I really wanted to enjoy dance, bad. As upset as i was with the 5 year wait to get the second half of a mediocre book...i was really willing to give it a chance. I bought it the second it came out, brought my kindle with me everywhere so i could read it in my down time - paid close attention and picked up on little subtle things others might have missed - all this, and i was still disappointed. (not in the Kindle tho, this thing is awesome, and no I'm not getting paid to say this. It's perfect for someone who travels a lot for work).
It really boils down to this - it doesn't feel like Martin enjoys writing about this world anymore. His behavior reinforces this feeling, too. It's like he's just bored of this world and has lost that energetic spark to create.
Reading the first three books, it was like a man excited about the world he was building, excited about the stories, the characters, excited about what he was going to DO with them and he wanted to get there as smoothly and quickly as possible. Remember when Catelyn left for King's Landing in one chapter, and then arrived there next chapter? It's because the journey was unimportant - that stuff was filler - what happened to her IN King's Landing was important.
Reading the last two, it was like he wasn't really sure what to do anymore, he couldn't figure out where he was going, he just had to fill up the pages with something, and he kept thinking back and forth on what to write. adding, deleting, adding, deleting - this is a worrisome sign when indecision, apathy, and indifference about a tale begin to rear their ugly head.
It's this energetic drive when you have a story you want to tell. But I didn't get that here from Martin, which is disappointing, because the man has genuine talent. He just doesn't seem to be inspired enough to use it. I never got the impression of a clear vision. I didn't get a sense of his excitement for these characters. It shows up in a lot of ways - the tired cliches, the empty characterizations of the main viewpoints - it feels like Dance was a homework assignment to him, a very unwelcome homework assignment. "This one was a three bitches and a bastard", indeed it was, and that feeling comes across in his writing style.
I really just feel he's bored and out of ideas. He's tired of Westeros, he isn't sure what to do anymore, and he's just stringing things along with random WTF moments thrown in to try and maintain our interest and fake excitement. It's similar to sudden loud sounds or 'GOTCHA' moments in bad scary movies; using cheap tricks to try and evoke a sense of fear when the plot itself can't.
There are only a few moments where I get a sense of the old Martin. Reading Theon's chapters were interesting. Theon actually had an arc, an evolution, and you got the sense that George enjoyed telling this story. Too bad he had to ruin it with yet another cliffhanger ending. In fact, this was one of the few true cliffhangers in the book, in my opinion. The other 'cliffhangers' were never set up properly and are more like 'dangling threads' that came out of nowhere.
We have Jon getting the Caesar treatment, Stannis marching on Winterfell, Theon and Jeyne escaping, Aegon landing in Westeros, the situation on the Wall, the Pink Letter... Too much buildup here with too little payoff!
And then one of the big cliffhanger moments from the first book - Brienne - gets barely a mention in this! We are left to deduce what she most likely said and her agreement to lead Jaime to UnCat in return for her life - yet another plotline that goes nowhere. At the end of the book, effectively, nothing big or major has happened that we can see the result of. Dany is basically back where she started, realizing she should have gone to Westeros. The entire sideshow in Meereen has effectively accomplished nothing. A lot of interesting things happen to the characters that are ultimately irrelevant. The Others are still persona non grata, mentioned only in shadows. Dragons still haven't returned. Stannis hasn't really conquered anything meaningful. Tommen is still king. Dorne is still 'progressing'. The Ironborn are still the same. Not enough major action has happened. I can accept one book of mostly filler, but two? A Dance with Dragons feels like it was written to meet a word count! What's next, he goes through and increases the font size on all the periods to add some more volume? He might as well, it'd be just as entertaining.
The problem is, Martin could have easily given us at least one big climax in this book. You could have given us a Meereen showdown with results, you could have given us Jon's "death" and obvious rebirth as Azhor Az'hai or whatever, you could have given us the Others finally attacking in force, you could have given us Victarion or Tyrion meeting Dany, you could have given us the battle of Winterfell and the results - there are so many things he could have done that we don't get to see. He could have given us the first use of Dragons in war, and that would have fit right in the with the title. I don't mind cliffhangers, but really we should have gotten SOMETHING resolved in this book so it doesn't feel like a giant tease.
The few redeeming moments for me - Selmy, Wyman's awesomeness ("So young" said Wyman Manderly. "Though mayhaps this was a blessing. Had he lived, he would have grown up to be a Frey."), "Would you like Freys with that", Theon - simply don't add enough to justify book for me.
If you enjoy reading detailed prose, and seeing a world being built by a very skilled author, you might enjoy this. If you're a huge fan of everything remotely to do with the world Martin has skillfully created, then you will find a lot here to fill in the blanks. Unfortunately, most of those blanks were blank for a reason - we just didn't care. I still don't.
If you're a fan of an engaging, interesting plot - the sort of plot that we saw in the first three books - I'd give it a pass.
PS: Martin may denounce us here at Amazon as trolls and sockpuppets, but I think that makes a mockery of the good rating system that has made Amazon so useful for people like me in the past. Mr. Martin, if you read this, please make note of the 'verified purchaser' next to this review. I'm a real person, with a real opinion.
