I know lots of people are excited about George R. R. Martin’s latest massive tome, A Dance With Dragons. Not only were there about 220 holds on the book when I requested it from the library, there were still about 200 holds when I picked it up. And yet, after the fight I had with the previous book, I was mainly hoping that this one wouldn’t be so painful.
Well, we get to check in with all the characters we were missing. Let’s see … Tyrion is miserable and he can’t wisecrack enough to cheer himself up. And he dwells on the terrible things he did every five pages. Danaerys is finding being a queen is not so much fun as you might think. Yeah, I know, earthshattering revelation there. Bran moving north into the lands behind the wall, where life is tough. We know. The only one to rouse my interest was Jon Snow acting like his father and refusing to knuckle under to Stannis.
In short, it’s so tedious, I barely managed to read more than a fewpages at a time. Then on page 83, yet another new viewpoint character appears. I don’t know if I can take this. It’s beginning to feel like we’re going to have to visit every realm in the world of Westeros and meet every soul living and dead before anything happens.
Lucky for me the book was due, so I returned it. I promised myself I would give this volume a chance, but there’s no way I’m going to haul a 50 pound book around again. So I requested the audiobook. That ought to keep me occupied for a while.
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