ASOIAF: Game of Thrones Books (Contains SPOILERS!!)

I think King would have finished DT earlier if he hadn't been hit by that minivan. And he may have finished it well for a change, instead of writing himself into the books and continuing to fail to end his works well.

The moment that I realized the Wolves of Calla were guys dressed like Dr. Doom, he really lost me. The rest of those books were a domino effect of terrible writing.

Never read any of Jordan's book s, and may not, because of the largely mixed reviews that I have read.

GRRM has the kind of motivation to finish that neither of those writers did. He is now competing with the adaptation that he always wanted for this work.

I have no doubt that he will finish.

What I am concerned about is the quality of the work put into those last two or three volumes.

 

Agree and disagree. Jon was killed because he planned to march south, that is true. And I also agree that he will not remain dead.

But the nature of him once he returns is something to wonder about.

How long before Melisandre revives him, even if it's her that does it?

Beric was revived immediately after every one of his deaths, and even so, began to lose a bit of who he was each time. Catelyn was floating in a river, dragged to shore by a direwolf, and we don't know how long it was before revival, but she doesn't resemble her previous self at all.

What will Jon be if and when he returns? Will he be someone who cares about his kin?

Will he be the agent of Melisandre? (she is a far more advanced magic wielder than Thoros of Myr, and may be able to weave control into her revival)

Will he only care about fighting the Others???

Too many questions for something we know little about as readers.

 

Interesting stuff from the Westeros forum...

[quote name='Black Crow' timestamp='1372884654' post='4671068']Welcome to Heresy 60, the latest edition of the popular thread looking at what’s really going on in the Song of Ice and Fire.

Its has the heresy tag because we challenge the orthodoxy that the Others are the ultimate enemy who will eventually be defeated by the Starks and the Targaryen dragons. This is the Song of Ice and Fire; the Otherlanders represent only one side of that conflict and there is an equally dangerous threat posed by Fire.

The Song of Ice and Fire is a magnificent, complex, multi-layered epic involving a sprawling cast of well rounded and often equally complex characters. It beggars belief therefore that the so-called ultimate enemy should be a one dimensional threat, existing only to provide something for our heroes to rally against.

Thus we question popular assumptions that the Others are evil incarnate, that the Children of the Forest are the good guys who once fought alongside the First Men and will teach Bran how to defeat the Others. There is, let us assert at once, not a single scrap of evidence in the books that the Children and the First Men ever fought shoulder to shoulder against anybody. On the contrary the Children abandoned Men to their fate in the Long Night and the First Men returned the compliment by abandoning the Children and breaking the Pact when the Andals came to Westeros.

We also doubt that Jon Snow is Azor Ahai and destined to be a dragon rider and we laugh at the timelines set out at the start of the series and since contracted in subsequent books.

Instead, prompted by the various clues, Easter eggs and cookies which litter the text, we look at the Celtic and Norse mythological sources which underpin the magic, and try to understand the nature of the protagonists. GRRM has likened the Others to the Sidhe made of ice – a point graphically illustrated in the current HBO version, which exactly mirrors what we’ve discovered of Mel, Moqorro and Victarion, revealing all three as being Fire made flesh, exactly equal to and opposite those protagonists of Ice – the Otherlanders with weirwood faces.

And then there’s the Wall, which we believe is not a defensive structure at all but the boundary between the Realms of Men and the magic Otherlands beyond. It was raised and maintained by great magic, and is not improbably the cause of the Long Night. It is, according to Ygritte, evil and made of blood as well as Ice. Thus we suspect that like the Berlin Wall, the Wall must come down to achieve a resolution of the conflict and restore the balance of the seasons and everything else, for to quote Janet Clouston: “Blood built it, Blood stopped the building of it, and Blood will bring it down”

In doing that, Jon may indeed be destined to bridle the Ice, but as King of Winter, while Danaerys Targaryen, once popularly tipped as his partner, may instead have to “go back” – to where the Targaryens and their dragons came from - into the smoke and salt of the Smoking Sea of Valyria in order to sort out the Fire.

All of these theories are just that and matters of controversy rather tenets of faith. We think we’re reaching a better understanding of what’s really going on, but as heretics we neither promote nor defend a particular viewpoint, in fact we argue quite a lot which is what makes this thread cycle so much fun, but we do very firmly reckon that the Starks’ role in all of this is a lot darker and more ambiguous than once it seemed and that the children are not so cuddly as they pretend.

We’ve long since given up providing links to previous heresies since it moves so damn quickly, but in honour of the occasion Heresy 50 contained a series of essays looking at a number of topics in more detail.

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/84200-heresy-50/

If you’re already actively involved in the Heresy business it needs no further introduction, but if you’re new, or simply intimidated by the sheer scale of it all, not to mention the astonishing speed with which it moves, and wonder what we’re talking about and why we’ve come to these peculiar ideas, just ask. We’re friendly and we don’t mind going over old ground again, especially with a fresh pair of eyes.

All that we ask as ever is that the debate be conducted by reference to the text, with respect for the ideas of others, and above all great good humour.[/quote]

 

[quote name='Black Crow' timestamp='1372884699' post='4671072']As we’ve now reached the venerable score of thread 60, how better to mark the occasion than with a retrospective essay by Professor Crow on the first three HBO seasons – and Heresy.

As we have discussed before the transition from the text to a visual medium is always difficult and inevitably results in changes. While these changes are not always for the better and often derided as dumbing down, they are usually driven not just by economy (reducing a battle to noises off) but by the need to explain what’s going on. Subtlety is therefore at a premium and things once hinted at or at best implicit become explicit on the screen.

The most important revelations on the screen relate to the Otherlanders, who have assumed far more prominence at this point in the show than they enjoy in the books. The threat they pose is heavily underlined and indeed to some extent although unseen the White Walkers are moving into centre stage in the finale as the Reeds explicitly declare that Bran must go north beyond the Wall precisely because he must deal with this threat.

As to the White Walkers themselves, although seemingly at odds with GRRM’s (scant) written descriptions in AGoT and the Tommy Patterson email, the weirwood faces seen in series 2 and 3 very strongly point to a connection to the weirwoods (especially when in juxtaposition) and therefore by extension to the as yet unseen Children – and to Ghost. There needs to be a caveat here in that the shaggy bear appearance in 01:01 is so off base that the current version may simply be a transitional compromise. Nevertheless, on balance and especially given the need to keep non-reading viewers on board with what’s happening, the weirwood comparison has to be deliberate and therefore ultimately significant.

From there we proceed naturally enough to Craster’s sons and the very unambiguous collection of one by an Otherlander early in Series 2. This alone should have ended years of speculation, but surprisingly some outside of Heresy are still in denial over this. Yet it is reinforced by the equally explicit attempted collection of Gilly’s son. Craster is undeniably giving up his sons to the Otherlanders, who are taking them for a reason; its not just a convenient way for Craster to dump them. He is proud of fathering his sons – 99 of them he says in the show – and is sacrificing them to the Cold Gods not because they are inconvenient but because he is a godly man and he is keeping right with the gods because he is sacrificing what is most precious to him. This is also underlined by Maester Aemon’s reaction in the show to being told that Gilly is one of Craster’s wives and that the baby is his son. Sam borrows Jon Snow’s speech about defending the realms of men to persuade Maester Aemon to allow Gilly to stay, but it seems quite obvious that Aemon’s declaration that they must not be sent north of the Wall has nothing to do with the rights of man and everything to do with Craster’s son.

That in turn leads us to the Otherlander pinked by Sam. On the face of it this is depicted very differently from in the book, but in reality the HBO version makes things a lot clearer. In the first place of course the time and place is shifted from a random encounter near the Fist in order for that significant attempted collection of Gilly’s son, to be made not by a Wight but by an Otherlander. Secondly although in the book, once stabbed by Dragonglass the unfortunate Ser Puddles (as he is sometimes referred to elsewhere on the forum) melts away, as the Ice Dragon does, in the show he turns to Ice and then shatters under his own weight. As discussed before, this far more explicitly depicts the concept of their being Ice made Flesh.

I might also add that leaving the ice aside, all of the Otherlanders we’ve seen in all three seasons have been refreshingly solid with none of this business of materialising out of mists, which would again support the more recent idea that they are not moving as mists but hiding behind stealth glamours.

Thus far therefore the Heretic take on the Otherlanders – and the significance of the Craster connection - is not only firmly based on the text, but confirmed by the HBO version.


The Three-Eyed Crow on the other hand is more difficult to pin down, with so much of it cut out of the show, but nevertheless there are some interesting clues. In the books the Crow speaks with Bran, promising that he will fly and luring him north. In the show we have the intriguing statement by Jojen Reed that Bran is himself the Crow and it is he who tells him that he must go beyond the Wall and acts as his teacher. Given that Bryn Blackwood doesn’t make a personal appearance until ADwD it may be premature to account him cut out of the story just yet, but if we examine his actual role in the proceedings, as distinct from the popular presumption that he is manipulating and orchestrating everything and skinchanging everything that flies, walks or swims, then the indications are that he may not appear and certainly isn’t acting in a deus ex machine manner. The true role of the Crow, and of those other crows who accompanied Sam and Gilly’s escape without any assistance from the equally absent Coldhands, is therefore still open to speculation. It may indeed turn out to be Bran himself, or perhaps the Crow is not a personal avatar but a collective one belonging to the Old Gods into whom Bran as a greenseer is fated to be absorbed.


A more straightforward tenet of Heresy is that far from Jon Snow uniting with Danaerys Targaryen to use the dragons to save Westeros from the Otherlanders, there are in fact two separate story arcs; with on the one hand the Starks dealing with Ice in the north, while La Targaryen deals with Fire out east.

This I would say is pretty broadly supported by what we’ve seen. I’d stress seen because while there have thus far been no revelations either in the books or the script with heretical implications, from start to finish we’ve seen Dany associated with the very different world of the east; especially now she has moved to the sandy deserts of Slavers Bay and acquired the sword-and-sandals brigade of Unsullied. Given the very rich – and sustained - visual difference between the two its going to be very very difficult indeed to make a convincing translation from desert sand to winter snows. While non-reading friends of 7V3N reckon otherwise and that now Dany has her army she’ll be catching the next bus to Westeros, we know otherwise. She’s going to spend the next series with sand between her toes and troubles all around as she tries to sort out the monster she’s created out there, massively increasing the existing disconnect from events in the North.

These are I think the major points arising, but feel free to pitch in.[/quote]

And more...

 

By the way... I have come to the conclusion that the Varamir chapter in the foreword of ADWD was a foreshadow of the death of Jon Snow.

I think Jon may end up spending most if not all of the final two books living inside of Ghost.

 

Coming back, yeah. But as what?

I am not so sure that the dragons will ever make it to the Wall. That's the expected conclusion. I think it will be the Children of the Forest who bring down the Wall, if it comes down at all.

From my re-reads years ago, it seemed pretty obvious that they are directly linked to the wights.

They aren't so enamored with men as people are led to believe.

 

BTW, has anyone read the Dunk & Egg books? They provide a lot of insight into the ASOIAF books.

Especially into the guy that is most closely influencing Bran right now.

 

Thanks. I haven't read the books in a while.

That brings up another question...

Beric was revived by a Red Priest. Thoros of Myr.

Catelyn was revived by a Knight who had been revived countless times. Beric, by all accounts, did not even know who he was anymore.

What does that make Lady Stoneheart?

BTW, GRRM already let the secret out about what word Brienne said to save her life at the end of AFFC.

 

Those chapters were excellent of the first read and pretty good on the second, although I didn't get much on the second read aside from the stranger in the snow.

I still think most of Arya's chapters destroy everything in the books, with Jon's being a close second.

Dany's have a lot of blatant foreshadowing, but I think most of it is meant to take your attention elsewhere.

Quaithe's ADWD prophecy actually has nothing to do with Dany, IMO. I think it is a prophecy about Jon.

Some people think that Quaithe is some kind of subverted personality of Dany. That would make sense in this case, since Dany has been having prophetic dreams about Jon since the early books.

IMO again.

 

And don't "can't wait" too long, current estimate of TWOW is late 2014.