My attempt to explain some of my problems with A Feast for Crows

Thanks to the great comment from JJ on my last post, I wanted to clarify some of my thoughts on the problems I had with A Feast for Crows. Basically, the argument goes that Feast is the second act set-up for the third act of the story Martin is trying to tell. And for the most part, I agree with this. The second act of a story is not always as explosive as the third act. Okay, cool, that's fine. But the second act should still be well written, and this is where I have my problems with Feast.

And really, for me, the biggest problem with Feast is the pacing problem, as JJ (and others) pointed out. It was a mistake for Martin to split the book, but what can you do, hindsight is 20/20.

But if we are talking second acts and set-ups, that doesn't excuse, in my mind, the overall *weak* writing found in Feast.



There's way too much gratuitous sex, for one thing. Sure there was sex in the other books, but it seems like half of Feast is some crazy-dirty sex scene that adds nothing to the story except titillation.

Also, there's way too many long descriptive passages that add nothing to the story. I'll grant that Martin is using the descriptive passages in Brienne's chapters, for instance, to highlight his themes, but good writing is able to further the plot and enrich characters even when it dips into a little flowery thematic language -- but Martin doesn't do that here, he sacrifices story for flowery writing. The book seems very padded as a result.

Then, worst of all in terms of bad writing, he loses control of the narrative by using too many different POVs.

I understand that he has this huge story to tell -- the Ironborn, the Martells, Cersei's misadventures in Kings Landing -- and he's stuck with his POV style of writing, so we've got to get new POVs to tell the parts of his story that take place in these different parts of Westeros.

My problem with all this -- based on my reading of the first three books -- is that this is not the story I signed up for. I signed up for a story in which a family of honorable people get in over their heads in a war for power. This family, the Starks, are the heart of the story for me. The only other non-Stark characters that we get major POVs from (before Feast) (and I'm leaving out Dany, because she's a special case and not really relevant to the Westeros characters... yet) are Tyrion, Davos, Theon, Sam, and then eventually Jaime. Of those five, Theon and Sam have direct links with the Stark family, so they feel "Starkish" even though they aren't exactly Starks. What they do effects and relates to what happens to the Starks.

Tyrion and Davos are not Starks (and they're often at odds with the Starks), but they share similar qualities with the Starks, in that they are honorable in their own ways, often seeking to do what's right over what's best for "their side" so that they feel to the reader like "good guys" (though, obviously, there is a lot of ambiguity there, since technically Davos and Tyrion are opposed to the Starks and do a lot of things that hurt the Stark cause).

Jaime is the only example of a character who (until the moment his first POV arrives) we could consider a straight-up antagonist to the Starks. (I will grant you that Theon is also an antagonist, but his conflicted, misguided journey suggests he might be on his way toward reform and a return to the Stark-ish ways.)

But note, that once Jaime starts having POV chapters he gradually begins to turn from antagonist to protagonist. He transforms from being anti-Stark (thematically speaking) to suddenly being pro-Stark (again, thematically speaking, in that he becomes more honorable, more a force for good than for evil).

This kind of consistency in how POVs are handled goes out the window in Feast. Suddenly we're getting a bunch of POVs from characters who are not really protagonists, some are outright antagonists, and some, like Cersei, never achieve that transformation that Jaime achieved. We follow her POV all through Feast, and yet she never transforms from antagonist to protagonist. Sure, we might get into her head a little bit, and see where she's coming from, but she's still the "bad guy" as far as the reader is concerned.

So what has Martin accomplished by giving us her POV. I still hate her as much as ever, only now, having seen inside her head, I no longer fear her. Not even a little bit. This was not the case in the first three books. Before Feast, Cersei might have been vain and paranoid and blind to her weaknesses, but she was still threatening. She was still someone to be feared by us Stark-lovers.

Now? She's a buffoon. She's completely non-threatening. She's been destroyed as an effective antagonist. I'd rather have seen her killed outright than have her so thoroughly neutered as a threat.

This is why I think it was wise of Martin not to give us the POV of Tywin (and why I'm not too keen on the idea of Melisandre as a POV in the next book). POV chapters should be reserved for protagonists or at the very least for ambiguous figures like Theon, who have the possibility of becoming protagonists.

Tywin remains the baddest badass of badassery because we never do get a glimpse into his head via a POV. We learn about him and find out he's not just a one-note bad guy from some of the comments of other characters (most notably Gemma in Feast), so it's not like having a POV is the only way to make a character three-dimensional and rounded. But he remains threatening, dangerous, unpredictable, because we never get that too-revealing glimpse inside his head.

With Cersei, Martin has given us this glimpse and ruined a once-great villain of the series.

I get what he's trying to do on a literary level. He wants to deconstruct these ideas of "good" and "bad" and "hero" and "villain." But at the end of the day, a story like this *needs* some heroes, however flawed they may be, and it *needs* some villains who are dangerous and powerful enough to be threats.

I have faith Martin will bring in new villains to threaten our heroes (and expand on some of the old villains as well). But as far as Cersei? She's been ruined for me. I neither fear her nor care about her one way or the other. If she dies, great. If she lives, whatever. She's about as effective now in the story as a dying dog. She might still be dangerous, but she's no longer compelling.

But at least Cersei is someone we know well from the previous books. The other new POVs in Feast are basically a bunch of newbies that I neither cared for nor cared about. Who are all these people? Why should I care about them beyond a straight-up plot level?

The answer is, I don't care. This is why I'm nervous about how the story is going to continue and why I'm not as ready to cut slack on the fourth book as a needed "set-up" second act. For me, what's being set-up is not the story I signed up for. I signed up for a story about the Starks (and Tyrion, heh, and yeah, Dany too). I couldn't give two craps about the smelly Greyjoys and their dumb drowned god. I don't care about how crafty the Martells are and how they're going to sneak their way into power. They are not the people I care about; they are not the characters I want to follow to the ends of the earth. And worst of all, they're not really related to any of the characters I DO care about. At least Tolkien, when bringing in new characters in his second act, had them share considerable face time with our heroes (i.e.: Eowyn with Aragorn, Treebeard with Merry and Pippin, Faramir with Frodo and Sam). The Ironborn and Dorne people are off on their own doing their own things and I'm just like, WTF, why do I care?

In other words, why I'm being so hard on Feast, is that I don't really like the way the story is going. It's getting too big. It's getting less personal (which is ironic, in a series that boasts the very personal style of POV storytelling). It's turning into, frankly, a typical epic, instead of the personal epic/family drama it started out as.

Will Martin recover? Will he get the story back on track in his third act? I hope so.

But to be a true masterpiece on the level of say, Tolkien, he needed to have a strong second act as well, and Feast is just not strong.

Tolkien's second act -- The Two Towers -- is just as strong as the rest of his story (and in fact, includes some of LOTRs greatest moments... Shelob, the Ents, the battle of Helms Deep).

What's disappointing is that Martin's work before Feast was SO STRONG that the weakness of Feast stands out even more.