A Song of Ice and Fire – A Feast for Crows (book 4)

Author: George R.R. Martin

**CAUTION: IT DOES CONTAIN SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE PREVIOUS BOOKS**

After the slaughter of several important characters in the previous book, one had to wonder who was left to tell the story and how the author was going to keep it up. The answer is plain and simple: a whole bunch of new POVs. 6 they are: The Prophet / The Drowned Man (Aeron “Damphair” Greyjoy); The Captain of the Guards (Areo Hotah); The Princess in the Tower / The Queenmaker (Aryanne Martell); The Kraken’s Daughter (Asha Greyjoy); The Soiled Knight (Ser Arys Oakheart) and The Iron Captain / The Reaver (Victarion Greyjoy). Additionally to them, there’s also 6 POVs already known to us from the previous books (thankfully, otherwise I would not follow it so eagerly): Cersei and Jaime Lannister; Samwell Tarly; Brienne of Tarth; Arya Stark / Cat of the Canals and Sansa Stark / Alayne Stone. All the above with a slash between names mean that character has chapters of his own with two different names – confusing, if you are not paying too much attention on the new characters. Also, the prologue is told by a novice of the Citadel.

Said that, I found the first two hundred pages a bit boring and struggled to get past it, but persistence paid off – once the story caught up, I couldn’t stop reading.

In Dorne, we are introduced to Prince Doran Martell, his daughter Aryanne, the Sand Snakes (the Red Viper’s bastards), and we discover Doran’s plans for vengeance against King’s Landing.

In the Iron Islands, the Kingsmoot turns out to be very predictable (surprise!).

Sansa is in the Eyrie, living as Littlefinger’s natural daughter. I didn’t intend to spend too much time talking about her, because she doesn’t deserve it – she is too silly, even after everything that happened to her and her family, but one thing caught my attention and I want to add this as another reason as to why I despise her so much. After “ages” having not thought about Jon Snow, when someone makes a comment about him, she thinks “he was only my half brother, but still…”. Even when she completes saying, or better, thinking, that now he’s all that she has, she has never considered him as real family! In comparison, Arya loves Jon with all her heart, and if she doesn’t think about Sansa too, who is her sister (not half), it is because they are completely different girls and this difference made them fight, so it’s not because of their blood that she doesn’t give a thought about silly Sansa.

Meanwhile, in the Riverlands, Brienne is still on her mission to keep her promise to Catelyn Stark and also Jaime Lannister, and she now has with her Podrick Payne, Tyrion’s squire.

But it is in King’s Landing that most of the action takes place. Cersei, sweet Cersei…I guess she will have what she deserves soon enough, or so I hope. She’s so full of herself and blind with power, that she does not seem able to think rationally, although she thinks her moves and plots and lies and games are fantastic and would make her father proud of her. What a big fool. She should know better.

Jaime has changed for better, and I definitely sympathize with him now. Samwell is the same craven as ever, and Arya is the one to whom all my best wishes are directed for, but at this point of the series, I have no idea what is going to happen to her.

To finalize: A Feast for Crows is focused in Westeros – from Dorne up to the Eyrie, the Iron Islands and King’s Landing. There are some bits and pieces happening in Braavos, across the Narrow Sea, but apart from that, we hardly hear about The Wall and Essos. George R.R. Martin decided to split the story in two books due to its length, but instead of dividing it per chronology, he divided it by location and characters, which means the next book, A Dance of Dragons, will focus in Daenerys (Essos) and Jon Snow / Stannis (The Wall).

I think this is good, because then we don’t have superficial stories everywhere, but does it mean that we’ll have to wait until the 6^th book (The Winds of Winter – publication date unknown) to know what happens to the characters in Westeros? This is cruel!!!!

It’s another brilliant book, but I’m not giving 5 stars because of those first 200 pages.

Buy A Feast for Crows from: The Book Depository or Amazon.