Woof, the bittersweet effective finale of the series. Enjoyable because, well, this world is so entertaining, the cast so compelling (most of the time), and we know that there’s a whole lot more story to be told. This is probably my third favorite book behind books three and one, and it loses points mainly because G.R.R.M’s weaknesses as a writer are most evident in this book.

Page-to-page it’s got some of the best scenes and over-arching plot point developments, but the elephant in the room is that this book was clearly partitioned from the cutting room floor of “shit that G.R.R.M. couldn’t fit into ‘A Feast for Crows’.” There is, in fact, an entire reading guide –akin to the Naturo supercut– with instructions about how to splice this novel into its predecessor for the “intended” reading experience, since much of its storylines, largely contained within Essos and the Wall, run parallel to that of FfC’s Iron Islands, Winterfell, Kings Landing plots. As such, the pacing is a bit stilted and we're playing a lot of catchup on the PoVs we missed out on in the last book. Can't say it's a worse tactic than having to wait to cycle through like 8 other characters before returning to someone again, but it's just the nature of the beast he's created for himself, and it appears as though he refuses to progress quickly enough when character arcs overlap.

Though much of the book is enjoyable, it can’t help but be penalized by the fact that G.R.R.M. bit off more than he could chew – further evidenced by the fact that the still-unreleased “Winds of Winter” has already suffered the same treatment of having to be split into a minimum of two 1500 page behemoths according to Martin’s own estimates. Needless to say, I fear his watch will end before we get some of the best setpieces that I believe the story has to offer: Battle of the Bastards, the High Sept, Hardhome, the return of Benjin, the North remembering, etc.

This book also marks the most severe deviation executed by D&D from the source material (with 3 years to plan ahead between the production of S5 and this book). Young Griff filling Jon Snow’s shoes as the [spoiler]. The Dornish plot mattering still, and a shitton more Essos plot than I frankly cared for. In some ways, I prefer the direction D&D went, but I’ve also been down the free folk rabbit hole enough to see how f(Aegon) solves many of the potholes introduced by D&D’s own lack of creativity.

Young Griff is a crazy character for D&D to have omitted, but it kinda makes sense why they did? He just comes out of nowhere and uproots all my priors about who had the best claim to the throne. I think that's intentional, so we sympathize with Dany, but anyone with less faith in G.R.R.M (me, the further I got into this series), might think that he got bored of his current cast and needed a new character to get from narrative point A to point B. As such, I'm not yet sure what purpose Jon Snow serves in the series other than just being a really solid dude ("I will NOT grow up to be my father").

Observations in order:

• The narrator describing Bran’s environment north of the wall as ‘blackly dark and full of fear’ echoes the manifestation of the refrain of the followers of the Lord of Light: that the night is dark and full of terrors.

• I also enjoyed the personification of the Lord of Light as the antithesis of the night king since “fire is always hungry,” as well as all the other obvious imagery.

• There's more wicked dialog – Davos stands out as the only redeeming member of Stannis' campaign. His petition for support at the Iron Bank is excellent.

• Tyrion continues to be entertaining, though in a depressing way now, having acquired more -slayer titles: Kinslayer, Kingslayer, etc. and he's just relishing them now, embracing his monstrosity as a dwarf. Memories of Tysha come up as a PTSD mechanism, and he continues to joke about being given a crossbow to show people what he means whenever they get on his nerves.

• The tell of Melisandre being a mere illusionist is a nice counterweight to ground the story back into its medieval grim dark roots, with the fantasy elements taking a backseat. (This is immediately followed by Bran warging through centuries of history at a time. That, somehow, doesn’t bother me though since he remains largely irrelevant in the canon.

• Splitting this book from the fourth allows for focused parallels between both Jon and Daenerys’ struggles in governing their people. Jon gradually losing hold of the wall is written really well as something "unattractive" that takes the full book to pay off, but boy howdy does it ever.

• The title chapters like “The Merchant’s Man”, “Prince of Winterfell”, “”The Lost Lord”, “The Wayward Bride”, etc. are so sick. Oftentimes I found myself at what I had deemed to be a stopping point only to get teased back into another chapter (or 3 since there’s a few chunks of these titillating previews in this novel).

• Wedding the fake Arya instead of Sansa is less poignant than D&D’s adaptation I think, +1 to them I suppose. But holy shit, Jeyne gets torched. Beaten, and Molested by Littlefinger’s guys in one of the earlier books because Sansa can’t bear to hear her crying, only to be pawned off to Ramsay who continues to molest, beat, and subject her to humiliating acts with both his hounds and with Reek is far worse than the implication of Sansa Stark being his betrothed.

• The Battle of the Bastard’s salvation viz a viz Stannis is more forecasted in this novel, though readers might forget by the time we ever get to read a sixth book.

• Winterfell being described as a “Lichyard” and the series ostensibly ending just short of Theon’s redemption arc is the perfect image to capture the series morose end on paper.

• Stannis’ march from Deepwod Motte to Winterfell is much more prolonged than the show indicates, which really hammers home the gravity of the statement “winter is coming.”

• Missandei being 11 is big yikes.

My favorite character in this book is Mormont’s raven – the embodiment of pathetic fallacy who barks out the tone of any scene taking place up north, as if it wasn’t already obvious. Good dark comedic device.

This book also offers a few rare occasions where I feel like “tell, don’t just show” is more effective – in particular with the suffering and tortue being spread out across several pages, and then over several chapters as well. Like “yup, Reek is still hobbled” every 200 pages or so does a better job illustrating his fear than the show is able to accomplish sans inner-monologue.

“smashing children's’ heads against walls” being an idiosyncratic euphemism in Westeros after Clegane (at Tywin’s command!!!) infanticide is the kind of excellent macro detail that G.R.M.M is good at.

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