^ The Dorne Reveal Variant: To preserve the revelation that Quentyn Martell’s on a mission to Daenerys until after Prince Doran reveals it to Princess Arianne rather than allowing it to proceed chronologically, simply take The Princess in the Tower/Arianne II (#75) and The Merchant’s Man/Quentyn I (#12) and put them after Alayne I/Sansa II (#44): Alayne I/The Princess in the Tower/The Merchant’s Man. The explanation: I’m rereading the series and just finished A Storm of Swords. At a certain point along the way I got to thinking about how to approach A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons.
Now that both books exist, there are options available to us that never were before. Martin infamously took years to finish Feast after Storm, and even more years to finish Dance after Feast. As we know, this came down to several problems.
Which is better: A Feast for Crows or A Dance with Dragons? Update Cancel. Is there a combined version of A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons? Ask New Question. Which parts of A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons have not been covered in Season Five?
First, he’d intended to have a five-year jump in the narrative following the conclusion of Storm, but after about a year of writing he realized it wasn’t working and had to start over. Then, once he’d started over, he discovered that while the five-year jump didn’t work for most of the storylines, it worked really well for a few, and it was hard to get them right without it. Then he realized that he had way too many characters and way too much story to fit in one volume as planned, and he needed to decide how to split one volume into two – should he tell half the story for all the characters, or (nearly) all the story for half the characters? (He chose the latter solution.) Finally, he struggled with “The Meereenese Knot”: How to get everyone on the hunt for Daenerys to Meereen, and in what order, and whether to try to have them all arrive by the end of Dance, and what to do with them once they got there, and what to do with Daenerys and company in the interim. So fans who read Storm when it came out had to wait a decade to find out how the stories of Jon, Daenerys, and Tyrion continued, despite the fact that in story time Jon and Tyrion’s tales in particular pick up almost immediately after we left them.
Even someone like me, who was late to the party and first read the series about a year, year and a half before Dance ended up coming out, had a delay. In my case it was a delay long enough to read the entire series, then read it over again, then have a month or two to wait before Dance came out. I know I’m probably not telling you anything you don’t already know, but what I want to convey more than the details of the production or reception of the novels is how distant the various real-world reasons for the delay between the end of Storm and the beginning of Dance made the events of those books feel in story time. Rereading Storm just now, some of this hit me like a lightning bolt. Like “Holy shit, Jon is a 17-year-old during his stint as Lord Commander, not a guy in his mid-20s who’s years older than when the story started.” It felt that way to me because of the delay, but it’s not true of the story at all. It just feels like it’s been years.
Game of Thrones, the hit HBO show that everyone has been talking about for years, is based on George R. Martin’s fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire. Of the seven planned novels, five are currently published. It’s arguably the greatest fantasy series of the century so far. However, many readers stop after the first book, A GAME OF THRONES. I just want to let you know that this is a huge mistake.
A FEAST FOR CROWS and A DANCE WITH DRAGONS are books four and five of the series. They cover the same chronological time period. It was a risky move for Martin, but it works because half of the main characters in the series are in FEAST and half of them are in DANCE. That’s why I wanted to review both at once. Combined, they come in at approximately 1,800 pages, but don’t let that dissuade you. Each page is riveting and by the end you’ll be so obsessed with the characters, it won’t feel like enough. The main strength of both books is what has caused readers to flock to the series for more than two decades now: his phenomenal characters.
For example, FEAST features Sansa Stark, a fugitive princess coping with Littlefinger’s manipulation and sexual advances and a bastard identity while trying to escape capture. On the other hand, DANCE has Jon Snow, an actual bastard who is forced to battle inner demons and evil foes alike to defend the kingdom, and Davos Seaworth, a lowly smuggler raised high, who is struggling to obey his king at the cost of his moral compass. These story lines require intense character work to be pulled off, and these are just three examples. More than 20 characters have POV chapters between the two books. Another reason I suggest continuing—or starting—this series is that Martin is constantly expanding his world.
Characters who were barely mentioned in book one have become major players by the end of A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. This feels completely natural as it happens slowly. It was an interesting twist to introduce Theon and Davos in book two. It’s equally interesting to get the first Cersei chapter in A FEAST FOR CROWS after she has played the villain for the other three books in the series. Perhaps this is all just beating a dead horse.
After all, Game of Thrones is one of the most popular shows on TV today. However, show aside, Martin has written a series that is considered by many to be a modern masterpiece.
While both formats have their pros and cons, many consider the books to be a more detailed and character-driven. That’s why I suggest dipping into Martin’s world. It is, after all, his original creation. If you’ve never read A FEAST FOR CROWS and A DANCE WITH DRAGONS before, I strongly suggest reading them for the first time in the order they were published. As stated, it is one story split into two, and that’s how George R. Martin intended for them to be read.
For second-time readers, I used to guide me on my combined read-through.