Book Spotlight: A Dance with Dragons

As I am currently writing this I’m still suffering from the effects of DWDWS (Dance with Dragons Withdrawal Symptoms) Yes! It’s a thing!

I stayed up way past my bed time earlier finishing the book and when it was time to wake up, I lost a long battle with my alarm clock. When I came to my senses, I was awake in bed thinking about how the characters would get out of their ‘out-of-the pan and into the fire’ situations (or if they would get out at all-alive). 

Then I realized that my husband and I were already late for work.

At the first chance I got I began researching on the sequel (Winds of Winter) I was looking for anything that would quench my insatiable thirst for any added knowledge as to how the story goes on. Thanks to the ever reliable internet I found out that Winds of Winter would be published (more or less) three years from 2011. This is the part where in I pull my hair, stomp my feet and wail like a child. But I also found some reassuring news which were a few gems in the form of sample chapters from Winds of Winter.

Here is the link to Theon's chapter, while here is the link for Arriane Martel's chapter. 

I’m hoping that this would keep me sane for the mean time. Of course if that is not enough then the upcoming third season of Game of Thrones is just 67 days, 7 hours, 50 minutes and 53 seconds away, as I am writing this. (I’m not obsessed at all!)

So while I have begun with writing about how ending the book has made me as I am right now-eagerly waiting for anything to treat my DWDWS (patent pending). Let me now move on to write about how I found the book.

Well the only reason why I am suffering from DWDWS is because the book was so good.

It was definitely a lot better than its predecessor ‘A Feast for Crows’. George R.R. Martin does not waste any page with the beginning of the book. He gets right into the thick of all the action and events, remember he left out POV’s of characters from the fourth book, so in a Dance of Dragons you get to find out what happened to very important characters after not hearing anything from them in the previous book.

It is rather strange to keep in mind that the events in the fourth and fifth book are happening at the same time.  Some characters are mentioned in the fourth book to have fallen a certain fate but, not all is what it seems in the Game of Thrones world and Mr. Martin never runs out of surprises to keep you from literally shouting out.

There have been a number of times when I had to put down the book to shout out in frustration, excitement or anguish. My husband has gotten used to my sudden squeals when I’m reading. One time, he overheard me let out a deep, deep sigh, the kind of sigh that seems to come from the very depths of your being and he was all the way down the stairs and I was in our room on the second floor.

A Dance with Dragons does not let up with the action, not one part of the book was boring or dragging but of course Mr. Martin is also the best in creating cliffhangers that will just make you want to scream and scratch your nails on a black board.

For the book photo -op we thought it would be apt if we used a dragon figure that a guest during our wedding gave us as a gift. Although it is a Chinese dragon it is still a good companion for the book. 

While it’s amazing how Mr. Martin creates the POV chapters of each character to such a believable level that it feels like Westeros is a setting for a really complicated soap opera. You want to shout at the characters in the book- ‘No! No! Fool! You’ve got it wrong!’ You get so engrossed in their thoughts and plights you can’t help but feel sorry for characters that honestly don’t deserve your sympathy at all but their development from- very bad to very pitiful can move any heart of stone. You will find yourself rooting for characters you loathed in previous books. That’s how Mr. Martin can toy with your emotions-I’m just a roller coaster of emotions in his hands!

Another thing I really liked about the fifth book is that, unlike the previous books that had the name of the each character as the title of a chapter or POV. Mr. Martin has changed it up a bit by giving a more romantic title to the chapters (for example, instead of having the chapter named: ‘name of character’ (avoiding spoilers here) he would name the chapter ‘The Ghost of Winterfell’ or ‘The Iron Suitor’ etc. etc. I really liked that change- it gave for a more dramatic feel to it, although Mr. Martin already started doing this on the fourth book.

Book 5 of A Song of Fire and Ice series has also definitely increased the violence level of how the story is narrated. I remember cringing at details of gory battles (a lot of entrails went squirming out) even bodily waste was featured more than once. I never ever thought I would have to read ‘frozen feces’ or ‘shat’ which is the obvious past tense of ‘shit’.

The added violence and graphic descriptions obviously helped in giving the story of a more realistic touch- there will be no censoring here; you get the good, the bad and the ugly.

I’m really not the ‘spoilers’ type especially when writing a review, I won’t be writing about what will happen in the book instead, I will tell you how much I enjoyed reading the books. Definitely ‘A Dance with Dragons’ is part of my top two among the five books, the other being the third book ‘A Storm of Swords.’

There should actually be a disclaimer on the book stating that there is possibility that you would suffer from the effects of DWDWS but of course if you are already about to read the fifth book in the series, it just means that you have already fallen under George R. R. Martin’s spell and you are already happily caught in his web upon a web of stories, plots, secrets and surprises, all basic elements when you are playing the Game of Thrones.