Songs of Ice and Fire

A Feast for Crows has been sitting on my mini-fridge (which doubles as my bedside table) since I got back from break. Over the first several weeks of the quarter, I got through the 900+ pages of fun, all except for the last twenty or so--basically, the last chapter. I think it's been almost two weeks since I read any more, but I'm loath to finish this book, since nobody really knows when (or at this point even if) the next book will come out.

A Feast for Crows is the fourth book in George R.R. Martin's epic fantasy series known as A Song of Ice and Fire (usually just abbreviated as ASoIaF--I mentioned it back in December or so here on the blog). Each book is at least 900 pages, paperback, and the third one is over 1100 pages long, paperback. The fifth book, called A Dance With Dragons, has been "about to be released" for five years now, since the fourth book was published in 2005. Martin isn't exactly the world's speediest writer, you could say.

Of course, it's hard at times to really blame him, considering the sheer scope of stuff going on. ASoIaF is written through various points of view--I think, over the course of the series, there have been at least 15 or 20 point of view characters. It chronicles an entire island continent and quite a bit of stuff going on in the far east of the world, a multitude of families, and a surprising amount of detail. Basically, ASoIaF is a story about the political posturings of an entire huge nation-continent, a bizarre world where summers and winters can last for years at a time, which was originally seven different kingdoms forcibly united a few hundred years before the story begins under a slightly vicious regime. About 15 years before the story begins, this dynasty was toppled by a regional superpower and all but two of the old dynasty's members were destroyed. The narrative picks up in the first book (A Game of Thrones) with the coming of fall after the longest summer anyone can remember and the stirrings of whole new rebellions, troubles, schemes for revenge from the downtrodden and the one final member of the old dynasty, and much more.

This is all fairly bog-standard vaguely-medieval epic fantasy fare, but although this is a foreign world with some bizarre animals in it (mammoths, aurochs, direwolves, etc), there is very little overt magic at all involved. Dragons are about as magical as it gets, and those are basically considered extinct in most of the world. It's also unabashedly adult--prostitution, rape, plunder, gory hangings, brutal colonialism, and all sorts of other imaginatively horrible ends exist, even while there's lots of consensual sex (both hetero- and homosexual) and surprisingly brave (but still realistic) deeds. What sets ASoIaF apart from most of the rest of the epic fantasy fare (including The Lord of the Rings) is the lack of a good vs. evil feel to the book. Characters are realistically ambiguous, and while there are certainly abominably gory acts and good acts both, no character is purely good or purely evil--in fact, most are quite confused themselves about what is going on. The political scheming, the posturing, the difficulty of painting any character with a broad brush all combine to make it a remarkably intriguing series thus far. It is no carefully-written Shakespeare, in the sense that every word is pored over to make is as perfect as necessary, but it is quite exquisitely plotted and obviously requires an extraordinary amount of world-building and a remarkable grasp for making characters life-like.

The four books published so far, in order, are A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows. HBO has picked up the series to make it a television series, and the first episode for that is supposed to come sometime in April. I really hope that the fact that the world of Martin is coming to TV will inspire him and his publishers to get the next installment out by the end of this year--word on the street is that he is basically in the editing stage now, finally.

Read 'em, definitely, but be warned--they are as addictive as crack once you get into them, and the wait for the next installment (when I still have 20 pages left of the last!) is already driving me crazy.