A Feast for Crows

A Feast for Crows, the fourth book in A Song of Ice and Fire, was released five years after A Storm of Swords, following a troubled writing process. George R. R. Martin first decided that the plot would jump five years in time, which would allow the children and dragons to grow. However, long after he had produced enough material, he abandoned that idea, noticing that more than half of what had been written was in the form of flashbacks. Martin then decided to start again from scratch, picking up the story from where the third volume left off. After some time, he also realized that this new novel had become too long, with more than one thousand five hundred pages, which made the publishers request him to split the story into two parts. Following the advice of a friend, he then split it according to the location of the characters in the story, in order to preserve some narrative focus. This way, A Feast for Crows shall deal with the events that take place in the south of Westeros whereas A Dance of Dragons, the fifth volume, will tackle those that happen in the north and Essos. This brief summary, however, already displays the major problem afflicting every page of the novel: the lack of adequate planning. Every story told in A Feast for Crows, both on a larger scale, such as the whole plot involving the Greyjoys, and a small one, such as with the character of Hyle Hunt, shows to be completely devoid of any point or proper conclusion.

The Greyjoy chapters are surely the pinnacle of what there is of worst in the book. The plot here is quite simple: there is a dispute for the throne of the Iron Islands and Aeron Greyjoy, a priest of the Drowned God, decides to settle it by calling for a vote to elect the new king. Thus, we are presented in a meticulously and dense way, as is usual with this series, to the main candidates (Asha, Victarion, Euron …), to the various secondary characters, such as the calm Reader, and to the exhaustive preparations for the election. However, by its end, everything remains the same. Both the characters and the political structure of the Iron Islands are not modified by the event in any way, shape, or form. Now, if the election would not change a thing why, for the Drowned God’s sake, we followed it this closely? If movie editors would already cut a very short scene of someone ringing the doorbell and entering a house just because it would signify an additional six useless seconds in their movie, imagine their reaction when coming across a whole plot that, in addition to sounding a bit artificial – democracy doesn’t seem to match the Greyjoys’ motto of “We do not sow” –  doesn’t appear to have any effect in that world whatsoever either. It’s possible, of course, that the election will be important later on due to some technicality in its proceedings or whatnot, but this doesn’t change the fact that it produces no impact in A Feast for Crows, it leads nowhere.

And if we look closely at the secondary characters, such as the knight Hyle Hunt, we also see that following them through Westeros is completely unnecessary. The knight, for example, doesn’t add anything of value to the chapters focusing of Brienne’s point of view and if the character didn’t exist nothing major that happened to her would have changed. In fact, Brienne’s whole story is also questionable in its result. Her journey through Westeros, which never goes anywhere, serves to show the dire consequences that the War of the Five Kings brought to the common people. But again, the book fails to show anything new in this respect, as Arya’s narrative in both A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords had already done exactly this, by exposing the little girl to atrocities, injustices, and death in a brutal and ruthless environment. The desolate and blood-soaked landscapes she passes through, as well as the treacherous and vile people Brienne encounters never surprise us, they’re just more of the same, and the outcome of her journey is even more alarming, if not reversed at some later point in A Song of Ice and Fire.

Jaime, however entertaining he may be, also hardly contains some semblance of an arc, since there is no prospect of evolution in the character. He needs to resolve the siege of Riverrun, which puts in check his promise to Catelyn Stark – which he thinks is his last way of safeguarding what’s left of his honor – as he gradually steps away from his sister’s influence. The honor thing was considerably dispensable, as it was also dealt with – and more effectively – in the previous novel, with his dealings with Brienne, while the problems of his relationship with Cersei are repeated to exhaustion. The number of times these words are repeated, for example, is unbearable: “she’s been fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and probably Moon Boy for all I know…” If you make a drinking game you risk ending up at a hospital: they appear at least once a chapter and sometimes more than two times on a single page. At least, this whole repetition serves to make very humorous the moment when Jaime actually gets to dream about the Moon Boy sleeping with Cersei – whoever the Moon Boy is.

Cersei, on the other hand, surprises by being the one with the most important arc in the book, showing a completely disturbed personality that makes her both annoying and fascinating. To Cersei everything is always a great conspiracy: if a servant smiles at her, Cersei immediately begins to deduce the motives of such a smile and its hidden meanings, concluding that the girl is obviously a spy, that the smile was of mockery, that the maid is an insolent and foolish girl, who represents an enormous danger to her children and to the kingdom and who, for these reasons, must be slaughtered like the cockroach she is. Paranoia forms the oppressive atmosphere of Cersei’s chapters: the entire kingdom is plotting against her, her counselors are useless and possibly traitors, and the fate of the Seven Kingdoms rests entirely on her shoulders.

It’s fascinating, then, to observe how Cersei wants to be the cunning, resolute, and powerful son Tywin Lannister always desired to have, but keeps making more and more dubious choices, sinking in the quicksand of her own making. Her arc is by far the most complex and well-developed in the novel, with just one downside: the attempt to make her the Snow White Queen by the exhaustive repetition of a random prophecy in which she would be queen only until a more beautiful girl appeared to steal her crown. It suggests a need to reinforce the hatred Cersei feels for another character, but it is a feeling that was already convincing enough without any prophecy whatsoever.

The quality of Cersei’s story differs so much from the rest of the novel that even her supporting characters are interesting. From the Kettleback brothers – the “Snow White Huntsmen” – to the mysterious High Sparrow and his sect, all have their significance and all impact the final events. One highlight, for example, is maester Qyburn who, with his Frankenstein-like experiments in a secret laboratory in King’s Landing, turns out to be a sadistic, sinister man, which helps to foment the stifling atmosphere of Cersei’s chapters.

Nevertheless, the rest of the book suffers from serious problems regarding a general lack of resolution. The plot situated in the southern kingdom of Dorne, besides being introduced extremely late in the series, has no closure whatsoever, exactly like the point of view of the sisters Alayne Stone and Cat of the Canals, who cannot even finish the training to which they are submitted. Meanwhile, Samwell Tarly simply travels for work and has an ending that only lore fanatics will fully grasp.

George R. R. Martin attempted to slow down the pacing of the story and give it a more philosophical, reflective, melancholic tone, but in the process he allowed the narrative to swallow its own tail, forgetting to make its discussions and metaphors still relevant to the series. In A Feast for Crows, the fantasy world seems to get bigger than what Martin can effectively work with. The solution, therefore, was possibly not to split the original manuscript in two, but to cut its edges, removing all the fat and giving the reader a much more efficient story.

December 11, 2024

Originally published in Portuguese on March 11, 2015.