Posted 26 June 2012 - 08:04 AM
Agree, Jon'll warg into Ghost and get reborn. Likely by Melisandre, but there were those visions where he was in black ice armour with a sword of fire... what are the chances he comes back an Other? Theoretically he's the song of Ice and Fire, but GRRM's been so miserly with info that it could all change. He does need to be better with his warging.
As for Dance, it dragged! "Where do whores go", "much and more", "must needs", "nipples on a breastplate", "words are wind"...faaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrkkkk. Dude seems to just fall in love with certain words and then flogs 'em! Dany went from ass kicker who freed the slaves to sooo Katy Perry. Reeeeally luuurved the blow-by-blow super descriptive writing on dyssentry, poolitzer $hit right there! Then there was the whole paragraph describing the food stocks in the stores of Castle Black... seriously:
"In the granaries were oats and wheat and barley, and barrels of coarse ground flour. In the rootcellars strings of onions and garlic dangled from the rafters, and bags of carrots, parsnips, radishes, and white and yellow turnips filled the shelves. One storeroom held wheels of cheese so large it took two men to move them. In the next, casks of salt beef, salt pork, salt mutton, and salt cod were stacked ten feet high. Three hundred hams and three thousand long black sausages hung from ceiling beams below the smokehouse. In the spice locker they found peppercorns, cloves, and cinnamon, mustard seeds, coriander, sage and clary sage and parsley, blocks of salt. Elsewhere were casks of apples and pears, dried peas, dried figs, bags of walnuts, bags of chestnuts, bags of almonds, planks of dry smoked salmon, clay jars packed with olives in oil and sealed with wax. One storeroom offered potted hare, haunch of deer in honey, pickled cabbage, pickled beets, pickled onions, pickled eggs, and pickled herring."
178 words! Don't even get me started on the turtles! Cant' believe this is the same guy that wrote Game of Thrones... two battles coming up, none eventuated, talk about blue balls! Martell - such tedious journey just ended up literally flaming out. Not that I didn't expect it once I was reading the chapter.
And yet the potential in the series is still there, but with two books to go, none of the protagonists have reached their goals. In fact they've only reached the point where they begin becoming who they need to be - Arya just started assassin training; Bran just began Greenseer training; Jon has been LCC, but he hasn't led anyone in battle; Dany failed again as Queen. Given the pace of the last 2 books I don't see how this gets resolved in 2 books.
"The harder the world, the fiercer the honour" - Dancer