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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.
A Song of Ice and Fire Overview – Author: George R.R. Martin
There are 7 books on “A Song of Ice and Fire”, only 5 of them published to this date. A Game of Thrones is the first one, released in 1996 – early this year HBO made a TV series based on it, and that’s how I became aware of its existence. According to what I’ve read on the internet, two days after the season’s premiere a second season was signed up, to be aired in 2012. I loved the TV series – it is so good that we watched the 10 episodes in only 2 nights, and because I didn’t want to wait until next year to know what happens, I decided to read the books.
It is my opinion, but I know a lot of people agrees with me, that usually books are much better than their adaptations to TV, as it’s not always possible to include all important details, but I was very surprised to see that HBO’s Game of Throne is very faithful to the book and very little has been left aside, and the characters are perfectly portrayed, with only minor things being different, like some hairs being curled in the book but straight on TV.
So…watching the TV series before reading the books put faces in my head, which for me was fine in this case. Normally, when I read a book and then watch the screen version, I get disappointed because I had imagined everyone so different! For the 2nd and 3rd books (A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords, respectively), which I’ve already finished, there are lots of new characters that I expect to be similar to what I’ve created in my mind, and I think this is the first positive thing I must say about the series: the author makes such a rich and detailed description of people, places, food, objects, etc, that it’s very easy to picture them.
