#rereading the dunk and egg stories made me go

[alicent-boleyn]

Here's a bust of Berenice I drew earlier!

She's a bit older here than in the ficlets I've posted - I'd say this is her at 35-ish, in 182 AC. Her favorite relative, Naerys, died a couple of years ago, her own secret children died of illness recently, and her precious nephew Daemon is being a snotty preteen twat to her. The early 180s AC are not her best years.

[chillyravenart]

I’m just starting the books; do you recommend I start with Fire & Blood first since it’s set before ASOIAF (and other companion books set before ASOIAF), or go ahead and read ASOIAF and THEN get to the companion books? Thank you for your input :)

That's great, welcome to the asoiaf book club! I've had people ask me this before and I'm sure my answer is different every single time lol. It all depends on what you want to know more of: the current timeline and various characters or Targaryen history in general. They're both super interesting and absorbing, but the styles are different. Asoiaf and Dunk & Egg are written through PoVs and Fire & Blood is a historical text "written" by a maester with various secondary sources including other maesters, courtiers and even the court jester. The Dunk and Egg novellas are shorter stories too, so they might not be as overwhelming to commit to as asoiaf or even Fire & Blood which is a sizeable tome.

If you want to read it chronologically, you can start with Fire & Blood or TWOIAF (which has the histories on other Westerosi Houses and regions, as well as Essos) followed by the Dunk and Egg novellas. House Targaryen has deep and important history within Westeros, so if you want to know the ins and outs of their involvement from the start, it's good to start with them, especially if you're already a fan of House Targaryen. Reading asoiaf will be different afterwards however as we only have Daenerys PoVs which unfortunately aren't as abundant as a Targ fan would hope.

However if you want to go in blind, and discover House Targaryen in fragments and via Daenerys' PoVs that's also a safe bet too. Seeing as Fire & Blood and the D&E books accompany the asoiaf series and lend even more information and history to the existing timeline.

I'd personally recommend you read the asoiaf series first, and then polish up your knowledge with the other companion books afterwards. Certain key Targaryen characters are mentioned throughout and when you read up on them later, it will add to your knowledge. And asoiaf is the main series and explores the current timeline and you'll be really intrigued to know more about House Targaryen after you finish A Dance with Dragon 😎 I'm currently rereading the entire series atm, and after I finish Dance, I intend to read D&E and then Fire & Blood. Weird order I know, but it makes sense in my head to go backwards. Hope that made sense and was helpful for you lol! 😌🔥

[shinylitwick94]

Reread A Clash of Kings. Not as good as the first book, but that had been my initial impression too, the first time I read it. I’m going to go into a little bit more detail here. 

 THERE WILL BE POTENTIAL SPOILERS for all the books, the Dunk and Egg novellas, the show, the WOIAF, TWOW sample chapters, etc.

This book drags for me, for some reason. It doesn’t drag as badly as I remember AFFC and ADWD dragging, but it still drags. Makes sense, since a lot of it is setting things up for ASOS, but it is noticeably slower than AGOT.

Once again, the sheer volume of things I missed on the first read is staggering. I barely cared about the Riverlands plotlines or Jon the first time around, so the only things I had semi clear memories of were the King’s Landing chapters, Dany’s chapters and the Winterfell chapters. And even then I pretty much missed half of what is going on.

I think a lot of this is down to the sheer amount of secondary and tertiary characters that actually do matter in these novels. The first time I read this I had no idea who the Freys, the Boltons and all of the other secondary houses were, no clue who half of the courtiers in King’s Landing were, no idea which smaller lords where on Robb’s side, or Tywin’s or Stannis’ or Renlys’. Oddly enough, in contrast with ADWD, I did remember most of the characters from Dany’s plotline and even their names and what they were doing. It was the Westerosi secondary characters I had no interest in. And that meant that things like Cat’s chapters in Riverrun or Arya’s entire plot became completely irrelevant to me. I think the only characters from Arya’s plot that I remembered with any sort of clarity were Gendry and Hot Pie. Everyone else was just a blur of sigils and names and loyalties.

Of course, actually knowing who these people are made rereading those chapters a lot more enjoyable. Especially once you start just how interconnected all of our plot threads are and you can see the beginnings of the Red Wedding(and the Purple one too), or understand what is actually going on during the battle of the Blackwater - as opposed to just thinking I get it - THEY FIGHT - now tell me who wins already. So this part I certainly found a lot more rewarding. I’m pretty sure I talked about it when I reviewed AGOT, but I did feel like it was more noticeable in ACOK. 

The plotlines I enjoyed best in this book were pretty much the same I had enjoyed the first time I read this. I liked the King’s Landing stuff, I liked Dany’s chapters, I really liked Theon and I also enjoyed Davos a lot more.

I do think adding Davos and Theon as POV here was absolutely necessary, but the POV issue is going to start snowballing hard in the next books and I’m not entirely sure if all of those additions gave us something we couldn’t have learned via raven.

Theon is definitely my favorite of the two new POVs. Davos is wonderful, but Theon is such a marvelous mess. And, of course, you get to see the whole Ramsay thing with hindsight.

This is also where GRRM starts slowing down his pace and writing in (occasional) filler chapters, namely in Arya’s storyline. I enjoyed Arya’s story a lot more this time than I did the first, since I actually understood wtf was going on, but I don’t think we needed 10 chapters to tell her story. I think a handful could have been quite easily condensed, parts of it even cut without the story suffering too much. The problem is still in its initial stages here, but this is the first time I actually looked at a chapter in these books and went “we didn’t need that at all”. It would be far less of a problem if I didn’t know it was going to get a lot worse really quickly.

Moving on to the topic of Jon/Dany/Tyrion, whom I complain about endlessly.

Cut for length.

Jon’s chapters are up there with Arya’s for being my least favorite ones in this book. The main issue here being that they’re just really, really slow and practically nothing happens. They leave the Wall, pass by Crasters’, Jon finds the dragonglass at the Fist of the First Men, Jon leaves with Qohorin and co, Jon joins the wildlings at the end. I know for some people that is a lot, or at least enough, but for me the whole thing just feels kinda meh. GRRM takes a looong time to describe every mountain wood and river north of the Wall and I’m just not that interested. It’s snowy and cold and inhospitable, we get it, no need to go over it fifty times. And most of the characters in the NW I’m just not that attached to - I can remember Mormont, Sam, Grenn, Pyp, Donal Noye, Edd and that’s about it. All the others just sort of blur together. Which, in the case of Jon “betraying” Qohorin, means that I don’t particularly feel for either of them, I just don’t know who Qohorin is and feel no reason to care about him at all. And then Jon’s narration is for the most part fairly stoic and monotone, which I can understand from a character perspective, but doesn’t really help me. All of this put together makes Jon’s chapters indescribably boring to me and this is probably the point in the series when I started actively dreading Jon’s chapters. I will note, however, that contrary to my initial impression, it’s not Jon that’s boring, just the way his story is being told.

Dany’s chapters are an interesting case for me, because I feel like a lot of what I said about Jon’s story could also be said about her. But the thing is, in the earlier Dany chapters there is a very strong sense of urgency pushing things onward and while the Qarth chapters also drag a bit, they’re also the series’ first major “big different sort of oriental city” moment, which is a lot more visually interesting to me at least than rocks and snow. There’s also a lot fewer of them, which I think is a good thing, since it means that whenever you’re with Dany, something happens - we have 5 Dany chapters to 8 Jon chapters and 15 Tyrion chapters in this. Qarth is also where we see the House of the Undying, which I really enjoyed and meet Quaithe and her creepy prophecies/advice, all of which ties in to the rest of the story and makes it feel less isolated even if she is half a planet away. And of course the arrival of “Arstan” is a lot funnier on a reread, especially since you notice just how many times characters (mostly Renly) point out that Barristan is nowhere to be found and “must have a king to serve”. Is Qarth still a little needlessly complicated? Yep. Unless we see Qarth again, there was no need whatsoever to create six different factions in that city (The Thirteen, Spicers, the whatever Brotherhood, the Pureborn, the warlocks/Undying, Quaithe). I get that part of that is worldbuilding, but it’s also super confusing. Fortunately most names are pronounceable here. So I did enjoy Dany this time.

ACOK is Tyrion’s finest hour. It’s the one where he’s in charge, making decisions, mostly good ones, helping save King’s Landing, calling Joffrey and Cersei out, etc. The result of this is that despite having so many chapters, nearly all of them matter. I do think one or two of them could have been condensed, but it doesn't feel like an issue because he’s doing stuff all the time and it’s stuff that matters, because he matters. He’s also close to other interesting characters, like Joff, Cersei, the members of the small council and Sansa, who the reader is already invested in, which again make his chapters feel a lot more lively. Essentially this is the Tyrion that everyone knows and loves and the Tyrion even I can appreciate without feeling guilty about it.

In ACOK we are introduced to a bunch of new characters, or at least characters we’d heard of before but never seen, like Stannis and his crew, the Tyrells, the Greyjoys, Ramsay and our first real wildlings. It makes the world feel a lot bigger and a lot more impressive, but it’s also harder to keep up with everything going on at the same time.

This is also where things take the first really unexpected turn downhill for the Starks, Ned’s death aside. I was completely shocked and horrified at Theon’s actions here the first time, and I still wanted to throw him inside a vat of acid during the reread, even knowing what’s coming for him. I also feel like the fall of Winterfell is a lot less foreshadowed than the Red Wedding. You have a million pieces set up in this book(and maybe even AGOT?) leading up to that. The fall of Winterfell comes out of nowhere and is pure Theon being an ass. I felt that this, combined with the darkness of Cat and Arya’s chapters made this book feel a lot more depressing than the first one.

Favorite POV: Tyrion, there’s no stealing that from him this time. Theon is also pretty impressive, for different reasons.

Least favorite POV:Jon, for the reasons above. Arya’s a close second, but the reread made those more enjoyable

Favorite scene: Renly’s peach. The only thing that saddens me is that the show thought of “is he a ham?” and GRRM didn’t. I also really enjoyed the House of the Undying.

Favorite character: Theon, for being such a wonderful little shit. Followed by Arya. Her chapters may drag, but she’s still a joy to read.

Least favorite character: Tough to say. Let’s go with Tywin. I really didn’t realize how much shit he put the people of the Riverlands through the first time.