Re-reading Song of Ice and Fire

I’m not going to re-invent the wheel here. The concept of re-reading the book/series is not new, so I’ll just borrow from experiences of other reviewers. Each article is going to be divided into one chapter blocks, in which I will try to cover what happened in the chapter, my commentary and some of the best quotes (if I find any).

I will try to stick to the main events in the summary, Song of Ice and Fire is quite long, the whole point of this exercise is to bring you up to speed with what’s important, besides I really don’t see a point in writing things like “and then Arya went to the kitchen”. I will also try to refrain from speculating, my commentary is going to be mostly focused on what I did like in the chapter and what peaked my interest. Also, I’m not going to try to spoon feed you my interpretation of the book, I’ll try to keep the commentary short and relating to facts rather than digesting “the exquisite brilliance of the Winterfell castle description”.

If you have not read the entire series (up to the Feast for Crows) at any point in time be warned that there WILL be spoilers. The reviews are written mainly for the people, who have read the books, and want to refresh the memory. If you have not read the books or maybe read just one and want to skip to the new one, this is NOT the advised way. If you insist on reading it anyway, please don’t complain if you don’t understand something. I may take some things for granted and assume people will know what I’m talking about.

If I get something wrong (I admit it may happen, although I will put every effort not to), please point it out either in comments under the blog post or on the Fantasy Fan’s Song of Ice and Fire forum. Be polite and constructive though, I have a low tolerance for trolls.

Before I start reviewing the content of the Song of Ice and Fire saga let me explain something that some of you might not know and are constantly wondering “who is this POV character everyone keeps talking about?” . In SOIAF books there is no single leading character, no pre-defined hero. The books are written from the perspective of different characters, those are called Point Of View characters, in short: POV.

By switching the perspective from one character to another the reader is given unique possibility of not only getting more information on the events at hand, but also another level of moral complexity of the story. The acts that may seem cruel and heartless from the point of view of one person may be seen entirely differently from the eyes of another, which makes the world of Song of Ice and Fire as far away from black-and-white as possible.

The POV characters change as the books move forward. New characters are added and some are removed as they leave the land of the living. Martin does not know the meaning of the world “mercy”, concept of happy ending is alien to him, so if you are new to the series, be warned, the POV characters will die and they will die for good, not Gandalf-falling-in-Moria die.

The main mission of this website is to deliver summary of the story so far to the fans waiting for the release of A Dance with Dragons. It is reasonable to assume then that the job should be finished before the book is published. The latest information on Dance with Dragons release date claim that it should be out by October 2009.

Assuming that there are going to be no further delays (bold assumption, I know) this leaves about 25 weeks to review four books. Quick glance at the content, to grasp the amount of material, left me with number of around 300 chapters in all books combined. Being a reasonable man I know for certain that I will not be able to provide updates on this blog on regular basis more often than once a week. This means I will have to cover 12 chapters during each update.

I will probably be the only fan who says this: I hope the book slips a bit. I’m going to try and review 10 chapters every week (although I may split them into two 5-chapter posts for easier reading and writing ) and keep fingers crossed that I’m not arriving with the finale a month too late…