up the publication process (and to produce a book of manageable size, if you can call 700 pages plus appendices manageable). A quick scan reveals one immediate disappointment - there is no synopsis. Book Three - A Storm of Swords - was published all the way back in 2000. Who can remember the basic plot line at this point, let alone details? A synopsis would have been a thoughtful act for those of us who enjoy the series but don't constantly reread it. I've emailed Martin to suggest he post one to his website.
Anyway, all griping about that admittedly minor point aside, A Song of Fire and Ice is one of the best fantasy series currently going. Martin is a skilled writer and an expert crafter of cliffhangers, red herrings, and other plot twists (probably comes from having written for TV so long). If he's no Gene Wolfe, he's also no Robert Jordan. Lots of action, interesting POV characters, keeps the magic mostly off stage where it belongs so as to facilitate suspension of disbelief, evolving characters who are not resolutely good or evil. Great stuff. I just wish he wrote faster and I really wanted that synopsis of what had gone before!
Update: Leslie weighs in on George RR Martin's latest entry in the Song of Fire and Ice:
Reading this book is like getting a Grande Decaf Skim Latte with Splenda when what you ordered was a full-fat Frappuccino. All the basic ingredients are there, but it lacks that extra oomph that really satisfies.
Ouch. Head over to check put her specific complaints, most of which I think are valid.
I was pretty down on A Feast for Crows for about the first half of the book, but with about a 100 pages left I'm somewhat mollified. It starts really slow but picks up as you go along. Even so, however, it will definitely end up as my least favorite entry in the series to date. Paul Di Filippo's review gets it exactly right:
Everything that readers have enjoyed in the previous volumes will be found here. Bold battles, larger-than-life characters, resounding declarations of love and hate and revenge, eruptions of magic, startling reversals, a sense of antiquity and destiny. His fecundity, ingenuity, craft and doggedness are inspiring and heartening.
But, truth be told, those very qualities are also a little frightening and even perhaps a tad weary-making—for Martin as writer, assuredly ("This one was a bitch," he acknowledges), but also for the reader. The sheer quantity of events, dialogue and invention begin to assume staggering, senses-numbing proportions. (Consider that the real-time span of this whole epic to date occupies about two or three months in the lives of its characters. We notice this when, for instance, the pivotal death of Eddard Stark, which occurred hundreds of pages ago in the first volume, is referenced as still fresh in the minds of everyone.) The sheer weight and quantity of prose begins to sit upon us as heavily as actual events do upon the characters.
For my money, Martin needs to (a) speed up the writing process - five years between books is way too long- and (b) find a good editor with a sharp pencil who can cut all the extraneous plot lines, unnecessary POV characters, tangents, and digressions. If he does so, he'll hold onto at least this reader.
Update: I (finally!) finished George R. R. Martin's A Feast for Crows last night (hey, I've been busy!). I'm pleased to report that the last half and, especially, the last third of the book really picked up the pace. Stuff finally started happening and a lot of it was interesting (Jaimie's continued evolution and Ceseri's [no spoilers!]). The seemingly extraneous new POV characters introduced early in the book finally started making a real contribution to the plot. All in all, good enough to keep me buying new books in the series.
I still think there should have been a synopsis at the beginning. And, I find it highly annoying for a writer who takes 5 years between books to end a series installment with at least three cliffhangers!
On that note, I was especially taken aback by an interview Martin gave Locus, in which he claimed:
...this is all part of a huge megaseries so there is not a complete resolution yet in any of the volumes, but I try to give a certain sense of completion at the end of each volume -- that a movement of the symphony has wrapped up, so to speak.
Horse hockey! There was no resolution for any POV character, except the ones who died, and even some of them seem likely to come back to life. And the end the of book was rife with multiple cliffhangers.
Bottom line: Recommended. And let's hope Martin doesn't take another five years to finish the next book.
