BloatedGuppy said:
AFFC and ADWD are two halves of a single volume. I've already admitted splitting the books favored neither of them, but even if you look at AFFC in a vacuum plenty happens. Just nothing you were interested in, apparently.
I know stuff happened in AFFC, but the problem is, Martin is so obsessed with minutiae that when the "stuff" finally comes, it's taken us nearly 700 pages to get there. AFFC and ADWD could have and should have been one novel, Cersei's arc could have been completed in about a third of the time allotted in the book. Instead, she spends 200 pages thinking everyone's an arsehole before she finally does something. I mean, whenever Margeary does something that looks like it'll make Cersei lose it, but no, she fumes mentally and does nothing. It seems as if Martin was trying to show Cersei being cautious for a change, but sitting on her arse all day and fuming to herself is not the way to do it. There is no drama.
200 pages, a quarter of the book is dedicated to this. It could have been done in about fifty pages.
Jamie's arc is full of nothing but inaction. That's great for Jamie, The Kingslayer is finally taking it slow. But the thing is, the rest of the book feels like nothing but inaction, and combined with the inaction of Jamie, it makes it all the worse. He gets bitched at by Cersei, roams the countryside, stays with relatives, gets bitched at by them, complains about Cersei's infidelity before finally going to Riverrun and negotiating peace. That sounds great, but as I said, compared with the inaction of the rest of the novel, it just looses all of it's punch.
And the Dornish folk, so many one off characters, all relatives of The Red Viper. They all want to go to war, but Oberyn says no. For most of their allotted time, it looks as if he's nothing but a giant wimp, but then near the end, it's revealed that he had a master plan all along, and it involves Dany, somehow, I don't know, it wasn't clear.
AFFC was nothing but tedium. Martin mentioned something about The Meereenese Knot of his story and how difficult it was to untangle it, drawing parallels to the Gordian Knot from the legends of Alexander the Great. Of course what Alexander did to that knot was cut it in half with his sword. That's what Martin should have done with AFFC, taken his authorial sword and cut the plot knot in half.
I should probably mention that this is all my opinion, informed by my own biases and not gospel truth. You can disagree with me and state why and I'll gladly receive it and respond, but it's doubtful you'll change my mind.
