A Feast For Crows - George R R Martin

[I, Brian]

First of all, drop your expectations of this book before you read it, or you could end up disappointed.

For a start, there's no Jon Snow, Daenerys, or Tyrion points of view in this -you have to wait for the next "half" - Dance of Dragons - for that. The only original point of views characters from the first novel are Arya and Sansa.

Also, the book is focused on the politics of Kings Landing - so expect no major plot progressions relating to the storylines already introduced to us.

But...if you can get past that, what we have is a potentially very enjoyable book.

Center stage to it all is the Cersei and Jaime points of view - a literal Dance of Dragons in themselves - along with the politics centered on the still ongoing wars across Westeros.

George introduces a new Point of View method in AFFC - he gives us a series of viewpoints of the Ironmen, but instead of focusing on a single character, we see three different ones.

He does the same with Dornish points of views - a range of characters to show us what is happening there.

Both the Ironmen and Dorne can appear as initially irrelevant world-building - but once finished, you realise exactly why George has included them in the novel.

Is AFFC a good novel?

In some ways, no - there's no real focus on driving plot - instead, the story looks to tie up loose ends and weave them into the wider political framework.

In other ways, yes - it's a great piece of literature by way of how George can skillfully bring characters and individual scenes to life with simple detail.

There are some aspects that were more violent that I would have liked -for those who've read it, I only need say "Biter and Brienne".

Also, while George's scenes are vivid and full of life, there are areas that disappoint - Brienne has a point of view throughout the book, but rather than achieve anything herself, she spends more time helping tie up our connections to other names mentioned in earlier novels.

Ultimately, though, if approached without prejudice, this continues to work well within the classic "A Song of Fire and Ice" series. It serves almost like a prologue for those things to come, and promises much.

Overall, this was my favourite book of the series after A Game of Thrones - less reliance on magic and a focus on politics requires less of a suspension of belief, and I felt it eventually worked well, once you could see the way the scenes tie together.

Although initially disappointed by the failure to address major existing plot elements, the finish was satisfying, and left me hungry for more, despite that I felt before starting that I may have had my fill already.