A Dance with Dragons

A Dance with Dragons, the fifth volume of A Song of Ice and Fire,  despite being one of the more concise volumes in the series, containing virtually only three main plots – which helps to move the narrative forward –, still suffers from the remnants of the bad planning surrounding the previous book, A Feast for Crows.

A Dance with Dragons follows stories that take place in two main locations: the North of Westeros, especially around the colossal wall of ice, focusing on the characters of Jon Snow and King Stannis; and the continent of Essos, with Queen Daenerys.

The stories of Daenerys and Jon share the same argument, that being a good person does not necessarily entail having the ability to lead. Khaleesi knows that she needs to prove that she’s capable of ruling a city if she wants to conquer all of Westeros, and therefore remains in Meereen, where she discovers that the search for justice can poison one’s soul and, even more importantly, that notions of morality and ethics sometimes need to be severely twisted or neglected if one wants to remain in power: it may be impossible to rule without corrupting oneself. Meanwhile, the new Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch must at the same time deal with the growing supernatural threat of the White Walkers, with betrayals and intrigues within his own organization, and with the more frequent demands of Stannis, Melisandre, and their small army.

There’s also the plot involving the imminent war for the control of the North. With Winterfell devastated and the Starks broken and scattered, the sinister House Bolton, whose main symbol is a flayed man, becomes the official “protector of the North”, thanks to the support of the Lannisters. However, to be able to consolidate its power it needs to extinguish Stannis. The book, then, initially switches between these three plots, with some brief pauses for some minor ones, such as Davos’ mission to get support for his King; Bran’s psychedelic search for the Three-eyed Crow; and the journey of everyone who is traveling to meet with Daenerys – like Tyrion and the innocent Prince of Dorne, Quentyn Martell.

Daenerys has the longest and most complex chapters in the book. Her rule in the city of Meereen can be considered her biggest test for the future legitimacy of her still remote conquest of Westeros. Holding a crown, Daenerys needs to stop the murder of her people by a local rebel group, fight an army of slave traders, contain a plague that is decimating most of the population, and even control her own dragons, which are becoming even more rebellious, violent, and dangerous. It doesn’t take long, then, for her to understand why people say that conquering a city is much easier than keeping it.

Her not entirely trustworthy advisers reveal to Daenerys the paths she can take in each situation. The scheming Resnak, for example, leans into more bureaucratic tactics of persuasion and diplomacy (“Your majesty should marry to calm the slavemasters,” he would say). The violent Skahaz, on the other hand, offers more brutal proposals (“Or maybe kill them all during your wedding”), while the noble Barristan Selmy functions as a living reminder of her true goal, (“Forget all this slavery nonsense and go to Westeros,” he would advise). With these pillars exposing three possible choices to tackle each problem, Daenerys’ development turns into a character study, in which every decision – good and bad, noble and violent – contributes to her growth, forming who she is. To that end, the narrative also reveals the character’s inner conflicts, displaying even shades of sexual frustration, to the point where she screams at her lover: “I am your queen and I command you to fuck me.” This helps to make her more tangible to the reader, functioning as a fine counterpoint to the shades of inscrutable power and mercilessness that her dreadful dragons cast on her.

Jon Snow, on the other hand, as the youngest Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, proves to be a wiser if equally harsh leader. The novel develops him well through the contrast between his response to those of his own order who refuse to obey him and his amicable relationship with their supposed enemies, the wildlings, in which he assumes the stance of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. His growing affinity with Stannis is also noteworthy: by always giving honest but respectful answers to the “king”, Jon practically takes the place of Davos as Stannis’ advisor, and it is extremely gratifying to watch their relationship grow to become something akin to a friendship, with one rooting for the success of the other – a bond that is imperative to make Jon’s inconsequential action at the end sound plausible.

And finally, we have the plot that takes place in Winterfell, told mostly from the perspective of the Greyjoys. To present Ramsay Bolton as a villain even more unidimensionally evil than Joffrey and more brutal than Gregor Clegane, George R. R. Martin gives Theon a penalty greater than one would imagine. Transformed into Ramsay’s pet, the once heir to the throne of the Iron Islands is tortured and humiliated constantly. Theon has his fingers skinned, he is hunted down for sport, beaten, burned, and even used to make Ramsay’s wife more “wet” to his Lord. The torture twists Theon’s personality to the point that it affects his own identity  (“Serve and obey and remember your name. Reek, Reek, it rhymes with meek,” he thinks) and is still but a small display of Bolton’s sick personality – Ramsay likes to hunt women in the woods, rape and kill them, give their names to dogs, and even make a pair of boots with their skins. On the other hand, the chapters that focus on Theon’s sister, Asha Greyjoy, only serve to give the complete picture of the siege to Winterfell, since her point of view doesn’t add anything new to Stannis’ march to war.

Even though these are the three main plots in the novel, Tyrion gets virtually the same amount of chapters as the other main characters to tell all his misadventures to get to Daenerys. After a sudden change of personality in the third book, Tyrion returns to his time of glory of A Clash of Kings, when even in completely unfavorable situations, he could turn things around thanks to his sharp tongue and endless wit. The only problem of his journey in A Dance with Dragons is its size, as Tyrion spends many, many,many pages just being thrown around in the world while trying to survive a multitude of adversities, never actually getting anywhere. 

But if the book had focused only on these main stories, with the slight pauses for Davos, Quentyn, and Bran, and completed them, A Dance with Dragons could still have been one of the best novels in the series. However, since life is an ocean of frustration, George R. R. Martin’s Ghost of Christmas Past haunts the book’s narrative and, as the author himself warns in a note at the beginning, the characters of A Feast for Crows return to complete the stories that should have been concluded in the previous novel.

Cersei, Jaime, Cat of the Canals, and Victarion all return to have chapters that should, in theory, end their arcs. Besides the obvious fact that these chapters should have been in the previous book, where they would not have made the narrative come to a sudden halt – for that one never moved in the first place –, they still have the same qualities and problems as before. While Cersei resumes her fascinating journey of self-destruction, Jaime’s story continues irrelevant and ends with one of the most gratuitous hooks in the whole series. Cat of the Canals, meanwhile, after approximately six extremely similar training chapters throughout two books, has her last one here almost end with the sentence “On the morrow you will go to Izembaro to begin your first apprenticeship.” Six chapters about training and her training is just starting, we can understand her frustration in a very primal, intimate level. And Victarion, of course, continues as disposable as ever, since he just keeps traveling to Essos and nothing more.

To make matters worse, with the entire book preparing the events for the battle between Stannis and Roose Bolton, it is a bit disappointing that the whole event is postponed and doesn’t transpire at the end. Just imagine what A Clash of Kings would be without the battle of Blackwater or The Two Towers without the battle of Helm’s Deep: they would be stories without their climaxes, without the parts that complete them and confer meaning to the whole thing. Now, to add insult to injury, Jon Snow’s arc ends in a predictable anticlimax, while Daenerys’ gets more and more convoluted as it gets close to the end, instead of marching to its conclusion. In other words,  the novel gets completely lost halfway in, without knowing where to go and what stories to tell – another victim of bad planning.

If the prose here appears to be a little more playful than in the previous books, having Theon rhyme his new name with words that explain what he is feeling at the time, for example, there are still a plethora of points of view and characters that serve little to no purpose. Melisandre’s chapter, for instance, serves only to hint at Jon’s high purpose, and nothing more, while the character of Jorah Mormont is reduced to a boring tour guide that provides tons of exposition.

A Dance with Dragons had great potential. With only three major plots, the book could have benefited from its more limited focus and substantially moved its storylines forward. And if the first half of the novel seems to fulfill that promise, the second demonstrates once again that perhaps George R. R. Martin has lost control of his creation.

December 04, 2018.

Originally published in Portuguese on March 11, 2015.