Perils & Pleasures of Reading George R.R. Martin

In the months and years leading up to the publication of A Dance With Dragons, the fifth book in George R.R. Martin’s A Song Of Ice And Fire series, Martin kept contact with his fans via a LiveJournal account. In his “Not A Blog” blog, Martin would announce upcoming events, offer spirited commentary on the current football season, and, occasionally, let people know how the book was going. His readers were eager for news. The first ASOIAF novel, A Game Of Thrones, was published in 1996, with subsequent volumes A Clash Of Kings and A Storm Of Swords hitting stores in every two years. But it was five years after Swords before A Feast For Crows, the series’ fourth entry, was released. The wait was frustrating enough for fans, but Crows was also a compromised novel, in many ways more of a stop-gap measure than a satisfying narrative, full of well-crafted but seemingly irrelevant plot threads that failed to deliver the same thrills as the series’ first three books.