Book 40 of 2013: A Dance With Dragons, Part 1: After the Feast by George R.R. Martin

Almost a year to the day after I got the Kindle edition 'box set' of the Song of Ice and Fire books, I finally finished the last one. A Dance With Dragons was split into two volumes and about a month after finishing the first part I decided to go on to the second part; it was a little bit sad because I had been reading these books on and off for a year and I'd actually believed that the next one had already been published, which is not the case at all. I think it's due out at some point next year, so there's going to be a bit of a wait going on until I get it.

Honestly, at this point in the book series it's a bit hard to summarise exactly what's been going on. Everyone is fairly well scattered across the lands of Westeros (and beyond) particularly the Stark children; the girls are off pretending that they're not really Starks, Bran is learning about his talents, Jon is trying to be the Commander of the Wall as best he can. The royal family at Kings Landing is fairing little better with Cersei finally being pulled up for everything she's done in the past, Tyrion is off across the sea having been sold as a slave. Meanwhile things aren't exactly going well for Daenarys either as her dragons have gotten decidedly out of hand.

As much as I did enjoy this book, it was pretty huge. That's not necessarily a good thing because there are now so many characters that I didn't get to see as much of them as I would've liked. I think that felt worse somehow because with the previous books if someone's not had a lot of page-time I've been able to think, that's fine, there'll be a lot of them in the next book. That might still be the case with this one, but I'm going to have to wait an awful lot longer to get to see them again. And I'm not always the most patient of people!

I've been struggling to like Daenarys as much over the last two books as well. I liked her when she was being a crusading warrior queen. Being stuck in a city whilst trying to hold onto her morals and rule doesn't suit her. The ending to this book was starting to bring me back around to her but it looks like we're going to have to wait until the next book before we see any real change in her. I hope we do because I want her to be one of my favourite characters again, I mean, she has dragons which makes her cool regardless of what she's doing.

My copy ended with the beginning part of the next book, which was cool because it seemed like a good start. Unfortunately it seems like ages until it's going to be published and it kind of leaves me feeling torn about what to do next. I like to reread all the books in a series before the next one is published, but these books took me a little while to get through and I strongly doubt I'd be able to rush through them right before the next one is published. Plus, I've just finished them, I'm not sure I want to go right back to the beginning so soon afterwards.

That said, I would really like to reread all the series again, as well as maybe looking out for some of the short stories or stand alones like the Dunk and Egg stories because I'm not really ready to leave that world behind just yet.

Thank goodness we've only watched the first series of the TV series, we'll be investing in the second after Christmas and so at least that way I won't have too long to wait until my next fix!