Submitted by Essord  (Nov 19, 2005)In the 4th book of A Song of Fire and Ice, Martin picks up right where he left 5 years ago, at the same high level and quality. The pace is good, not too fast or too slow, and each chapter has its own power and depth. Again we see a wide caleidoscopic view throught many characters and this time several temporary new viewpoints are added which enrich the scope of the story, because the persons from which the story is viewed in the chapters is limited and now we see more of all the events that are happening in Westeros.
And again those events are quite dramatic with many new unexpected twists. That's what A Song of Ice and Fire makes such a great fantasy series: Martin manages to truely create a quite unpredictable story, while many others often follow too predictable paths. Martin certainly did a fine job in the development of Cersei through the course of events in the story.
One warning though: to be able to finish some storylines in this book, Martin has put the new events in the North and about Daenerys in book 5 when he noticed his novel got too large to publish in one novel, so the people who are desperately waiting for new events there will have to wait, but not again 5 years, since Martin has written half of book 5 already.
In this book Martin starts a few new developments that make me wonder a bit about the timeline of the story. The current pace seems it hard for those developments to finish in time, so I'm interested in how this will be resolved in a satisfactory way. But I have faith in George R. R. Martin's ability to do so.
With this new book A Song of Ice and Fire remains one of the best fantasy series around, even after a wait of 5 years. It certainly was worth it.
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