I Danced With Dragons

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Stayed up way past my bedtime last night in order to get there but I finally flipped the last page of George R. R. Martin's fifth installment in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, A Dance With Dragons, last night / this morning. If anybody's read it and wants to discuss anything you can bring it to the comments, I won't be reviewing it properly or posting any spoilers here in the blog. 

I will say that I loved it, and it was one of my favorite volumes so far. Martin's language is so rich and fun and curious and strangely plotted - people who roll their eyes at him as just sorcerers and dragons and mead wenches with their tits popping out are really doing themselves a disservice. At this point in this series you're aching for certain goals to be reached and then he gets you so caught up in the way he discusses his character's relationships and contrasting mindsets that you will follow him anywhere, gladly. Unto the end of time apparently, because gods know when we'll get Book 6. Sigh. But yet I am so sated with the just-short-of-1000 pages I just read that I feel fine waiting a bit, mulling it all over. (Get back to me in a couple of years and I'll surely be singing a different tune, no doubt.)

ETA all this means that I'm now off reading every review and every fan-reaction there is to be found on the whole of the internet, so I will be hella distracted today and posting will probably be light.

ETAA Okay I love this quote from the review of the book at Salon:

"I couldn't stop reading Martin because my desire to know what was going to happen combined with my absolute inability to guess what would happen and left me helpless before his sorcery. At the end, I felt shaken and exhausted.

I can't recall the last time a work of science fiction or fantasy had that kind of effect on me. I'm almost glad that it will be years before I have to do this all over again. Because it will take me years to recover."

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