A Dance with Dragons (2011) Book Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty good. It's Ottawa Comiccon this weekend and I'm going on Saturday, which is cool because I haven't been in four years. Today though, I'm here to talk about the final book (so far) of A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons. I finished it before bed last night and I'm ready to talk about it. There will be spoilers because, while not a whole lot of major things happened in this book, there are some that happened near the end that I want to talk about. So you know the drill, if you haven't read this book or seen season 5 of Game of Thrones, please do so before reading this review, if you care about spoilers. Let's get into it.

As I've been through A Song of Ice and Fire, I've noticed that this series become less cohesive and more vignette style because of how disconnected every character's story is from everyone else's stories. Sure, there are some crossover as Tyrion encounters Aegon Targaryen, who is on his way to Westeros to retake the Iron Throne from the Lannisters, while Tyrion is on his way to Meereen to offer his assistance to Daenerys, but Jon Snow's story doesn't intersect with Daenerys's, Tyrion's, Jaime's, Theon's, or Cersei's stories anymore than any of theirs intersect with each other. 

I've complained about this in previous reviews of A Song of Ice and Fire, because it makes it difficult to keep up with everything going on. However, after thinking about it, this is pretty normal for Martin. For those of you who don't know, in 1987 Martin, along with fellow Science Fiction author, Melinda Snodgrass, who wrote several Star Trek: The Next Generation season 2 episodes in 1988 and 1989, began editing an anthology series called Wild Cards, which is about an alternate post-World War II history where superheroes and supervillains, known as Aces and Jokers, exist thanks to an alien virus that got spread after World War II. There's no real connection between any of the characters's stories in that series, and yet there is a connection because of the overall plot of the alien virus. 

I mention all this because that's exactly how A Song of Ice and Fire becomes as the series goes on. Whether we get Winds of Winter or not is something I don't feel qualified to speculate on, but, where Martin leaves things off at the end of the book, is a good place to end, because, just like in real life, people's stories go on even if you don't encounter that person ever again. Yes, Martin created Westeros and all of these characters, but, he wrote these books to be so realistic that the world continues on whether we see these characters in the books ever again. I'm going to go over this at the end, but I think Game of Thrones ruined the books for Martin. I'll get into why I think that later though. Right now, let's get into the book itself.

So, if I had to pick my favourite story in this book, it has to be Daenerys's. The reason being is that, despite Ser Barristan's urgings, Daenerys has decided to rule in Meereen and doesn't necessarily want to claim the Iron Throne in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. Combine that with her weariness of war following the constant battles with the Yunkai, The Sons of the Harpy, and other slavers, and I was not surprised when she hopped up on Drogon and flew away from Meereen. She'd been through so much over the course of this series, and when she had the opportunity, she ran away, because the pressure was too much. Especially because she'd had to forsake Daario, whom she loved, to marry Hizdahr zo Loraq, a Meereenese nobleman who promised her that he could broker a peace between Meereen and the Yunkai if she married him. After Daenerys flees on Drogon, Ser Barristan believes that Hizdahr married Daenerys to gain access to her Dragons so he can kill them. Of course, Hizdahr hasn't denied it as of yet, so who knows.

The other storyline that I enjoyed the most was Jon Snow's with the Night Watch at the Wall. Him dealing with King Stannis's wife, Queen Selyse, Melisandre, the treaty between the Wildlings and the Night's Watch, and everything else going on at Castle Black. I just found it to be more interesting than anything else going on in the book, besides Dany's storyline, which I've already talked about. I think what fascinated me the most is how Jon handled everything. Sometimes he handled things poorly, other times he handled them quite well. And that's what we do as human beings. Sometimes we handle situations poorly and other times we handle them well. It all depends on the situation and what experiences we have at our disposal to handle said situation.

When I read this book for the first time back in the summer of 2019, I already knew that Jon Snow would get stabbed by members of the Night's Watch before I ever started reading A Game of Thrones. I never read the synopsis of this book on Wikipedia or one of the many Wikis devoted to A Song of Ice and Fire. I knew because of the TV show. I've never watched Game of Thrones, but the day after the season 5 finale aired on HBO, my Facebook and Twitter feeds were filled of images of Jon lying in the snow, having just been stabbed. 

Game of Thrones was a phenomenon and a staple of 2010s pop culture. It changed geek culture forever, even before The Avengers came out a year later. It also changed television forever as well, giving rise to serialized storytelling and binge watching. So even if you were someone who wasn't watching it, you knew someone who was. If you were on social media between 2011 and 2019 you could not escape it. People posted screenshots, reviews, opinions, made speculation videos on YouTube, and memes were everywhere. So even though I've never seen a single episode, I knew about Ned's beheading in season 1, the Red Wedding in season 3, Jon getting stabbed in season 5, and the finale of the show in season 8.

I mention this because A Dance with Dragons came out almost a month after season 1 of Game of Thrones ended. In fact, it is the only book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series to come out while the TV show was on the air. So it's worth noting the popularity and influence that Game of Thrones had on the television landscape of the 2010s and the influence it had on geek culture.

Overall, A Dance with Dragons was a great book. It's a shame that the TV show may have ruined the books for Martin, as he has yet to finish the sixth book in the series, The Winds of Winter. Because he's 74, with him turning 75 years old in 15 days, people have begun to speculate that the sixth book, and the series as a whole will go unfinished. Personally, I think we'll get the sixth book in three or four years, maybe less, depending on how much longer the writer's and actor's strikes go on for, since Martin is primarily a television producer and writer, and House of the Dragon is most likely one of the shows affected by the strikes. But we shall see what happens.

Alright my friends, I think that will be it for me for today. I'll be back soon for the next installment in my Marvel Star Trek comic book overview series where I'll be discussing the first comic book series to be based on Star Trek: Voyager. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.