he preceding three volumes in Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire—A Game of Thrones (1996); A Clash of Kings (1999); and A Storm of Swords (2000)—constitute nearly 3,000 pages of recomplicated intrigue in a complex subcreation, conducted among literally hundreds of characters. You will not receive a summary here.
As before, the new volume is told via the shifting viewpoints of about a dozen key characters, in alternating chapters. The alert reader will note that many of the key characters from past books, however, are missing. As Martin explains in an afterword, the parallel events in the lives of these protagonists will be narrated in the forthcoming volume, A Dance with Dragons. It is unclear whether this fifth book will climax the series, although events seem to be trending that way.
The present novel finds the wars that have riven the Seven Kingdoms, upon the death of King Robert, to be dying down. The Lannister clan seems firmly entrenched upon the Iron Throne, in the figure of King Tommen, an 8-year-old boy who is the pawn of his duplicitous mother, Queen Cersei (herself being plotted against). Jaime Lannister, Cersei's maimed brother and lover, is out of favor but remains a force to be reckoned with.
However, in the north, in the Iron Islands, a new threat is brewing. The harsh figure of Euron Greyjoy, otherwise known as the Crow's Eye, has ascended to the Seastone Chair. He intends to conquer the entire realm of Westeros and means to employ the dragons of Daenerys, the exiled heir to the dynasty that King Robert overthrew.
Meanwhile, the scattered surviving children of the Stark clan undergo their own continuing trials. The two daughters, so different in temperament—Arya, a tomboyish warrior maid, and Sansa, a weak-willed girly girl—have each found a refuge from those who hunt them. Arya has become a seller of raw seafood under the tutelage of a mysterious mystical order known as the House of Black and White. Sansa is masquerading as the daughter of a lord sympathetic to her clan. Jon Snow, the bastard Stark, has been appointed Lord of the Wall, the magical barrier that keeps back the Wildings and the Others from destroying the Seven Kingdoms. Two other sons on the run, Bran and Rickon, do not figure in this volume. And the children's mother, Catelyn, has passed through death to become an avenging specter. Also connected with this house is Brienne, a warrior woman, whose loyalty takes her deep into perils.
As in the previous installments, all the houses engage in numerous Machiavellian schemes to raise themselves above the others. But none of them save Robert's brother, Stannis, seem to realize that their mundane struggles mirror a cosmic battle between the Lord of Light and the Lord of Darkness for control of the whole globe.
Arthurian scope, Norse fatalism
Martin's monumental achievement continues apace in this fourth installment. Everything that readers have enjoyed in the previous volumes will be found here. Bold battles, larger-than-life characters, resounding declarations of love and hate and revenge, eruptions of magic, startling reversals, a sense of antiquity and destiny. His fecundity, ingenuity, craft and doggedness are inspiring and heartening.
But, truth be told, those very qualities are also a little frightening and even perhaps a tad weary-making—for Martin as writer, assuredly ("This one was a bitch," he acknowledges), but also for the reader. The sheer quantity of events, dialogue and invention begin to assume staggering, senses-numbing proportions. (Consider that the real-time span of this whole epic to date occupies about two or three months in the lives of its characters. We notice this when, for instance, the pivotal death of Eddard Stark, which occurred hundreds of pages ago in the first volume, is referenced as still fresh in the minds of everyone.) The sheer weight and quantity of prose begins to sit upon us as heavily as actual events do upon the characters.
This would be tiresome if it were not that the quality of Martin's work is so good. He just never relents, whether he's describing a battle involving scores of combatants, a one-on-one fight between knights, the intrigues of the court or the shifty mien of an innkeeper. His capacity to find some new angle of attack—instanced by the introduction in this book of several new viewpoint characters—is admirable.
Of course, the rich Shakespearean dialogue, bawdy and earthy, and the Haggard-like way in which characters are buffeted by fate also sustain our interest. Surprisingly, out of all the millions of words involved in this series, very few concern actual fantastical elements. You could count on two hands the magical tropes involved here: dragons, pyromancers, zombies, a shadow assassin. The magical "wonders" that too many bad fantasy novels have made stale are here used sparingly, while Martin returns to a kind of amped-up William Morris focus on the affairs of the human heart in a time and place where deeper, darker passions ruled.
As an old savant says, "Dead history is writ in ink, the living sort in blood." Martin is definitely employing the latter medium; thus his pages breathe and caper.
