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A Feast For Crows (A Song Of Ice And Fire book 4) by George R.R. Martin
01/02/2006 . Source: Pauline Morgan 
pub: Bantam Spectra. 745 page hardback. Price: $28.00 (US), $38.00 (CAN). ISBN: 0-553-80150-3. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out websites: www.bantamdell.com
There have been a number of authors who have embarked on long series of huge books. Some, like David Wingrove with his 'Chung Quo' series in which China is the dominant nation in the far future seems to have planned the whole sequence in detail. Each book tells part of the story and dovetails into the previous ones, often picking up strands for which seeds have been planted well before. The work is massive but highly controlled from start to finish. Lisanne Norman in her 'Sholan Alliance' series, which is a well-written space opera, writes each novel at a time, concentrating on solving the set of problems presented in each book. She may sow the seeds for the next volume and her long term plan is sketchy but each adventure is highly controlled. In the current series by George R. R. Martin, 'A Song Of Ice And Fire', the book controls him. No doubt Martin knows his ultimate destination with this epic but it is taking a very long time to get there. There has been a gap of nearly six years between the publication of 'A Feast For Crows' and 'A Storm Of Swords', the previous equally thick volume.
Martin is a brilliant writer with an aptitude for bringing places and characters to life. He has set up a very complex situation with a large number of factions vying for supremacy. He deals not just with the nobility who are the policy makers but also with their victims, the ordinary people who happen to get in the way of the events. Whereas most authors would be content to follow through the lives of a handful of the participants, especially where their lives entwine, Martin wants to tell us about everyone. Therein lies the problem. The elapsed time since the last volume does not help and it is difficult to pick up the threads without re-reading. In order to carry the story along in this volume he has only been able to concentrate on seven of the plot strands. Some characters seem to have almost been forgotten but to include them here would make the volume even more unwieldy.
The continent that used to be the Five Kingdoms is now a morass of intrigue, suspicion and bloodshed. The focal area for this volume is mainly King's Landing where Cersei is the queen regent. Her younger son, Tommen, is the eight-year-old king, crowned after his brother was poisoned. Cersei believes her younger brother, the deformed dwarf Tyrion, is culpable of that and her father's murder. She desperately wants his head - preferably detached. She remembers a childhood prophecy by a fortune-teller that she would outlive all her children. In order to thwart the telling, she makes decisions that seem misguided, especially to her twin, Jaime. He is actually the father of all her children. Jaime is trying to solve problems by diplomacy rather than the bloodshed Cersei favours. We also follow the misfortunes of Brienne, the warrior woman Jaime has sent to find Sansa Stark, Tyrion's child wife. Sansa has found refuge in The Eyrie masquerading as the bastard daughter of the Lord of Harrenhal. She is hiding in full view and will probably be safe as long as she has enough of the dye that darkens her red hair. Sansa's sister, Arya, after some wandering about the countryside has taken refuge in a temple on the island of Braavos. Calling briefly on the island, but not making real contact with her is Samwell, a member of the Night's Watch which guards the northern wall across the country keeping out the feared Wildlings. He is accompanying Maester Aemon south for the sake of his health. There is also the struggle of succession in the Iron Islands after the death of Balon Greyjoy, their king. To the south in Dorn, Arienne Martell proposes to abduct Myrcella, Cersei's daughter, in the country to marry into the ruling Martell family. Arienne's intention is to provoke conflict.
Confused? It is not surprising with the vast cast of characters, many of whom died in previous volumes but are still in the thoughts of the living. The story is moved on slowly and, in some cases, background information is filled in. This book is definitely not the place to start. Buy the whole series, wait for the last volume, then if you are still in the land of the living, take a good run at it.
The one major quibble I have of Martin's writing is the way that, whoever the viewpoint character is, women are always described by the size of their breasts. It gives away the author as male. Women rarely look at others of their own sex in those terms. We are far more bitchy.
Pauline Morgan
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