A Song of Ice and Fire Series Review Part 3: The Seven Kingdoms Have Exploded into a Storm of Swords

 

A Song of Ice and Fire Book 3: A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin

Spoiler Warning

This review contains spoilers for both the novel and the HBO television adaptation Game of Thrones. 

Content Warning

This review contains mentions of slavery, extreme violence, child marriage, and sexual assault. 

Introduction 

To most, this is the true masterpiece of George R.R. Martin's epic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire. To many other fans, they have decided that this novel will suffice as their makeshift ending to the story if Martin never finishes the series. Others consider this the last truly great novel in the series, with some fans being disappointed by books four and five. One thing that I think most Ice and Fire fans can agree on is that A Storm of Swords, from start to finish, is one hell of a ride.

The third Ice and Fire installment picks up after the events of the War of the Five Kings in book two, with Renly Baratheon dead, Joffrey's hold on the Iron Throne secured in his betrothal to Margaery Tyrell, Stannis Baratheon regrouping at Dragonstone, Robb Stark continuing his fight for Northern independence, and Balon Greyjoy's dominion over the North tenuous--as his daughter Asha and brother Victarion still hold lands there, but Theon lost Winterfell (the heart of the North) to Ramsay Snow.

A Storm of Swords is the longest installment in the Ice and Fire series to date, originally being published in two volumes to accommodate its massive size, and the HBO adaption Game of Thrones opting to split the vents of this novel into two seasons instead of one (seasons three and four), a choice I agree with. So many major plot points and events occur in this novel, truly one right after the other in nearly every chapter. Trying to cram it all in just ten episodes would have been a massive disservice to such an intense story. 

Summary & Review

The first thing I have to get out of the way is just to say how supremely Martin built up to the infamous Red Wedding (if you know, you know). As shocking and horrendous as the event was, when you consider every aspect of Robb's storyline from both this novel and the previous, it really feels like you should have seen it coming from a mile away because Martin did nothing to hide the Freys' fury at Robb's betrayal, or to hide Walder Frey's untrustworthy slimy nature, nor did he hide that Roose Bolton was most closely associated with the Freys the entire time. There's also the fact that Bolton's bastard son sacks and claims Winterfell at the end of A Clash of Kings, which should leave the reader with a linger suspicious about Bolton's intentions in this novel. 

I also think that the events leading up to the Red Wedding were more complex in Martin's original version of the story than in HBO's adaptation, which makes the wedding itself more of a tragedy, and it also gives Robb's death much more weight. In the show, the buildup is watered down to a star-crossed lovers' tragedy; Robb betrays his marriage pact with Walder Frey because he falls in love with Talisa, marries her instead of Frey's daughter, and Frey takes his vengeance against Robb's entire host. But in the novels, the conspiracy is so much deeper. 

Robb didn't exactly betray Walder Frey because he was horny and in love with a gorgeous battlefield medic from all the way across the world who engages in flirty banter with him. There is no Talisa Maegyr in A Song of Ice and Fire. Instead, we have Jeyne Westerling. The important thing to understand about Jeyne is that her family are Lannister bannermen, and she should be Robb's enemy because of that. However, when Robb is off fighting his wars in the Westerlands, he gets wounded in battle, and Jeyne and her mother Sybell Spicer care for him and nurse him back to health, leading to the false impression that they aren't actually loyal to the Lannisters just because Tywin is their liege lord.

Yes, Robb does have sex with Jeyne, and it's probably a mistake, but it was truly a moment of both physical and emotional weakness. He was in bad shape from his injuries and still recovering from them. On top of that, he had just learned that Theon Greyjoy--someone he loved as a brother--had supposedly murdered his own little brothers, and Jeyne was the one there to comfort him through it. Keep in mind too that Robb Stark, in the novels, is only fifteen--not a fully matured adult. His slight transgression in the moment is mostly understandable (and, of course, there's also that popular fan theory that Sybell used a love/lust potion on Robb, as she is the granddaughter of the woods-witch Maggy the Frog, who gave young Cersei Lannister her self-fulfilling prophecy of doom).

This is where the true tragedy began because Robb never intended to break his marriage pact with the Freys, but after sleeping with Jeyne, he had to weigh his options. What if she got pregnant? If he didn't marry her, it would be a bastard with a family sworn to House Lannister. If he did marry her, though, and Jeyne had a child, it would be the heir to his kingdom. And even if she's not pregnant, it's considered highly dishonorable to take a noble woman's virginity and not marry her, and that's not how Ned Stark would have raised his son. And after all, the Freys are still Tully bannermen and they have to keep fighting for House Tully (who fight for House Stark) even if Robb doesn't marry Walder Frey's daughter, right? It's their sworn duty.

*sigh*

By marrying Jeyne Westerling, Robb made the decision that he clearly believed was the lesser of two evils, that would cause the least damage to the war effort, and he was following in the footsteps of poor Ned Stark. But unfortunately for him, he played right into the Lannisters' hands by making this choice; this was literally the choice that Tywin wanted him to make. Jeyne's mother Sybell had written to Tywin Lannister the moment Robb Stark showed up on their land with the hope that "nature would take its course" between Robb and Jeyen, and the conspiracy between Tywin, Sybell, Walder Frey, and Roose Bolton had already begun long before Robb officially married Jeyne. Though it's relatively unclear how and when Roose Bolton became involved, but involving Frey was clearly purposeful as Tywin likely predicted that Frey would be willing to turn his cloak if Robb betrayed him. There's even a moment before the wedding, when Tyrion walks in on his father writing a message fervently, and Tywin explains that some wars are won with swords, but others are won with quill and ink. That line alone should have warned us that he had a plan to defeat Robb Stark, as they've already defeated Stannis at the Blackwater, and he hasn't made a move against them since. 

This is all really the true tragedy of the Red Wedding--not just that Robb and all his men got murdered, or that Frey betrayed them after Robb tried to make amends for his previous transgression against their family. No. The tragedy is that Robb tried to do everything right to prevent such a disaster from occurring, to hold on to the fight for his people's independence, but that Tywin Lannister simply outsmarted him. Robb won every battle, but he still lost the war. Because Tywin conspired and predicted the choices that Robb would make, and he used the outcome of his choices against him, to defeat him, and all of it was planned from the moment that Robb first crossed paths with Jeyne Westerling. The significance of all this is lost in the change of Jeyne to Talisa Maegyr from Volantis because, not only does it weaken Robb's decision to marry her, but it also weakens Tywin's entire conspiracy leading up to the Red Wedding. 

Having the Freys play "The Rains of Castamere" (the Lannister song) at the wedding itself and tip off Catelyn Stark to the slaughter that's about to occur is just an extra gut punch from Martin because, by that point, he had already made it plain as day that Tywin had bested Robb. This was done just to tip off the readers who still hadn't put all the pieces together, and it's devastating. In fact, the entire Red Wedding sequence is so devastating (in the most well-constructed and well-written way) because any reader who didn't figure out that something bad was going to happen sooner is now slowly figuring it out alongside Catelyn as she realizes that something is amiss. And by that point, it's too late. Telling it from her perspective is also effective because you don't just get the slaughter, but you also get the emotional aspect of Catelyn having to watch her son be murdered before she gets killed herself. She dies believing all her sons are dead, her youngest daughter is probably dead, and her only living child is a captive in the hands of the Queen. 

Now the rains weep over his halls with not a soul to hear, indeed. 

Just like the Red Wedding, the deeper meaning of Tyrion and Sansa's wedding is also so much more in the novels than it ever was in the show. I discussed briefly in my previous ASOIAF review, but the show always portrayed Sansa Stark as more of a damsel in distress than she really was in the source material by taking out key aspects of her character development and her maturation. 

In the show, Sansa swoons at the prospect of being wed to her crush Loras Tyrell, sobs when she learns she has to marry Tyrion, and then goes with grace to her wedding and her marriage bed (though Tyrion refused to consummate). In the novel, however, Sansa is asked to marry Margaery's eldest brother (non-existent in the show), Wyllis Tyrell, the heir to Highgarden. Sansa is smart enough to figure out on her own that Tyrells only want her to marry Wyllis because with Bran and Rickon supposedly dead and Robb a rebel at war, she's the heir to Winterfell should Robb fall. They are making a power-play with her, and she only goes along with it because it's her ticket out of King's Landing and away from Joffrey and Cersei, as well as it means her son will be the Lord of Winterfell someday, so she will name her son Eddard, so that an Eddard with the blood of House Stark can rule the North again one day. Her decision to agree to the marriage is every bit as much political as the Tyrells proposing it in the first place. 

Of course, Tywin acts immediately after they discover the marriage arrangement, because of course, Tywin already known the Red Wedding is coming and knows that Sansa is about to become the heir to Winterfell a lot sooner than anyone realized, so he has to destroy the Tyrell marriage match as soon as possible. So once it's determined that Sansa is marrying Tyrion Lannister instead of Wyllis Tyrell, does she weep and then go with grace to her marriage like in the show?

No.

In fact, the Lannister never even told Sansa she was to marry Tyrion ahead of time. She was in her room trying on gowns for Joffrey's wedding when she was dragged against her will to her own wedding in the Sept without even knowing she was meant to be a bride. And when Tyrion couldn't reach her shoulders to cloak her, did Sansa Stark bend down and submit to her new Lannister husband?

No.

She stayed rigid and stood tall. She would not kneel so that Tyrion could wrap her in Lannister colors. Her act of defiance was not specifically about trying to humiliate Tyrion. It was simply the only act of defiance that she had in that moment. It was to tell the Lannisters that they could beat her, humiliate her, imprison her, and force her to wed, but they could not and would not ever get her to bend the knee to them. 

It's such a strong, subtle moment of character development, showing the depth for which Sansa's loyalty to her family actually goes--despite her earlier devotion to Joffrey in book one. Tyrion's reaction to her revulsion of him is also dripping with intricate characterization. When Sansa is disgusted by the idea of consummating her marriage with Tyrion, Tyrion doesn't consider that it's because of what his family has done to hers, and he doesn't consider her age as a factor (she's twelve, Tyrion, of course she doesn't want to sleep with you). For him, it comes back to his personal internal conflicts--his insecurity over his appearance (worsened since his entire nose was literally lopped off his face during the Battle of the Blackwater), and of the wounds that his relationship with Tysha left him. 

Tyrion has been living out his Tysha-fantasy with Shae for the entirety of their relationship. As far as Tyrion was ever aware, Tysha was supposedly a prostitute who his brother Jaime hired to be with Tyrion, and she pretended to love him to gain money from his rich family. So now Tyrion is playing out this fantasy where he thinks he is falling in love with Shae, despite the fact that he's paying her for her affection and her constant desire for riches. He wants to pretend that Shae, also a prostitute, could fall in love with him for real because he wants so desperately to believe that maybe Tysha truly loved him. And the deeper issue here is that Tyrion doesn't believe that any woman could ever love him, and his marriage to Sansa reinforces that. She doesn't want him, and that's understandable (again, I stress, she's twelve), but to Tyrion, this only reinforces his deepest insecurities. 

The kicker of this aspect of Tyrion's characterization is the ending, when we learn from Jaime that Tysha was never a prostitute. Jaime lied on Tywin's orders. Tysha did love Tyrion. That when Tywin Lannister let all of his guards pay Tysha for sex, they were all raping her, and that Tyrion (by Tywin's command) was forced to rape his own wife, when Tywin had Tyrion (only thirteen at the time) participate last and pay Tysha with a gold coin. This is one hell of a motivator for patricide. 

Not to say that the fact that Tywin abused Tyrion his entire life and sentenced him to execution for a crime he didn't commit by itself isn't enough motivation. This is what they did in the show, and some fans think it took away Tyrion's entire motivation to kill Tywin. I disagree. He still had plenty. The Tysha revelation simply added a deeper layer in both the murder of Shae and Tywin--Tywin for obvious reasons, and Shae, which almost seemed like more of a punishment that Tyrion was trying to inflict on himself rather than on Shae for betraying him at his trial. He had tricked himself into believing Shae was the prostitute who loved him, and Tysha had been the traitorous gold-digger, and in truth, it was the other way around. 

Of course, the entirety of the Purple Wedding and the subsequent trial for Tyrion is a treat. Not just because we got to see Joffrey Baratheon finally die, but because it's all so good--the trial itself, Oberyn's fight with the Mountain in his trial-by-combat, and of course, Jaime's decision to free his little brother from imprisonment and set him free before his execution (a betrayal of Cersei too, mind you). 

It also blows my mind how intricately Littlefinger arranged the entire thing from as early as book two. His scheme, as I understand it, is as follows:

1. Ride to Highgarden and make the marriage match between Joffrey and Margaery Tyrell.
2. Spread rumors throughout Highgarden that Joffrey was abusive, so that Olenna would not want Margaery to marry him.
3. Propose the scheme to Olenna that if the rumors against Joffrey are true (which he knows the are, because everyone has already seen him abuse Sansa) they can poison Joffrey and wed Margaery to Tommen instead.
4. Send Ser Dontos Hollard (a disgraced knight turned fool) to befriend Sansa with the promise of getting her out of King's Landing to gain her trust. 
5. Hire the three Kettleblack brothers and their father and send the brothers to King's Landing as members of the City Watch to sew discord between Cersei and Tyrion.
6. Take credit for Tyrion's idea to wed Joffrey to Margaery, so that he gains the grand royal reward of being promoted to Lord of Harrenhal.
7. Use this position to broker a marriage alliance with Lysa Arryn, Lady of the Vale, giving him an excuse not to be present at the wedding in which Joffrey will be poisoned (removing himself as a potential suspect).
8. Have Ser Dontos give Sansa a hairnet with a poisoned bead, with specific instructions to wear them the day of Joffrey's wedding. 
9. Convinces Joffrey to put on a mockery dwarf show at his wedding, to inflame his conflict with Tyrion.
10. Sale to the Eyrie for his own wedding and trust that Olenna Tyrell goes through with her plan to poison Joffrey.
11. Have Ser Dontos whisk Sansa away to his ship, where the Kettleblack father is waiting to row aboard.
12. Murder Ser Dontos to buy his silence forever, then throw the hairnet on his body to further incriminate Tyrion, as the hairnet was seen on Tyrion's wife as well as incriminating Sansa as being complicit in the murder. 
13. Having all three Kettleblack brothers provide false testimony against Tyrion at his trial, so Tyrion becomes the primary suspect because of his open hatred of Joffrey, should have been executed, and therefore the Tyrells get him out of the way, so Sansa can marry Wyllis like they wanted all along.
14. Betray the Tyrells by stealing Sansa for himself.
15. Disguising Sansa as his bastard daughter Alayne and therefore keeping her dependant on him because Sansa is wanted in the murder trial herself, and Littlefinger knows who she really is. 

Mind blown at how complex this is. How once you realize that Littlefinger has been scheming this much, that everything he has done since book two has been leading up to this, all because he wants his fantasy do-over with Catelyn by using her daughter Sansa, and because he lives for chaos, of course. 

Tyrion isn't the only Lannister brother who gets an amazing storyline in this novel either. Jaime Lannister's redemption arc in this book isn't just a highlight of A Storm of Swords, it's one of the high points of the entire series. It demonstrates just how well George Martin can write a character and manipulate how his reader feels about said character, because he took one of the truly most reviled characters from the first installment of this series, and then he made him one of the most likable. Losing his sword hand to Vargo Hoat, stopping Hoat's men from raping Brienne, saving Brienne from being mauled in the bear pit at Harrenhal... It's hard not to root for Jaime in this book, and that feeling reaches its climax at the end of the book, with Jaime's decision to save his little brother's life. Tyrion has been convicted of literally killing Jaime's (illegitimate) son, but Jaime knows Tyrion and knows he didn't do it, so he lets him go. 

Jaime's relationship with Brienne is also one of the most compelling love stories A Song of Ice and Fire has given us, mainly because it actually has a slow, genuine build-up to it. Romances tend to be few and far between in ASOIAF, and they usually spring up pretty quickly, but with Jaime and Brienne, GRRM likes to torture his readers with the will-they-won't-they aspect. I also think it is an example of the enemies-to-lovers trope actually done well. Typically, I don't like this trope. I think most writers can't pull it off in a way where the relationship isn't just downright toxic and abusive, but I think that Martin is skilled enough that he has pulled it off fantastically with Jaime and Brienne. 

Brienne has every reason to hate Jaime based on what she knows about him, but in their travels together as she returns him as her captive to King's Landing (in exchange for Catelyn Stark's daughters), she sees a side of him that no one else, not even Cersei, ever has. She learns that the Kingslayer isn't so evil, especially after he confides in her the truth about why he murdered the Mad King--because the Mad King was planning on burning down the city of King's Landing and all half-a-million of the people who live there. Jaime isn't the Kingslayer; he's a hero. It's something that Jaime has never confided in anyone before outside of Brienne, and this moment is truly the defining moment of their relationship. 

“Guards!” he heard the wench shout. “The Kingslayer!”

“Jaime, he thought, my name is Jaime.”

A Storm of Swords (page 508).

I will make a controversial statement, though, and say I think the show actually made a worthy book-to-show change when they added the fight between Brienne and The Hound. It didn't happen in the novels because of slight differences as to where characters were at certain points in time, so Brienne and Jaime didn't even make it back to King's Landing in time for the Purple Wedding in the novels, so she definitely never had time to cross paths with The Hound. Some fans of the novels disliked the fight because of Brienne "randomly" crossing paths with The Hound to make it happen, because Arya didn't trust Brienne, or because it was done for the purpose of fudging in a fight scene, but I disagree with all these criticisms. 

1. Brienne was on her way to The Eyrie in her search for Sansa Stark, and The Hound and Arya were leaving The Eyrie after learning that Arya's aunt Lysa was dead. They were literally on the same road to/from the same location, converging on each other. It's not any more random than in book one, when Catelyn randomly encounters Tyrion at the Crossroads Inn on the Kingsroad to take him captive. Sure, it's happenstance that they were there at the same moment, but Catelyn was leaving King's Landing to go to Winterfell, and Tyrion the opposite, so it makes logical sense. Brienne meeting the Hound on the road to the Eyrie works the same way; it's not any more or less believable than the latter example. 

2. Arya's distrust of her does make sense. Aside from having literally just been traumatized out of her mind by witnessing the Red Wedding, Brienne freely admitted to carrying a sword given to her by Jaime Lannister after The Hound recognized the Lannister gold (not to mention that Podrick was wearing Lannister squire colors). The last time someone on the orders of the Lannisters came to "take Arya to safety," it was Meryn Trant, who killed her dancing master. Of course, we know that Brienne is being genuine, but there is literally no reason on earth for Arya to think so. Why would she trust someone employed by Jaime Lannister? Of course she wouldn't.

3. The fight between Brienne and The Hound would have been more meaningful a change if the show had stuck to Brienne's book-plot. In her storyline in book four, Brienne actually crosses paths with a Septon who supposedly buried the Hound's body himself, and the two have some very emotionally meaningful conversations about The Hound. These conversations would have been enhanced if they had been included on the show if Brienne actually thought she was the one who killed The Hound. On top of that, there's a recurring element in the novels about Brienne never having made her first kill yet. The show wasted it by letting her slaughter Renly's guards the night he died (instead of Loras), but if they had kept this aspect of Brienne's character, they could have had Brienne make The Hound her first "kill" to keep her oath to Lady Stark to protect her daughters and using the sword Jaime gave her to do it. 

Apart from Jaime and Brienne and Robb and Jeyne, the other big romance introduced in this novel is Jon Snow and Ygritte. The two have more of a traditional star-crossed lovers story, with Jon being loyal to the Night's Watch and Ygritte being a wildling, so of course, they end up on opposite sides during the Battle of Castle Black. It ends tragically with Ygritte dying in Jon's arms, repeating her usual mantra to him, "you know nothing, Jon Snow." 

Typically I don't enjoy stories where the female love interest is abruptly killed off, however in terms of this series, I've simply come to expect most characters to die eventually. Martin killed off his protagonist in book one, so no one is safe. I also feel that Ygritte's death represents a lot more to the morals of this story than just making Jon Snow sad. The entire love story between Jon and Ygritte, and the subsequent tragedy, represents the conflict as a whole between the Night's Watch and the Free Folk, the prejudices, the xenophobia. Are the Free Folk completely innocent of any wrongdoing? No. However, the Night's Watch is the primary instigator in the long term of the conflict, as it has passed from generation to generation. The Free Folk are facing potential genocide if they don't get south of the Wall before the Others wipe them out, but the Night's Watch won't let them. They're attacking of Castle Black may be brutal, and the raids of the lands under Night's Watch protection are unnecessarily violent, but at the end of the day, the reasoning behind it is for the survival of their entire people. Jon Snow comes to be the only person who truly understands the full reality of that, and so his relationship with Ygritte and her eventual death ends up being the extra motivator that Jon needs to see the Free Folk's perspective and to become an advocate for their right to survival. 

And with Jon's promotion to Lord Commander of the Night's Watch at the novel's end, it leaves the reader feeling hopeful that he might establish some peace between these two warring groups, so that they can all be better prepared when the common enemy strikes. 

There are some aspects of Jon and Ygritte's relationship, the way that it is written, that may come across as icky. Mostly, that part during their first sexual encounter where the consent is rather dubious. It's one of those things where I generally can't tell if Martin wrote it that way intentionally to highlight the underlying dysfunctional dynamic of Jon and Ygritte's relationship, or if he just wrote it without considering the unsettling connotation of how it would read to his audience.  It's the same thing with Jaime and Cersei's encounter in the Sept of Baelor as well as Daenerys' entire wedding night with Drogo. It's hard to figure out how GRRM means for his reader to take it--it's possible that he himself didn't even know, and he wants us to draw his own conclusion on it, to be unsettled or not is your choice as the reader. 

This seems to be a trend that GRRM also uses when depicting his characters. In his own narration, one never gets the impression that Martin wants us to feel one way or another specifically about any given character. Unlike some authors, who you know instantly which characters they favor, you can't really tell when reading A Song of Ice and Fire which characters you're "supposed" to like and which you're "supposed" to hate based on Martin's authorial authority. He's mostly neutral when it comes to how he presents all his characters. Every single one of them is realistically flawed, has made mistakes, has strengths and weaknesses, has moments where they are sympathetic and moments when they're not. He gives the same amount of care and depth to everyone in his story, making it hard to discern "good guys" versus "bad guys," because really, they're all just morally gray human beings. 

This is actually a strength of Martin's writing, I believe, because it allows readers more room to develop their opinions naturally on who they want to root for. Martin can manipulate you into feeling bad for someone when he wants you to, or make a character frustrate you so bad you'll throw the book across the room, but he's never trying to tell you "Here's who to root for, here's who to root against." He wants you to come to that opinion organically, and then maybe you'll have a more organic experience with the ending if he ever gets to it.

And that brings me to one of the most highly controversial characters within the ASOIAF book fandom.

Daenerys' storyline in A Storm of Swords was definitely an improvement over the Qarth storyline that she got stuck in, in A Clash of Kings. Book three follows the Mother of Dragons' conquest of the three cities along Slaver's Bay: Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen. Her conquest of Astapor does not actually begin intentionally as a conquest, but rather Daenerys' contemplation of purchasing an extraordinarily large slave army that Astapor owns called the Unsullied. It ends with her "liberation" of the Unsullied from the slave master who is selling them. 

I put the term "liberation" in quotations because I don't really feel that the Unsullied were actually liberated. Not really. True liberation is true freedom; it would be that they get to leave behind the life of fighting and training that they were forced into and live their own lives, the lives of their choosing, and that's not really what they end up with. By the time the "liberation" is complete, all these slave soldiers are still soldiers fighting for the cause of someone else, who they don't know--they're still meat in someone else's war. 

In order for Daenerys to win everything and lose nothing in this transaction, she needs to gain the Unsullied and be the last person to hold the whip, so that no person could ever use them against her later or ever. But also, she can’t show up to Westeros with a slave army because that wouldn’t make the people of Westeros sympathetic to her cause. But she manages to come up with a perfect solution- she stages the dragon-swap with the master for the Unsullied, knowing full well that the dragon will only obey her, but that once she holds the whip, the Unsullied will also only obey her. 

So I wouldn’t consider it a real liberation, because (especially in the book version, which was changed tonally quite a bit in the show version), Daenerys didn’t really “liberate” the Unsullied to strike a blow for human rights’ justice. She did it because it was the best way to get a slave army without looking like a slaver. Brilliant war strategy thinking, but it’s hardly humanitarian. All 8,000+ of those Unsullied who have been enslaved since infancy are still going to be butchered in her war. It’s GRRM playing off this idea he’s created with Dany before, which is that she’s good at making herself seem like a caring ruler, but at the end of the day, she’s still a highborn playing the game of thrones. And if there’s one thing GRRM has stressed, it’s that the common people are always the ones who suffer most when the high lords play the game. 

There’s also the matter of what Daenerys does next, which is to have the Unsullied sack the city of Astapor. Her words here vary a bit from her show counterpart’s.

In the show, Daenerys orders her Unsullied to sack Astapor and to kill every man who holds a slave master’s whip but not to harm any children. It’s hard not to root for her because, well, no one likes slave masters. However, in the novel, she tells the Unsullied to slaughter every person who wears a tokar (an item of clothing that all freeborn people are allowed to wear, not specific to slave masters), and to harm no children under twelve. 

This statement is a much different story, because it’s no longer a story about a liberator who wants to strike down those who would put other men in chains. This story is now about a conqueror who wants to sack a city that she has no claim to, slaughter literally everyone who might oppose her (every man wearing a tokar = literally any citizen of Astapor), and who said that any child who looks to be above twelve is fair game for the slaughter that’s about to ensue. 

This is not the same as what we got on the show. This is not liberating slaves. This is a brutal slaughter for no purpose other than to show strength—something that Daenerys very pointedly learned from the Dothraki—they only follow the strong.

“Dany would never slaughter a city full of innocent people like that!” -everyone who watched “The Bells.”

“Except, she kind of already did in Astapor.” -me, after reading A Storm of Swords. 

Yes, there are slave masters in Astapor, and they’re vile human scum. But there’s also people who aren’t—innocents, high and low born alike, all those poor unfortunate children over the age of twelve. Some of the people in Astapor might have actually been abolitionists, who may have legitimately backed an uprising against the slave masters if Dany had tried to gain support from inside the city, but we’ll never know because she literally had everyone butchered without a chance to speak for themselves. 

This is not heroic or something to cheer for. It’s brutal warfare and useless slaughter over a city that Dany doesn’t even intend to rule. It’s conquest and it’s tyranny.

I don’t like to make claims about what will happen in future installments of A Song of Ice and Fire or how they will compare to seasons 6-8 of the television series because no one really knows for sure except for Martin himself. But what I will say is that if Martin decides to have Dany go full tyrant during her conquest of Westeros, it’s honestly not hard to believe because it isn’t a far cry from what she’s already done here in Astapor. The only difference is that she’ll be doing it to characters we’ve come to know and love instead of nameless extras who don’t matter to us as soon as we’ve turned the page. 

It also leaves Daenerys’ motives for what comes next a bit unclear as well. She goes on to sack Yunkai and Meereen, the other two cities situated alongside Slaver’s Bay with Astapor. She has no intention of ruling Yunkai when she sacks it, but it again comes back to what Missandei taught her about the Unsullied. She said that Daenerys would be best to “blood” them early (a terminology meant to say that she should allow them to sack some smaller villages or fight in some skirmishes for practice before she really needs them to be ripe). The sacks on Slaver’s Bay are more Daenerys’ “blooding” of the Unsullied. Her decision to stay in Meereen and actually rule the city comes as more of an after thought, when she decides she needs practice at ruling if she’s ever going to rule Westeros for real. (Which is also one hell of a decision to come to, to turn an entire city of real people with real lives depending on you into your test run at being queen, like the mistakes don’t count). 

Perhaps I’m being a bit hard on Daenerys though. She is young and the only two role models she ever had when it comes to ruling were  Drogo and Viserys—neither of whom were likely to teach her anything good. Also, I don’t genuinely get the impression that Dany is being cruel for cruelty’s sake or doing evil for evil’s sake. There are plenty of characters in ASOIAF who do behave like this, such as Littlefinger. Dany is different in the sense that she does seem to have good intentions and does seem to think she’s making the world a better place. The bad part is that Dany just doesn’t seem to grasp the consequences of some of her actions. She takes the victories for what they are and ignores the rest.

“If I look back, I am lost.” 

This is a quote that Daenerys repeats to herself in nearly every book, usually in moments where she’s messed up or something goes wrong. This isn’t exactly a good mantra when you intend to be a queen because it’s prohibiting Daenerys from learning from her mistakes and becoming a better queen. If Dany had learned from her mistakes during her time with the Dothraki, and the disaster that came from sacking Lhazar, maybe she would have thought twice about the way she handled her sack and conquest of Slaver’s Bay. 

So to speak, Daenerys differs from characters like Littlefinger or Ramsay Bolton in the sense that she has a conscience. She does have a moral compass, it just doesn’t necessarily always point her in the right direction. She has the potential to be a decent ruler if she truly puts her mind to it, but right now she’s too misguided by her obsession with claiming the Iron Throne, and it’s steering her in the wrong direction. It was just like my predictions about her visions in the House of the Undying in A Clash of Kings—she didn’t see premonitions of her path to victory, she saw the warnings of the path to her downfall and she just doesn’t know it yet. 

Now that is what I call layered storytelling. And no one does it like GRRM. History has had its fair share of conquerors in its course, and all too often, they are revered as being heroes, with people ignoring the brutal bloody wars they wage to complete said conquests. And all these conquerors had great notions about making the world a better place too. None of them actually did, of course. Most of them really left the world worse than they found it because of the bodies they left in their wake. This is what Martin is getting at with Daenerys.

He writes her as a hero and someone to root for because he wants you to root for her. He wants to show us how conquerors and tyrants actually get their following in the first place, because people later always question “how could anyone have ever supported this person?” Well, here, he’s showing us. And the best way to show us is to make Dany likable, make people support her. It really makes Daenerys a great (albeit divisive) character, unlike most archetypal characters in fantasy. From a lesser author, Daenerys would be the Exiled Princess who returns and restores peace to her kingdom. Or she would be the Evil Queen who causes destruction and woe and chaos for evil's sake. She would be on one end of the spectrum of good and evil, with the author clearly telling us how we are supposed to feel about her. 

But with Martin, he's simply just made her a person. 

Final Thoughts

A Storm of Swords may truly be the masterpiece of A Song of Ice and Fire. It may lack the narrative cohesion that the first novel in the series had, but it makes up for it with literally everything else it presents us with. My complaints are small, simply that the narration and world-building get a bit long in the tooth, so a reader may miss important details here and there. There's also a touch of discomfort to the nature of Jon and Ygritte's relationship that some readers may find disturbing. 

Overall, I would give it 5 out of 5 stars. this is the type of political, character-driven, tense, high-stakes, layered, and nuanced fantasy that I am here for. 

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