A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire Series, book 4)

By George R. R. Martin

Blurb: 
Crows will fight over a dead man's flesh, and kill each other for his eyes.

Bloodthirsty, treacherous and cunning, the Lannisters are in power on the Iron Throne in the name of the boy-king Tommen. The war in the Seven Kingdoms has burned itself out, but in its bitter aftermath new conflicts spark to life.

The Martells of Dorne and the Starks of Winterfell seek vengeance for their dead. Euron Crow's Eye, as black a pirate as ever raised a sail, returns from the smoking ruins of Valyria to claim the Iron Isles. From the icy north, where Others threaten the Wall, apprentice Maester Samwell Tarly brings a mysterious babe in arms to the Citadel.

Against a backdrop of incest and fratricide, alchemy and murder, victory will go to the men and women possessed of the coldest steel and the coldest hearts.

Review: 
I have read the books before Feast for Crows a long time ago, maybe 4 years now. Due to the books being so long and I had so many other books to read I put the series on hold. Since they took so long to read I haven’t reread them and just dived straight into the next book. I also would like to mention how I’ve been rewatching Game of Thrones so it’s become hard to decipher what happened differently between the two so I apologise if this review is poor.

The first thing I want to mention about this series as a whole is how feminist it is. Which you might think I sound crazy for saying but I’ll explain. Yes there is a lot of female hate from the males and they get raped and mistreated but the main character women are so strong and powerful. Women like Brienne, Arya and even Cersei have just a powerful role in the game of thrones. I also see this as I rewatched the series with the likes of how season 7 ended with 2 women on top. It just amazes me to see this perspective from George R R Martin books that I didn’t realise before.

I’d like to point out I am a big fantasy reader and I’m not afraid of big books, like you can see in my reviews of the Tawny Man Trilogy (still got more of the Elderling books to read, I can’t escape big books it seems). What I love about George R R Martin’s fantasy books is the detail he’s put into it. It feels like he’s created a whole new world and its amazing how he has done this, it’s just so creative and so easy to fall into the world. Pretty much every single character no matter how small they are has a name and for the most part they’re all different names. 

For those who haven’t read a game of thrones book, (this is probably not the best review to start with being mid way through the series but just in case) the layout I’d say is fairly unique especially in this book. There is so many different main characters so Martin has wrote them all in a third person angle. So rather than chapters it’s characters each new chapter is a different characters perspective so its really interesting to see the story develop through different eyes. In this book however, he had so much to write that he only put half of the characters perspectives in it and in the next book Dance with Dragons he put the other characters who weren’t in this one but it is all taking place at a consecutive time. Which now makes sense to me on why there's still another two books to come out.

Also another thing worth mentioning about the chapters is that if a character is hiding their identify such as Sansa being Alayne and Arya as Cat then the chapter name will correspond. Also will the text about them, it’s not just the name heard in conversations and some chapters don’t have a character name such as the ironborn storyline, I believe this is because there has been different characters telling those stories like the one in Dorne.

We have various different little plots going on around the big plot. In Dorne, they’re trying to make Myrcella Queen as she was second born and in Dorne gender doesn’t matter (again, another feminist setting). Cersei is trying to deal with taking power away from Margaery. Brienne is trying to find Sansa with the help of Podrick. Sansa is trying to have power in the Eyrie. Jaime is trying to come to terms with his one hand. Arya is learning the way of the many faced God. Samwell is trying to keep maester Aemon alive. The ironborn are fighting over their throne.

I wouldn’t say A Feast for Crows is an easy read, far from it. For starters it’s a very long book and there's so many characters it can get confusing. Although the very heavy conversational chapters are a lot easier to read compared to the dream ones.

After this point, I’ll be going into more detail of scenes so the spoiler warning will be going up. I just want to say that I did enjoy this book even though it took me so long to read. However because they are so big and take up so much time I can only reward it 4 runes out of 5.

*SPOILERS*

Now I did have a few more scene notes but sadly I lost them when I left my previous job, so I can only talk about the ones I do have notes for but thats still plenty.

One scene I really liked was when Arya defended Sam whilst he was in Braavos. Of course he was completely unaware that this was Jon’s sister but that's what I love about this. It’s just another clever example of dramatic irony.

A common thing seen in Jaime’s perspective is how much he loves Cersei but also that love being diminished as he repeats the names over and over again of who she has slept with. It’s interesting to see how he is being shaped by the betrayal. However you can also see the respect he has gained for Brienne now by defending her name when she isn’t with him and just generally thinking of her.

Some more dramatic irony somewhat involving Arya is when Brienne finds Gendry. Gendry probably doesn’t know where Arya is but probably could have helped Brienne if they both knew. When Brienne saw Gendry she thought it was the ghost of Renly Baratheon, still unaware that it is the bastard son of King Robert. The true heir to the throne. 

This book is just filled with dramatic irony and I am such a fan for it. There’s a scene with the Dornish princess Arianne who finds out she was betrothed to a man who had his face melted by gold. The readers all know from this subtle hint that it was meant to be Viserys Targaryen. If he didn’t die that would be a very interesting change of storyline with Dorne teaming up with the Targaryens. 

The scene that broke my heart in this book is when Brienne was killed by the revived corpse of Catelyn Stark. Catelyn did it because she was convinced Brienne had become too friendly with the lannisters. I love Brienne as a character so it was a real shame to have a killed but that usually is the case in A Song of Ice and Fire. Whilst she was dying George put that she called out one word. But didn’t specify what, to leave the audience to interpret this how they like, I believe she called out Jaime. I just really appreciate the subtleties in this book.

Overall, I’m giving the book 4 runes out of 5 because it was an excellent well thought out book it just took me far too long to read so it got to the point where I just wanted it to hurry up but that's more my slow reading fault than the authors.

Quote: 

“It is being common-born that is dangerous, when the great lords play their game of thrones” 

- Petyr Baelish, A Feast For Crows

Rating: 4 runes out of 5

written by Lauren

Check out my review of book 5A: A Dance with Dragons: Dreams and Dust