Review of A Feast For Crows

A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think I may be coming off a Game of Thrones high, since I almost gave this book four stars instead of three. But then I read a few of the other reviews on this site and came back to my senses. Through most of thE book, I was bored silly and hated a lot of the new storylines introduced. I'm well aware that this is only half of an even grander story, but I feel like George R.R. Martin could have done a better job of splitting the two stories in half. At the end of the book, Martin talks about how he thought about leaving a "To be continued", as his initial plan was to have all of the characters present, and to spread the book's legs out a bit more. But instead, he decided to split the characters of this story in half, which in the end, I think was a bad move. Better to have half of a story with interesting characters dispersed throughout, rather than half of a story with only boring characters instead. That just doesn't fly in my book. Pacing is everything to me, and this one mostly moves at a snail's pace throughout. Only the last 100 pages or so are thrilling.

That said, Martin is too good a writer to give this book any less than three stars. If I was able to read through 976 pages, then it couldn't have been that bad, right? And it wasn't. I've put down shorter books than this because I couldn't get through them, so the fact that I finished this one is a testament to Martin's storytelling. Even the boring stuff is worth reading, I guess.

If you've read the other three books, then you have to read this one. You'll suffer through most of it, but will feel rewarded in the end. I look forward to A Dance of Dragons.

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