A Song of Ice and Fire Series Review Part 5: The Greatest Dance of All
A Song of Ice and Fire Book 5: A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin
*Spoiler Warning*
Introduction
It’s a bit sad to say that A Dance with Dragons will remain my last book review for A Song of Ice and Fire, and hopefully won’t be my last ever! But George Martin has yet to complete The Winds of Winter, so alas. Typically, when I reach a review for the last book in a series, I like to give a small review for the series as a whole at the end. For the purposes of A Song of Ice and Fire, I will not be doing that because the series is unfinished. I can’t completely accurately give the series a rating on a 5 star scale because I don’t know how it’s going to end or if I’ll enjoy the last 2 books. I probably will, but that’s only optimism and conjecture.
In my previous review for book four, A Feast for Crows, I discussed how Feast gained all the story’s major thematic concerns, while Dance got all the big moments, so I suppose that’s where I’ll begin.
Summary & Review
The truly epic moments are what really make A Dance with Dragons, and by that I mean moments like Jon Snow’s assassination at the Wall, Cersei’s walk of atonement, Daenerys’ first flight on Drogon with the battle of Meereen looming, and Theon’s escape from Winterfell with Stannis’ battle against the Bolton’s looming (nice foil with the Ice and Fire battles, George, I see what you did there!) Moments like these really feel like A Song of Ice and Fire is returning to the grand scale that it was on for books 1-3, after A Feast for Crows was a much slower, more character driven novel. It’s also nice to see again some of the familiar characters that we missed in the previous novel (Jon, Tyrion, Dany, Stannis and Davos, Theon, who hasn’t been seen since book 2…)
Dance is also the last novel to upgrade existing characters to POV status, as Martin has said no new viewpoints will be introduced in the remaining two installments. Barristan Selmy is an interesting choice as we don’t get many older characters to have viewpoints in ASOIAF and because his character was so prematurely killed off in the show, I’m very intrigued to see the direction Barristan goes in for the novels. It’s also interesting because the show didn’t have the battle of Meereen happen until Daenerys returned to the city, and the battle was pretty easily won since her dragons just destroyed the enemy fleet lickity split. I vastly prefer the way that Martin has set up the Battle of Meereen for his novels though, as he’s gone to great lengths to make sure we’re actually getting a real high stakes battle. Having Daenerys and her dragons present for the battle makes it too easy and removes any sense of intrigue, because it’s just about guaranteed that she’ll win. However, Martin was careful to remove Dany and Drogon from the city just before the battle takes place, and to let Rhaegal and Viserion loose, so that they can’t be used either. By taking away dragons and dragon riders, the Battle of Meereen will become a good ol’ fashioned medieval battle, much like Blackwater or Castle Black, that will rely on Barristan, Tyrion, and Victarion Greyjoy actually using their brains to defend the city when survival is not a given.
And for those wondering, no. There is absolutely no way possible that Daenerys and Drogon will return in time to save city and win the battle. At the point that Dany took off on dragon back, the battle was just days away. Given that this novel ends with Daenerys being swarmed by the Dothraki who have been following her to take her to the Dosh Khaleen ever since Drogon died, she’s being hurtled away from Meereen towards Vaes Dothrak. Geographically, there’s no chance for her to get back to Meereen in time for the battle. And I’m glad for it. I’d rather get a high stakes battle where we don’t know who is going to win or how than just another instance of Dany’s dragons being used to claim victory. To me, the book’s battle of Meereen is going to be wildly more interesting.
Although I have to say, even with this intrigue, I’m still way more interested in what Martin is planning to do with Melisandre’s upgrade to a POV character than Barristan Selmy. Melisandre’s origins have never really be fully explored, and she’s one of the few (if not only) characters in the story who has actually been to the Shadowlands, a location I would love more glimpses into. Also, with Melisandre now as a POV, we might actually start to get some more clarity into what exactly she sees when she looks into the flames.
I also have to hand it to Martin for his use of Stannis Baratheon in this novel. I never much cared for Stannis in the show, and in the previous installments, he felt more like a necessary character that I just wasn’t very invested in. He needed to be there because he was Robert’s rightful heir, but I didn’t care much about him.
That all changed with Dance.
While I still wouldn’t say that I’m fully team Stannis the Mannis, I do understand now why book fans hype his character up so much. I’m this book, we actually get to see Stannis and Jon Snow do a lot of real political strategizing together for Stannis’ upcoming fight to reclaim Winterfell and the North for House Bolton. We never got to see it much in the show, but Stannis is actually an extremely smart battle strategist. I don’t necessarily agree that the Battle of Ice is going to be a given that Stannis can defeat Roose Bolton (as we all saw the Red Wedding, and we know Bolton plays dirty), I would agree that Stannis and Bolton are pretty evenly matched, which means we’re probably going to get one hell of a battle. I’m also hoping to potentially see this battle end in limbo, with no one clear victor on either side, leaving Winterfell prime for the Starks to take back themselves eventually (as it is their ancestral home, so I like that thematic idea better), but I expect Stan the Man to put up a good fight first.
For those show fans curious, I also feel compelled to explain that book-Stannis has not and probably will not burn his daughter Shireen alive. She’s still there, hanging out at Castle Black.
Martin has set it up perfectly, so that the sacrifice of Shireen Baratheon is highly likely to happen in the beginning of Winds and will actually have some real consequences on the plot. At the end of Dance, Ramsay Bolton supposedly writes a letter to Jon Snow. Among other things, it claims he killed Stannis. Though this is probably not true, the significance here is that Melisandre will think it’s true. She believes Stannis is the Prince Who Was Promised, so she’ll be desperate to bring him back, and she’ll need a big sacrifice to do it. Mel’s religion claims that someone who has king’s blood is always the best for powerful sacrifices, leaving Princess Shireen as the “best” option. Stannis’ men will go along with it because most of them are more loyal to Melisandre anyway, and the men on the Wall will go along with it because it’s already been implied that Shireen’s Greyscale can’t go dormant, so they’ll want to stop her from potentially spreading the disease and starting an epidemic there.
Only sacrificing Shireen won’t resurrect Stannis (if Stannis is even dead by this point), it’s going to be what brings back Jon Snow after his “For the Watch” assassination, confirming once and for all that Jon is the PWWP and a Targaryen (as the PWWP is supposed to have Targaryen ancestry in their family tree). This setup will also fix so many pesky plot holes from season 6 of the HBO show, such as Melisandre being able to resurrect Jon with little effort when it was established death must be used to buy life, Mel’s decision to resurrect Jon at all when neither she or Davos have any emotional attachment to him, and the show’s version of Shireen’s death which didn’t really seem to have any actual motivation from Stannis to do other than to make us hate him and didn’t really advance the plot in anyway.
Or at least, these are my predictions based on the way Martin has staged everything by the end of this book. He’s notorious for subverting our expectations, but with only two planned novels left, I think it’s fair that I should be able to predict some things.
Another observation I made whims reading A Dance with Dragons is just how much darker most of the characters’ behaviors are in this book. Martin already said that Winds is going to be a very dark book because winter is meant to be a time of darkness, and Dance is clearly the setup to that with so many previously likable characters slowly edging their way into becoming rather despicable.
Jon Snow forces Gilly to abandon her own baby on the Wall and take Mance Rayder’s baby with her to Old Town because he’s afraid Melisandre might burn Mande’s baby, so he feels compelled to protect it, but has done nothing to safeguard Gilly’s son. Then he lies to Sam about it. He also has several child hostages on the Wall from the Free Folk.
Tyrion Lannister has explicitly expressed his desire to rape and murder Cersei. Yes, Cersei abused him for years and he’s justified in hating her, but wanting to rape her first is pretty diabolical. Plus, he had sex with an enslaved prostitute in Volantis and advised Young Griff on how to invade and conquer his own country.
Daenerys Targaryen gives up her fight to end slavery and instead decides if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em and directly invests money into the slave trade to profit from. She has an innocent man’s daughters tortured in front of him, takes child hostages as her servants in the Great Pyramid, abandons her city while it’s on the brink of war because apparently ruling proved to be too hard, and rounded up a bunch of Meereenese men at random and crucified them without trials, resulting in the murders of several innocent people because it “felt” like justice.
Arya Stark takes it upon herself to murder a Night’s Watch deserter in Braavos for no other reason than that her father used to execute deserters from the Wall.
Catelyn Stark has been resurrected into the ruthless murderous Lady Stoneheart, who seems to find every person with any remote connection to House Frey guilty for the Red Wedding and wants to hang them all.
Even Varys proves to become an agent of chaos much like Littlefinger in this book, who never cared about protecting the realm. He murders Kevan Lannister for the purpose of manipulating a war between the Lannisters and the Tyrells, just as Littlefinger once sought to start one between the Starks and the Lannisters.
Not to mention that Bran has maybe dabbled in some cannibalism.
These are some pretty grim interpretations of many previously beloved characters. While the narrative shift might be off-putting to many readers, especially those more accustomed to traditional fantasies with more black and white Good Guys Vs. Bad Guys motifs, but Martin is clearly doing it for a purpose. For one thing, he’s highlighting the more realistic and darker side of war, which is that war is never glorious or something to be romanticized, and that when people wage it, they shouldn’t be considered heroes. Even those who start wars for justifiable causes can never seem to rectify the amount of civilian casualty and suffering that war causes—something that Martin specifically addresses when he shows Tyrion visiting Astapor and Yunkai after Dany’s sack of those cities. Her cause was to end slavery, which is a justifiable cause, however her violent means of conquest left the survivors of the cities starving and sick, displaced and dying, living on the verge of total societal collapse, because Dany dismantled their government systems without any effective replacement government systems in place to take over when the old system fell.
Another thing GRRM highlights is the way that ultimate power corrupts. Characters like Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow are basically branded to be likable characters that readers will root for. They both start off as underdogs who have to slowly rise to the top, and they both fall in line with several cliche, generic fantasy tropes. From the hands of a lesser writer, they’d be the heroes of this story. And we would all predict that our parting shot would be the two of them, married as king and queen, ruling Westeros in peace and prosperity.
But George Martin is not that kind of writer. He’s not going to let Jon or Dany win after years of the bloody warfare they’ve been involved with. But the main difference between the show’s interpretation of this and the novel’s interpretation is that Martin’s version moves at a more gradual and natural pace towards Daenerys’ eventual descent into tyranny, whereas the show spent so long removing her darker character traits, that their attempt to make her a villain ultimately failed. They also didn’t even attempt to touch on the darker side of Jon Snow, or Tyrion Lannister for the matter, which is a flaw in storytelling because villain!Tyrion is intrinsic to villain!Dany. One does not work without the other, as they’re both going to be involved in Dany’s attempt to conquer Westeros.
Along with this idea also goes the theme that war isn’t quite so black and white. Real political opponents can rarely be classified into exclusively bad and exclusively good when talking about warfare and violence. There’s almost always going to be shades of gray on both sides, even if one side is clearly the prominent aggressor, and by flipping the narrative the way Martin has, he’s sowing us that. He’s showing us the darker sides to the characters we like, and he’s forcing us to empathize with and understand the actions of the characters we don’t.
And it’s actually really good writing because it means that Martin has such a strong understanding of all his characters that he knows both their strengths and their flaws, but he’s detached enough that sentiment does not prevent him from trying to glorify his favorite characters or demonize his villains. With some authors, you can tell which characters they wrote that they liked the most because there’s favoritism that happens, where the author’s favorite characters are always portrayed as being right, being justified, getting to win in the end, having all the cool powers. And you can also tell who the Ultimate Big Boss Villain is because many writers are too afraid to give understandable qualities or sympathetic moments to their antagonists. They want their readers to dislike their antagonists so much that they’re trying too hard to make them evil-with-a-capital-E. This isn’t the case with Martin’s work. He equally distributes wins and losses, strengths and flaws, good moments and bad moments, empathy and apathy across his playing field to all his characters. The end result is that every character, in their own way, just feels like a product of this universe and where in it they’ve been dropped, rather than a Good Guy or a Bad Guy with no wiggle room in between.
Another impressive thing that Martin is doing with his narrative flip is preparing to return the story to its roots. A Song of Ice and Fire has exponentially grown in proportion from a story that was originally meant to be a trilogy, and now has seven planned books, some of which are so long they must be published in two volumes. With a story of that magnitude, it’s understandable that the primary focus gets away from itself a bit. Book one clearly started out as a story about the Stark family, about their fall from power, and how eventually the surviving members of the family would come back together older and stronger to bring their House back into power once more. Arya’s storyline on Braavos is developing her into the physical fighter, Jon’s time as Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch is making him the leader figure, Sansa’s time in the Vale with Littlefinger makes her savvy and politically smarter, and Bran’s three-eyed-crow training is giving his the spiritual, supernatural upper hand. Once the siblings all come back together, they really will be a force to be reckoned with, and if they can all work together, they can raise House Stark back to its former glory.
In Martin’s original plan for the trilogy-that-never was there was even supposed to be a five-year time jump, so he could age up the Stark children and their progress. The original title for the final novel was going to be “A Time for Wolves,” before it was changed to “A Dream of Spring.” But the problem is, Martin didn’t think it made sense for the other characters to do nothing of import for five years, so instead of jumping forward in time, he’s filling out a longer series, and the last two or so books have gradually been focusing more on Lannisters, Baratheons, Targaryens, Tyrells, Martells, Boltons, and Greyjoys than it is on our Starks. But that being said, the Starks are always there in each book, no matter who else is being focused on, and I have no doubt that as the story progresses, we’re going to return to our Northern roots, as that’s the purpose of centralizing the Others as a major to the North primarily. It takes the reader back to Winterfell where everything started, where the biggest plot buildup is going to play out, and where we’ll see the surviving members of Stark family finally find their way back together after being separated for so long.
But with the story’s progress towards ending with the resurgence of House Stark to power, it leaves little room for the novels to end with a Targaryen on the throne and a Lannister as her second-in-command. But in flipping the narrative and developing Tyrion and Daenerys into the eventual antagonists to the Starks, once they all make it back to Winterfell, it allows their characters to remain integral parts of the narrative, but still keeping the story grounded as a story about the Starks. Daenerys is the greatest threat to the North finally gaining independence and governing themselves again like they did before Aegon’s conquest. But she’s also their greatest potential ally in the war against the army of the dead.
I guess maybe my thinking there is just related to why I generally prefer the Starks' Northern Independence storyline over the idea of Daenerys' conquest triumphing. Personally, I find stories about people fighting for their independence and rights to rule themselves against tyrants and conquerers and monarchs more than I enjoy stories about people obtaining mass amounts of power for themselves. I find the first more empowering, though I do understand why some people are the opposite. And it's also not a slight on Dany's character. She's an amazing feat of a well written character on Martin's part. Very few writers can pull off characters that layered and complex whilst not characterizing them inconsistently.
I do have mixed feelings about the way that Martin had chosen to expand House Targaryen in this novel. I’m mostly on board with R+L=J, but I’m pretty on the fence about Young Griff/Aegon Targaryen’s introduction in this book, even if it proves true that he’s not actually who he really is. I do understand it. The sack of King’s Landing and the murder of Elia Martell and her two children with Rhaegar Targaryen has always been a big deal, and it’s reiterated in nearly every novel. That being said, I always thought the purpose of this was just laying the groundwork for the way the Lannisters (and the Targs for that matter, Aerys was the one who forced Elia to remain in King’s Landing as a hostage when he had sent his own wife and son to safety) had wronged Dorne, and foreshadowing potential independence for Dorne as well as the North eventually, freeing Dorne from their oppressors.
Never did I have the vaguest inclination that Martin was going to come out with a character five books in that is supposedly, but probably not actually, Elia’s murdered son. It feels a bit too late in the game for Martin to throw in Aegon’s faction. It might have worked, had their been substantial foreshadowing to this character’s existence in previous books, and his appearance in Dance the payoff to that. But if Martin foreshadowed it, he fooled me because I never got that impression once in books 1-4.
I get that his character is also serving the purpose of explaining Varys too, which I do appreciate because Varys has been shady and mysterious since book one, never clearly throwing his support towards one side or the other. Dance reveals that Varys and his Pentoshi pal Illyrio Mopatis are Team Aegon, and they’ve been playing the longest con yet—using Viserys and Daenerys as pawns to start a war between the Dothraki and King Robert, to clear away all their opponents before ushering in Aegon as the rightful ruler who brought peace after the destruction Robert and Viserys were meant to sew. The dragon eggs were meant to be nothing more than to be sold to book passage for Viserys across the Narrow Sea, and Dany was meant to die in Varys’ little planned poisoning to motivate him to join Viserys in the attack of King’s Landing and make Viserys look like a savage, foreign invader. Their plans fell to ruin because Viserys died, Drogo died, Daenerys lived, and a war broke out prematurely between the Starks and the Lannisters (thanks, Littlefinger) before the Dothraki were ready to cross the Narrow Sea. This is actually the true reason why Varys jumped in the middle of book one to try and help Ned prevent a war. It wasn’t about saving the realm from war. It was about that little conversation Arya overheard Varys have with Illyrio in the dungeons of the Red Keep, where they discussed it being too soon. Varys was trying to stave off the coming conflict because his war wasn’t ready yet. But now it is. Which is why Varys is actively manipulating a war between the Tyrells and the Lannisters.
I like all the implications of Varys’ true plans, but what about motives? Why is he throwing himself at Aegon? Who is Aegon actually?
A slightly convoluted and still likely popular fan theory that one can find all over Reddit and Quora boards about A Song of Ice and Fire suggests that Varys is a Blackfyre—a family that was a bastard offshoot of House Targaryen that staged several rebellions for the throne. That this is why Varys has such a Valyrian sounding name and keeps his head shaved (to hide his silver hair), and also probably why he was castrated—a sacrifice for his powerful king’s blood. A Dance with Dragons reveals that Illyrio Mopatis had a silver-haired wife named Serra, implying she was a Blackfyre (as most their descendants are in Essos). The fact that Illyrio gave Tyrion during his stay with him children’s clothes fitted for a boy implies that Illyrio also had a son at some point. The Blackfyre theory suggests that Aegon is actually the son of Illyrio and Serra, a Blackfyre descendant, and that Varys and Illyrio have been working for years to stage the next Blackfyre Rebellion through Aegon’s reign.
It’s a very on-the-nose subplot that only very close readers would find rewarding, as the Blackfyres have been mentioned sporadically through the series, but haven’t ever been a major part of the story before. To me, it just feels like one of Martin’s infamous gardener storylines—an idea that pops up midway through the writing process that wasn’t initially planned for. Also it’s probably the reason the show ultimately cut Aegon’s plot altogether and abandoned Varys’ origin story. I bet any money that they couldn’t figure out a convincing and organic way to interject the history of House Blackfyre into their show, and I don’t really blame them. It definitely feels like Martin has just thrown this into book five without proper build up to it, which does make it seem out of place.
But the only other alternative is to have Cersei on the Iron Throne when Dany gets to Westeros if it’s not going to be Aegon, and we all saw how well that turned out… it didn’t. Not only does giving Cersei the throne upon Tommen’s death not work with the established laws of inheritance in Westeros, but there was just no convincing way to make the viewers believe that anyone in Westeros would actively fight for Cersei after all she’s done, and that hurts Dany’s development into a tyrant because they had already turned Cersei into one first.
The pros to Aegon’s role in this story is that it actually has the potential to work better. Since Aegon reaches Westeros at the end of Dance, he’s already begun conquering Westeros. He gets to be the one that cleans up the mess of the country the Lannisters made. He gets the opportunity to bring peace, stability, and prosperity to Westeros, endearing him to the people. So by the time Dany gets there, she’s the usurper disrupting the peace and causing a war for nothing more than to obtain power for herself. She won’t be a liberator anymore because there won’t be anyone to liberate, because Aegon is likely going to be a good king who has the love and support of his people. Dany will be forced to become the very thing she hated most in Robert Baratheon- a usurper. Not to mention that with the well-established guise that Aegon is Elia and Rhaegar’s son, his claim is better than Daenerys’. In this story setup, the idea that Dany won’t have the support of Westeros as Queen actually makes sense.
It also allows Aegon the opportunity to develop into a really cool character. I just wish Martin had handled his introduction into the story better.
The biggest flaw of Dance for me wasn’t Aegon, however. It was Quentyn Martell. While Aegon has the potential to go on to become an interesting and integral character, I really feel that Quentyn was a bit of a weak link in this book. The plot of this novel mostly could have happened exactly as it did without Quentyn’s role. The only extraordinary thing he accomplished plot-wise before being killed off was freeing Rhaegal and Viserion from the pyramids where Dany locked them up, but Martin could have found another creative way to accomplish this without inventing a character and promptly killing him off. It’s not to say that a character who only makes it through one book can’t be important—Ned Stark and Oberyn Martell proved that—but they have to accomplish some really good plot action for it to feel like they were necessary, and Quent just didn’t do that for me. No hate on the Prince of Dorne, I just wish he’d been more important.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I would rank A Dance with Dragons 4 stars out of 5. It had some really amazing plot beats that have left me furious that I don’t have the next installment, and Martin is doing a superb job of darkening the tone as we move gradually into winter. But there are flaws. Quentyn’s storyline is lackluster, and while Aegon is interesting, his introduction is clumsy.
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