Rating: 1
Date:4th of October 2010.
This has got to be one of the worst books I’ve ever read though after the first three, I wasn’t surprised. Till now, “A Song of Ice and Fire” has been a huge disappointment after all the hype and the last installment takes the cake.
There’s as much fluff here as Robert Jordan ever stuffed into the “Wheel of Time” series’ later books. In one chapter, nothing happened until the last two paragraphs. Martin keeps filling the book with history and the character’s thoughts and irrelevant details of how they dress. He brings in useless characters to make the story even longer when everyone just wants to find out what happens to the main ones.
I wish Martin took some lessons from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series. Now that’s the way to write.
Another thing that pushes the endurance of the readers is that he never lets the various threads of the story meet. Every novel has multiple storylines I know, but in this one, they might as well be completely different stories for all the interaction that goes on between them. At one point I thought that Sam was going to find out about Arya and everything that’s happened to her. But Martin just feeds us a feeble interaction between the two and leaves it at that. What’s the use of working through four books if the storylines still don’t meet up I ask you?
There are some who say that Martin’s work is lifelike and in real life the good guys don’t win. I understand that sentiment. But if you take it to the extreme, we get a book which is little more than a boring historical narrative. Something has to happen dammit!
As if that wasn’t enough, there still isn’t any fantasy element to the series. It’s ridiculous. It doesn’t deserve to be classified in the fantasy genre. We’re just given promises and more promises but the plot doesn’t advance, the good guys keep losing – so what’s the pull here?
I’m sorry I wasted my time over this horrible series.