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Archive for A Storm of Swords

Game of Thrones – Episode 30

Jun09

game-thrones-dragon-posterTitle: Game of Thrones

Genre: Historical Fantasy

Watched: Episode 30 – June 9, 2013

Title: Mhysa

Summary: Satisfying, but more staid

ANY CHARACTER HERE

After last weeks intense and narrow(er) focus, this week hits on each and every thread in Westeros (and beyond). The result is more diffuse, and is typical of GOT’s first/last episodes in that it’s mostly positioning the characters for the season to come. Still, there are some great moments like:

Arya and the Hound – Bolton ascends the keep to survey the chaos below. This part of the battle — achem, slaughter — feels big for TV, and it’s good to see it on screen (unlike the seige of Yunkai!). We zoom below through the chaos to follow the Hound fleeing with Arya. In the background is the grisly spectacle of the wolf head staples onto Robb’s body. This was suitably graphic and is a very medieval touch. Bodies of the vanquished were rarely treated with respect and this kind of symbol defilement is pretty  authentic.

Later, Arya and the Hound stumble (a tad too coincidentally) on a bunch of Frey soldiers boasting of their participation in the above grisly bit of business. Arya, now stripped of all hope and ties has only her connection with the God of Death left. She uses Jaqen’s coin (oh so appropriately) to trick and stab one — the hound finishes off the others. And so she moves into position.

I liked this moment, and it’s bit of savagery. Valar Morghulis.

Birds of a feather (a sharp one at that)

Birds of a feather (a sharp one at that)

Bolton and Frey – just in case we wondered exactly what happened, Walder Frey gives Bolton a bit of an info dump (including that Edmure is alive and the Blackfish on the loose) — certainly continuing to establish his self-serving character and Bolton’s cold one. Since it wasn’t totally clear to new viewers, Bolton takes a moment to fill us in about his bastard Ramsay and the (second) taking of Winterfell, which segues too…

Theon and Ramsay – Our nut job continues to  be quite effective. Not only does he tease poor Theon with a sausage, but he teaches him his new name. And so Reek is born. Another piece in position. Oh, and finally non-readers will (sort of) understand who the hell is holding (and chopping) Theon!

GRRM loves his boiled leather!

GRRM loves his boiled leather!

Balon and Yara/Asha – Ramsay sends a note to Balon along with “Theon’s favorite toy.” Poor Theon. Fortunately for us, we never see inside the box. Balon could care less, but Yara puts together a raiding party and a ship to go for a rescue. This felt a tad forced. Not that I begrudge Yara the sentiment, I just didn’t quite by the dialog.

Nice mood lighting

Nice mood lighting

Davos – has a chat with Gendry and they bond over their common origins in Fleabottom. This is fine, but hardly exciting stuff. Then Davos continues his reading practice with Shireen and stumbles across a note from the Night’s Watch. He goes to Stannis  to argue (again) against sacrificing Gendry. We’ve heard it before. Then he sets the boy free himself in a boat and returns to confess his treason. Stannis sentences him to death, but when Davos shows the note from Castle Black Mel steps in to save him and divert the king in this direction. Piece on the move.

Don't fall in!

Don’t fall in!

Bran – and crew approach the night fort. While camping inside Bran tells a creepy tale of a cannibal cook that is partially lifted (by Martin) from Herodotus (the first historian back in our world). They think they hear a ghost, quite effectively, but it’s just Gilly and Sam. When Sam recognizes Bran he tries to get him to come with them to Castle Black, but Bran knows he must go North of the Wall. Still, Sam passes on his dragonglass.

Soon, Sam and Gilly make it back to Castle Black where after long absence Maester Aegon returns. I nice scene, and I like the old man as well as ever.

Jon – is washing his eagle scratches when Ygritte catches up with him. Nicely done and touching, he speaks the truth and professes their love, and she, also now choosing loyalty has to shoot him. Kudos for excellent use of “you know nothing, Jon Snow.”

A wounded Jon escapes, then rides up to and collapses outside Castle Black. Sam and Pip drag him in. This last felt a little quick and forced.

Don't mess with a woman scorned!

Don’t mess with a woman scorned!

Tyrion – strolls with his wife (and Shae just a step behind). Their banter and building friendship is nicely handled. Pod flirting in the background is a nice little nod to the squire’s “bedroom powers.”

But when he’s summoned to a small council the company isn’t so nice. The news of Robb’s death has arrived and Joff takes every opportunity to gloat. The hostility between Joff and Tyrion, obvious enough before, continues to ferment. Tywin, however, has no time for the King’s nonsense, and quickly proves who has the power. Pieces in place.

Lannister road trips must've been a blast!

Lannister road trips must’ve been a blast!

The following conversation with Tywin and Tyrion is good as usual, full of both Tywin’s philosophy and more biting back and forth. This is a complex relationship. Can we say daddy issues? Ty doesn’t forget to remind the Imp of his duties in the bedroom. It seems dad knows he’s not sticking it to her — I wouldn’t thought Ty would keep this to himself.

When Tyrion returns to his wife to deliver the tough news she already knows, and what little trust he was beginning to build shattered. Like several critical moments this week, there is little or no dialog.

Later, Ty teaches Pod how to get drunk everyday, when Cersei arrives for another of her little chats with Tyrion. Again, as has happened a number of times in the show, they are actually slightly sympathetic to each other. As I’ve continued to state, show Cersei is much more likeable than book Cersei.

Two's company, three's... or don't mess with a woman scorned

Two’s company, three’s… or don’t mess with a woman scorned

Shae – meets up with Varys who attempts to bribe her into sailing away to another land. This continues to show Varys as a man who prefers the carrot to the stick, but Shae is having none of it, preferring to fight for her man.

Jaime and Brienne – arrive at Dubrovnik (I mean Kings Landing) after a long flight from Ireland. Due to jetlag no one recognizes him, but he must be persuasive because he gets back into the castle and finds Cersei. This segment felt quick and wasn’t a very satisfying ending to what was one of my favorite arcs in the first half of the season.

Dany – and crew wait outside Yunkai, which being a composite of some Moroccan town and CGI looks pretty great. A bunch of slaves emerge and she does another rousing speech and they declare her mother. This leads to crowd surfing, or really a tradition used (invented?) by the Roman army, in which victorious leaders are passed above the crowd. The first half of the scene felt a little cheesy, but the crowd, augmented with CGI extras, has a bit of scale at the end and the final up sweep with circling dragons is nice and rousing.

By ending the season each time with Dany, it seems the producers recognize her as the structural backbone of the larger multi-book story.

Look Ma, CGI Unsullied!

Look Ma, CGI Unsullied!

Overall, this was a solid episode with some good scenes, but the sheer breadth of handling every narrative thread left many of them feeling a little thin. I was also surprised we didn’t see the return of that other mother — next year I guess, for a lot of stuff. This was a great season, and it contains some of the scenes from the books. I think it solved the main season 2 problem of over-compression, allowing for more character moments, and upped the visual ante so that things felt big (gigantic for television even). Nicely done. Even if there were a few cheap outs — sacking of Yunkai! Given that GOT is now HBO’s second biggest show ever (after the Sopranos) we can hope season 4 is even bigger!

On a minor note, I’m disappointed not to see Olena or Marg in the finale.

Another excellent analysis of this episode.

If you liked this post, follow me at:

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or all my Game of Thrones posts or episode reviews:

Season 1: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

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The official “Inside the Episode”:

Related posts:

  1. Game of Thrones – Episode 29
  2. Game of Thrones – Episode 27
  3. Game of Thrones – Episode 21
  4. Game of Thrones – Episode 23
  5. Game of Thrones – Episode 12
By: agavin
Comments (2)
Posted in: Television
Tagged as: a game of thrones, A Storm of Swords, Episode 30, Fantasy, finale, Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin, HBO, Mhysa, Season 3, Season 3 Episode 30

A Dance With Dragons

Jul24

Title: A Dance With Dragons

Author: George R. R. Martin

Genre: Epic Fantasy

Length: 959 pages, circa 400,000 words

Read: July 12-23, 2011

Summary: Awesome, but not without issues.

ANY CHARACTER HERE

My charge through book 5 of Martin’s epic fantasy series was a bit drawn out by my need to concentrate on the second draft of my new novel Untimed, but I finally finished. Before I launch in, it should be noted that this review is full of spoilers.

Dance is huge, weighing in at nearly 1,000 pages. This itself is actually a welcome and comforting fact because these books are something to savor. Overall, I would rate this volume as better than A Feast of Crows and slightly worse than the first three. Still, it’s a fantastic book. Prose-wise, Martin is still a master at both people, places, plotting and reversals. It’s just that this book suffers from a few pacing and structural issues.

Most of these stem from his controversial decision to pull out half the characters from the bloated manuscript of Feast and push them into Dance by themselves. So the first two thirds of the new book is everyone who didn’t get a turn in Feast. Now, for the most part, this saved the best for last. Dany, Jon, and Tyrion make up the bulk of the book, particularly this first two thirds, and they are some of my favorite characters. But overall this leaves both Feast and Dance feeling a little more threadbare than the first three books. Personally I think he would have been much better off winding out the story chronologically, trimming out some useless threads (Aeron Damphair, Victarion, and probably the Dornes), and rearranging the plot so as to have some kind of sub-climax at the end of each book.

As it is, Dance reads excellently for the first 2/3, feeling fairly focused on its three mains. But it’s weird to rewind in time and revisit certain happenings from Feast from the other side (for example Sam leaving the Wall). When we get to the cut off point, however, some of the characters from Feast start to weave back in. This mostly has the effect of slowing the narrative and making it more diffuse. At least until the set of cliffhangers and deaths that come in the final chapters.

I also think that Martin is letting his pacing slip a bit. It’s not that each chapter isn’t entertaining and well written — they are — but many threads there have multiple chapters where the happenings could’ve been collapsed without loss. If we hadn’t known a few of those details were there, we would never have missed them. Worse than the pacing issues, however, is a weirdly increasing fondness for skipping some of the big moments. Now Martin has always done that (the Red Wedding, the “death” of Bran & Rickon, etc) but it’s worse than ever. He has a real tendency to build slowly toward a big event, then skip the event itself, showing what happened to the characters obliquely through other eyes at a much later point.

I’m going to go through some of my opinions and analysis thread by thread.

Prologue

I don’t really understand why fantasy authors are obsessed with these. It was kind of interesting, but didn’t advance anything.

Jon

His thread is fine (until the end), but it does feel a bit static. While he’s certainly grown into command, he mostly sits back at the wall and fields interference between factions (Stannis, his queen, the Red Priestess, the Wildlings) etc. Then at the end, he mysteriously decides to rush off to Winterfell. This is a move that makes no sense as he has refused to enter into family entanglements about six times before, and while he is goaded, there is really less at stake for him. Then out of nowhere comes a reaction to this decision that leaves us in a bad cliffhanger. Boo.

Tyrion

The Imp is funny as always and now I can hear Peter Dinklage cracking each and every droll line. Still his thread is also a little dragged out, although it does involve some great sightseeing and is certainly entertaining all along. In the first part of the book it feels like he (and everyone else) is heading toward Dany, but then he gets within inches and turns back. Using him to introduce us to Griff and “Young Griff” is however an excellent device and works much better than an extra POV would have. It is mostly through Tyrion and Dany that we get a sense of the complex and old slave societies of the mainland. Unlike Westeros which feels like late Medieval England, these realms feel more like the ancient east (perhaps an updated Babylon vibe).

Dany

Her chapters are mostly political. She does feel a bit passive. I don’t really understand why she doesn’t try to get a handle on her dragons earlier, this is obviously a key move which could trump all of her political problems. Instead she dicks around (literally and figuratively) with various factions. This is all fairly entertaining, but feels like treading water. Then “a big event occurs” (at least this one is on screen) and she rides off on Drogon. That’s all great, but her narrative disappears until the last chapter. When it returns nothing is resolved at all, but a new out of the blue cliffhanger is introduced. I do really like the world of Meereen and the slave cities, although it feels like we are lingering here a bit long.

Barristan

The hero serves to replace Dany as the POV in Meereen. He’s actually a great POV character with all his lingering thoughts about events during and before Robert’s Rebellion. I really enjoyed his chapters. But they didn’t come to any resolution.

Theon

The hier to the seastone chair returns to us, a few bits worse for the wear. I hated Theon in books 2 & 3, but I enjoyed his chapters immensely here. His transformation into Reek and back again is very deftly handled, with a very proper (and sordid) period quality. It isn’t for no reason that Tarantino used the phrase “medieval on his ass” and that is exactly what the Bastard of Bolton has done to Theon. His pseudo redemption is good. Still, we have classic Martin avoidance of the action with the actual escape from Winterfell. In the cut between Theon jumping from the wall into the snows and his delivery to his sister is a big blank. Not that we needed the travel, but whatever battle happened at Winterfell needed some detailing.

Asha

I could have lived without her POV. It mostly serves to fill in some parts of Stannis’s story when he leaves the wall. The technique is sketchy and I ended up having no idea what really happened during his brutal snowy march and the seige of Winterfell. This I thought was the weakest part of the book structurally, as I’m basically confused.

Quentin and the Dornes

Cut! Dull for the most part, except for some info about the cultures they traveled through. I couldn’t have cared less for these characters. The attempt to steal a dragon was interesting, but was also vaguely described. I’m thinking that Martin, for all his brilliance as a character and world builder, isn’t actually the best at action scenes.

The Dorne chapter back in Dorne: It was okay, but we didn’t really need it.

Jaime

This sucked. I like Jaime’s POVs, but this single chapter had a bunch of crap, followed by one of those annoying Martin reveals that just serve to highlight the gap in information. Brienne returns and they ride off. You don’t find out how she escaped her predicament, what she knows, anything. It just kinda sucked. The effect of her cliffhanger was entirely spoiled.

Cersei

These were pretty good, and I enjoyed seeing her get hers. Martin certainly knows how to throw in the creepy little details so your mind fills in the rest.

Victarion

Cut! I could have lived without these, and they basically just told you he was heading off to Dany with a horn and a Red Priest. Although he’s better than his brother — I’d take any chapter over Aeron Damphair.

Arya

These were great. I have no idea where they’re going, but that’s fine. Arya has always been one of my favorites. Give us more. To be honest it felt like these were the chapters that should have gone in Feast and this the conclusion that book should have had for Arya’s thread. Probably that was Martin’s original plan.

Bran

His chapters were good, but so little, and it all felt dropped as his last chapter is about midway in the book.

Davos

I’ve never been a fan. I think we could have just had these told by raven.

Epilogue

This was actually very good, really being a Kevan in King’s Landing chapter in disguise. I loved the return of Varys at the end — particularly his dialog.

Some observations: There is more magic of sorts in this volume. Martin has a real thing for nubile slave girls — but then again, what self respecting fantasist doesn’t? The scope of this book, with it’s gigantic foreign cities reminiscent of the ancient world is going to make for some hard adapting should the TV series get this far. As I noted in my series reviews the show already has problems with handling large scale people scenes. These slave cities and the like will make that even harder. Likewise with the slave sex and slave violence. I’m all over it (in fiction) but some of it will undoubtedly have to be cut/changed. Sigh. I like that Martin at least highlights some of the sad reality of actually being a nubile slave girl.

Overall, Martin’s books are among my all-time favorite novels. I enjoyed the book immensely, and eagerly await the the next volume (and I’m sure I’ll be waiting for a long time), but I can’t help but think it could have been SO much better if Martin had taken all the material in both Feast and Dragons and reedited them together into two chronological and slightly leaned down volumes.

If you liked this post, follow me at:

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Season 1: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

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Related posts:

  1. Inside Game of Thrones
  2. Game of Thrones – Episode 5
  3. Game of Thrones – The Houses
  4. Game of Thrones – Episode 2
  5. Game of Thrones – Episode 3
By: agavin
Comments (6)
Posted in: Books
Tagged as: A Dance with Dragons, A Feast for Crows, A Song of Ice and Fire, A Storm of Swords, Fantasy, Fiction, Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin, HBO, High fantasy, Major houses in A Song of Ice and Fire, Novel, Novel Review, novels, Peter Dinklage, Television program
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