A Dance with Dragons Review

After what seemed like an eternity I finally finished A Dance with Dragons, which is the sixth book in George RR Martin’s epic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire. Or to bring this down to a broader cultural understanding for those who haven’t read the books: Game of Thrones. 

If you have never read the novels or watched the show then maybe you should go put the kettle on and have a nice cup of tea…are they gone? Then we’ll continue. A Dance with Dragons takes off where A Feast For Crows finished. But unlike A Feast For Crows it was not nearly 800 pages of filler. Basically Crows spent more of its time following the misadventures of minor characters the series has never shown an interest in before and suddenly decided that they deserve a whole book for some reason. While that’s not to say nothing of any importance happened in the book that was essentially to the overall plot, those golden nugget moments were very few and far between.

A Dance with Dragons once more focused on the main characters and their continuing adventures. Tyrion Lannister, having fled King’s Landing is roped into some mysterious quest to the other side f the world while Daenerys Targaryen sets up home in the desert city of Mereen. Jon Snow has to contend with the reality of a shortage of rangers to defend The Wall and Bran Stark finally meets the mysterious three eyed crow that has been plaguing him through dreams for the last six books. 

There is a game changer this time round, resulting in probably the best twist in the series so far (which I will not spoil here). This very easily makes A Dance with Dragons the best in the series to date.

As usual the story sucks you in, with events running in tandem across Westeros and other parts of the world. As ever George RR Martin’s characters are memorable and on form.

The only critique I have is that once again, another war is looming within the pages of the book. After six books of other wars and scuffles, I kind of feel I’ve had my belly full. There are a lot of new locations visited in the book and some great revelations along the way but I do feel the series is starting to run out of steam a bit now.