OFFICIAL Game of Thrones Thread

[scurvyfreedman]



Are you really asking me what's wrong with kicking a child off a wall intending to send him to a horrific death?

It was a push. With his right hand. His sword hand. His severed hand.

 

[iamacyborg]

Anyway, Bran should have listened to his mother, he'd never have been in that situation if he'd just done what she told him to do.

 

[scurvyfreedman]



Spoiler

For families that are supposed to go back hundreds of years, they sure do seem to have pretty linear family trees, don't they?

Spoiler

It is somewhat odd. Aegon the Conquerer did kill off a large percentage of many of the families in the Field of Fire. The Lannisters seemed to have thrived, with a cadet branch at Lannisport besides the main branch at Casterly Rock. Plus, Jaime cannot even count his cousins. The Starks have the Karstark branch which goes pretty far back. Tullys are a relatively new Paramount House. As are the Greyjoys. But, Dorne has been relatively in seclusion. The Martells should be much bigger, even though their topography limits resources. The Tyrells, like the Tullys were raised by Aegon when their prior Lords Paramount were killed (Harren the Black from the Iron Islands - Riverlands weren't a Kingdom and the Gardners respectively). The Arryns go all the way back to the Andals and the Vale is quite fertile. The Starks, though are First Men. They go back even further. But, there seem to be a lot of Northern Civil Wars before the King Who Kneeled. Even two generations ago Skagos rebelled.

The Blackfyre Rebellion seems to have claimed a lot of lives, especially Targaryens.

Robert's Rebellion really culled the families. Starks lost Ned's father, brother and sister. Ned's mother was never discussed. Targaryens were down to two, maybe three. Baratheon already had lost Robert's parents at sea prior and he only had one uncle mentioned-although Patchface survived!- so it was Robert, Stannis, and the child Renly. Jon Arryn may have been shooting blanks. Robert is likely Littlefinger's spawn. They have a lost generation. Hoster and the Blackfish are all of the Tullys from that prior generation. The Martells have grown strong. The Greyjoy Rebellion and the Iron Islands lack of resources thinned that family.

 

[in stitches]



You're telling me that if you had the chance to kick some Bmore shithead off a belltower, with no witnesses, that you wouldn't jump at the chance? Come on man, we all know the score.

a kid. certainly not.

It was a push. With his right hand. His sword hand. His severed hand.

tomato potato asshole all the same.

 

[scurvyfreedman]

GRRM has finished two new books. No, neither of them are Winds of Winter.

One is a Wildcards book.

Another is a compilation he edited including a novella from the Song of Ice and Fire series. And, no, it's not a Dunk and Egg story. It's several generations before Dunk and Egg; the Dance of the Dragons.

Spoiler

But, I think it will foreshadow the Daenerys and Aegon upcoming war. The Dance of the Dragons was an internal Targaryen civil war over succession two generations before Baelor the Blessed. GRRM foreshadows a lot of the main series in the Dunk and Egg series. Shaved head Egg incognito with a large, honorable Knight. Not different than shaved head Jaime with Brienne (who is likely Ser Duncan's spawn).

In the Arienne Martell teaser chapter GRRM published on his website a year ago, she visits some Lord on her way to seduce Jon Connington (good luck). The Lord's daughter is odd and has green sight. She has a dream that the dragons were dancing and lots of people were dying. Has to be Aegon and Daenerys.

 

[in stitches]

FFS, how much am i going to have to read to understand this whole story?

 

[Piobaire]



FFS, how much am i going to have to read to understand this whole story?

It's like Torah study.

 

[scurvyfreedman]



FFS, how much am i going to have to read to understand this whole story?

You should start with AGoT. It's got a lot of backstory about Robert's Rebellion that was ignored on the show. It's an easy read, although somewhat slow b/c of the style of writing and all of the names and places that are unfamiliar. A Clash of Kings is quite different than the second TV season, but you'll be used to the writing style so it can go quicker. A Storm of Swords is the fastest read, although the longest. It's got the most character development of the vast majority of main characters. A Feast for Crows is the shortest and most upsetting for the first time reader b/c GRRM divides the story geographically and a LOT of the major characters do not appear at all and a lot of completely new characters are introduced on page for the first time (although many were mentioned previously). And, A Dance with Dragons is the most recent book, in hardcover only for a few more months at least. It covers the same timeframe as AFfC in the first half, so it catches you up on the characters that were MIA for close to a decade in print.

In total the main story is about 5000 pages. There are detailed family trees and maps in the back so they help you draw connections to characters.

The Dunk and Egg novellas are two generations prior to the current storyline. Some of the characters are still alive, but mostly it's two generations before. There are only three of those stories. They are shorter. Probably about 400 pages total, but history repeats it self quite a bit. The character who overlaps the two stories is off page mostly, but appears in the third book. But, his backstory is throughout. The connection, though is pretty hard to realize, until you've read a few things a couple times.

I read the main series twice before I read Dunk and Egg. Then, I've read the main series piecemeal, not straight through chronologically the third time through, rereading certain characters. The books are first person narrative style from different primary character perspectives. One thing to remember throughout is that the internal thoughts are usually honest, but there is no omnipotent narrator. But, the all are unreliable when it comes to what others are thinking and reports they hear from third persons.

Dive in!

 

[in stitches]

^^ thank you, that was very informative. ^^

It's like Torah study.

very well played.

 

[iamacyborg]

You guys should all read Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series btw.

 

[JustChris]

I would recommend reading Feast for Crows and Dance with Dragons simultaneously- two chapters from FFC, then one from DWD until you hit the point where DWD goes past FFC chronologically. That way FFC, which is the worst of the books, doesn't suck as much and all of the storylines mesh better, since they are supposed to be happening simultaneously.

By the time you finish all 5, the wait for the next book should be down to only 6 years or so.

 

[Neo_Version 7]

I actually agree with in_stitches. While I appreciate Jaime as a character, I don't sympathize with the guy. I, for one, am very glad he had his kid-shoving hand hacked off.

 

[scurvyfreedman]



I would recommend reading Feast for Crows and Dance with Dragons simultaneously- two chapters from FFC, then one from DWD until you hit the point where DWD goes past FFC chronologically. That way FFC, which is the worst of the books, doesn't suck as much and all of the storylines mesh better, since they are supposed to be happening simultaneously.

By the time you finish all 5, the wait for the next book should be down to only 6 years or so.

That's a good strategy for a re-read, but I really believe it's critical to read them in the order they were intended by the author. There are a few major reveals that would happen way too quickly if you know what's going on in the other geographic areas, rather than reports back to the characters of AFfC. I enjoyed AFfC a lot more the second time I read it. The first time I was like- WTF, where are x,y, and z? And, the reports of some of them are classic GRRM style.

Spoiler

The unreliable, but trustworthy to the reader, narrator tells you something about someone else that turns out not to be true. See: Davos' storyline as reported in AFfC

Then, in ADwD we get to see the first person version of the same story. The cliffhanger is destroyed if you get the answer immediately or before you get the report in AFfC.

 

[JustChris]

I kinda think my way is closer to the way GRRM intended them. He had too much to put in one book and he still wasn't finished, so he made the choice to split up the manuscript geographically. He said at the time that it was the best of a couple of bad options. Also, the foreword to DWD says, "Rather than being sequential, the two books are parallel ... divided geographically, rather than chronologically." However, DWD covers more time than FFC, so about 3/4 of the way through the book, the narratives merge and it continues in a unified manner. So he wrote the first couple hundred pages at the same time he wrote all of FFC and the narratives are chronologically concurrent. It makes sense to me to read them that way.

I read FFC when it was first published and mostly hated it, since it focused on all the characters I dislike the most. Then, when DWD was finally published, I read Storm of Swords to refresh my memory and read FFC and DWD the way I described. It made FFC bearable and both books actually seemed to track better than they would have if I had read them separately.

 

[worakl]

I kinda think my way is closer to the way GRRM intended them. He had too much to put in one book and he still wasn't finished, so he made the choice to split up the manuscript geographically. He said at the time that it was the best of a couple of bad options. Also, the foreword to DWD says, "Rather than being sequential, the two books are parallel ... divided geographically, rather than chronologically." However, DWD covers more time than FFC, so about 3/4 of the way through the book, the narratives merge and it continues in a unified manner. So he wrote the first couple hundred pages at the same time he wrote all of FFC and the narratives are chronologically concurrent. It makes sense to me to read them that way.

I read FFC when it was first published and mostly hated it, since it focused on all the characters I dislike the most. Then, when DWD was finally published, I read Storm of Swords to refresh my memory and read FFC and DWD the way I described. It made FFC bearable and both books actually seemed to track better than they would have if I had read them separately.

Is there some sort of PDF-version that actually merges them in a decent way?