Book Review: A Dance with Dragons by George RR Martin

A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A Dance with Dragons is the fifth book in the Song of Ice and Fire series, and continues the epic saga Martin has constructed. Intrigue abounds, characters die, and of course there are dragons.

Quantifying my feelings about this book is difficult. On the one hand, I waited years (YEARS!) for this book and suffered through A Feast for Crows because all of my favorite characters were in Dragons instead. Finally getting to see what Dany and Jon and Bran were up to was great. On the other hand--they're not up to much. The plot doesn't seem to really advance in this book, and on fronts where the plot is advancing (Bran, for example), their stories stop mid-novel and never pick back up. I spent the last half of the book yelling at it that I wanted to see what Bran was doing and whether he'd ever learn to "fly." The book ends just as things are getting interesting again.

I think this book suffers from middle-of-the-series syndrome, something we usually see in the second book of a trilogy; things are progressing, but nothing's starting and nothing's ending, so getting a single plot arc going is difficult. I expect that The Winds of Winter and, ultimately, A Dream of Spring will be much better as the stories come to their close.

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