Sunday, April 26, 2015

A Feast For Crows by George R. R. Martin


In the fourth book of the Game Of Thrones series, the war for the throne is about over.  King Joffrey is dead as is Robb Stark.  King's Landing and the kingdom is now ruled by ten year old Tommen and Queen Cersei is serving as the effective ruler until his majority.  Although she has always considered herself a cunning manipulator of others, she immediately starts to make bad decisions.  Only the fact that so many of her foes are displaced or dead allows her reign to continue.

On the Wall, with the ascension of Jon Snow as commander, the war against the Wildlings is over for the moment although that against the Others is just starting.  Jon sends Samwell on a mission and to get reinforcements for the wall.  Elsewhere, traveling bands of soldiers turned thieves after the war rove the land, laying waste and havoc wherever they go.

Sansa and Arya are still alive, but no one knows where they are.  Jaime Lancaster is sent off to resecure the Tully lands, while Brienne travels searching for the Stark girls.  Stannis is up North regrouping for another attempt at the throne while the Iron Men are rampaging on the coast. 

Martin tells the reader in the afterward that so many of the main characters are missing because he realized that his fourth book was too massive and he split it in two.  There were several ways to do this.  He could have split it by time, following all characters sequentially.  Instead he chose to split it by characters.  Some characters are in this fourth book, while the others will be in the fifth with both books covering the same timeframe.  I'm not sure if this was the best choice but it is how he chose to handle things.  This book is recommended for fantasy readers and those interested in the Game Of Thrones series.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I love the cover for this book. It looks like a good series read!! :D thanks for sharing your review :)

Sandie said...

It is definitely one of the standard-setters in fantasy. I started reading this series years ago and stopped, waiting for all the books to be written. I finally decided I needed to read the ones I have now in case the rest never happen.