A Song of Ice and Fire Series (Books) *Spoilers*

DarkMaster · 06-06-2012, 06:30 PM

I felt some unnecessary filler in both Book 4 and 5, and Book 5 ends on some ridiculous cliffhangers. Very unsatisfying I thought that certain events, which were built up throughout the entire book, didn't happen in the end... and now we wait 4-7 years for them. Bleh.

Book 4 is very jarring right after Book 3, with a bunch of characters absent (either now dead or left out for Book 5), and totally new locations. It does get better towards the end. With all the books, I will say that they start sloooooow, very fucking slow. I think that it makes the pay off better maybe, but I'm not sure. Sometimes I feel like shit rambles on.

Having said all that negativity.... they're still awesome. Book 3 being by FAR the best. Maybe the best book I've ever read? Can't think of any others. Going to re-read them over the summer on my nice new kindle.

ZebraRampage · 06-06-2012, 09:30 PM

Book 4 was very slow, and the worst of them all. Only half of the characters are there, as you've heard, and they're the ones I liked the least. Book 5 had the storylines of all the best characters, but it all comes together again in the end of that book. Book 3 was definitely the best though.

Ginkasa · 06-07-2012, 03:40 AM

The problems with AFfC and ADwD is that they happen after things have winded down a little bit. There really isn't that much going on; its all just set-up for the next two books. GRRM was initially going to skip over the time period covered by the two books, but felt he was relying too much on flashbacks to cover necessary information from what happened. So, he scrapped what he had written by that point and started to actually tell this period of time in his story.

Hopefully now that we've gotten that set-up done, the final two books will return to something a little closer to AGoT - ASoS. It should also, theoretically, be a shorter wait since GRRM has resolved the issues that plagued him as he wrote AFfC and ADwD.