Back from Vacation

[shipperx]

 

Back from vacation.  Checked in a bit while I was gone via borrowed ipad (and damn its autocorrect feature.  It results in some odd posts).

It was a little cool for Florida for mid- May.  But other than running somewhat cooler than normal the weather was lovely.

Ate a lot of shrimp and crab.  Looked at a lot of water.  Read Book II and  started Book III of the "Game of Thrones"/A Song of Ice and Fire series. 

I think I may have to take a break and read something happier though because, damn, this is one bleak set of books.  Someone tell me, does something good ever happen to any of the characters I like?  Does something good happen ever?

At this point, I hate Cersei and Joffrey with the heat of a thousand suns.  Really.  I haaaaaate them.  I've warmed toward Catelyn and Sansa.  If I'm going to fall for Jaime Lannister...well, he's still has a long row to hoe because he still seems very much an entitled ass to me, one with a very cock-eyed view of the world that still seems quite odd as I understand it  

Love Tyrion, though.  Love.  Which brings me back to... did I mention that I hate, loathe, and despise Queen Cersei  (though I think if she has one quasi-sympathetic trait it's that she's constantly being underestimated because guys are too busy thinking that she's 'just a woman' to recognize that bitch has plans and bitch executes them in a timely manner.  She shouldn't be underestimated.   But... I still hate her).

I still think I'm going to have to take a break though.   It's a weird contradiction in that reading the books is addictive.  You just keep turning the page wanting more.  It's when I close the book and think about it later it strikes me that for allllll the pages I've read, not all that much has happened and what did happen was relentlessly upsetting..., so why do I feel so compelled to read more so quickly?  What has happened,  is almost relentlessly, ubiquitously dark... and then I find myself reading more,

I think I may need a happy book break before going back to the machinations in these books.  I need a dose of something frivolous and happy (which brings to mind the "Raising Hope" season finale and Jimmy's 'emo goth' phase as Drakkar Noir.  Heh.  Nice finale).

Comments

[zanthinegirl.livejournal.com]

I'm about 3/4 of the way through book one, and I agree both about the addictiveness and that nothing good ever seems to come to my favorites either. But I didn't know Jaime was supposed to be sympathetic. Really?? Huh!

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I'm just going by fandom's love of him. And in Book III he's suddenly a POV character. Surely his becoming a POV character means that I'm supposed to begin to understand his POV.

Alas, so far I just want Brienne to kick his ass. And often. And to tell him that if he's too damn stupid to understand why everyone points out that he broke his oath by murdering the king he was sworn to protect then he's just not very bright. It's not that no one else wanted the "Mad King" dead. They all did. It's that who the hell can trust him? And why the hell should they? On the one hand, he was willing to turn a blind eye to the fact that the Mad King did mad, sadistic things...because he was the King's Guard. Okay, then... except, on the other hand, he broke (all) his vows as King's Guard for reasons no one else knows but which he thinks he's so bright and shiny that everyone else should magically understand because, god knows, he should never stoop to explain himself.

So why should anyone (but Cersei) trust him? Why should I feel bad that no one else does trust him? Is there any reason that they should? And why shouldI feel bad that his ego is bruised because people don't praise him for his unexplained reasoning? To any one observing, he wasn't going to cavil on the grounds that Mad King Aerys was roasting knights alive but he would deny his oath when it threatened something else ... Which. Fine. I guess. It's his own
'honor code' he's serving, but don't expect me to think he's 'poor Jaime' because people don't trust and/or praise him for serving his own code without regard to anyone else. If you're going to follow you're 'own' code and to hell with everyone else, then everyone else is perfectly entitled to think 'to hell with you.' He can't have it both ways.

Then again on the list of "evil people who do evil things" he's pretty far down the list. I kind of sympathize with Arya's ever growing list of people who need to die.

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

I'm not really such a Jaime fan, so I'll be interested how you see his redemption. I like Jaime, but mainly for is interactions with Tyrion which are amazing in book three.

But yes...bleak. I can't remember anything good really happening to anyone and book four is no different. The third book is imho the best of the series so far. It's a wild ride with lots twists and turns and there are some characters meeting that are very interesting together. I hope that the bleakness will relent a bit in the new book, because by book four it really started to grate on me. Yes, war is a nightmare, he gets it across.

[txvoodoo.livejournal.com]

Maybe a good idea would be to read the 4th book right before the 5th book comes out, so all the plot points will be fresh!

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

How far are you into book 3? (I disliked Jaime at first, but was in love with him by the end. There's some big moments that changed my mind, so I'm wondering if you've gotten to them yet.)

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

About 150 pages or so.

[fenchurche.livejournal.com]

Ah, man... wish I'd known you were in Florida too! Not that I was there very long or had a lot of extra time (I was either out at Kennedy Space Center waiting for the launch or watching the launch or I was at Disney trying not to fall asleep too early).

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

It's a weird contradiction in that reading the books is addictive. You just keep turning the page wanting more. It's when I close the book and think about it later it strikes me that for allllll the pages I've read, not all that much has happened and what did happen was relentlessly upsetting..., so why do I feel so compelled to read more so quickly? What has happened, is almost relentlessly, ubiquitously dark... and then I find myself reading more,

That was my problem too. Although I didn't find them to be page turners. I was constantly skipping ahead and back again, because I'd get really bored wandering about in the forest with Jon or Ayra.

Oddly you denouncement of Jamie reminds me of the denouncements I read about Spike while I was online in 2002.

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

Ah, at this point he's still a total dick. Don't worry, you're not supposed to like him right away.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

By 2002 Spike had had a fair degree of development, though. Jaime really hasn't thus far. He had all of one scene in the last book.

And I think I became most impatient with Davos and Theon Greyjoy as in "why the frell am I following these people?" I mean, I get what they bring to the political gamesmanship going on, I just couldn't find it in me to care.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Regarding Jamie? Talk to me after you've finished Storm of Swords. See I read this story differently than most people did - first, I was spoiled by Jamie fans going in - they coaxed me into reading it by doing all these character comparisons with Spike. Frustrated with book one because I did not see what they were going on about - I read the last 200 or so pages of Storm of Swords - and whoa. Literally, whoa! So had to go back and read the whole thing after that, took a five year break in between Clash and Storm because I was too spoiled on Storm and I wanted to forget it so I could read it properly.

All I can tell you is the same thing I told someone else, attempting to explain the appeal of Jamie at this point is a bit like trying to explain Spike's arc to a Buffy viewer who has only seen School Hard. You can't do it without a lot of spoilers. I can't remember exactly - but I think Jamie's story takes off around page 750. Storm is 1500 pages long, so that's about midway through...

I don't remember the Greyjoys at all - I think I scanned that bit. The Fisher King bit or Stannis' sailer guy bored me to tears as well. But I will state - that if you hang in there - the Stannis storyline pays off also.

Martin's books get better as you get further into them...he likes to do a very slow build. In a way I'm glad someone else is writing the series - because so far it's paced a lot better than the books.

Oh - the best recapper of tv series online is queenofthornes. She's doing a great job of not spoiling on the books (even though she has read all of them five times and knows the details by heart. She knows things that I don't remember at all.)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Oh - the Fisher King guy is Davos. I couldn't remember his name. And I Really agree with you, I got the most frustrated with his story-arc as well. Boring.

You are going at a great clip in either Tyrion, Sansa, Ayra or Danrys and wham, you slam to a dead halt with Davos. The story stops cold. It does however begin to take off somewhere around page 600 or so - can't remember. And it has a great pay-off.

And agree - I hated Cersei and Joffrey in the books too.
Really hated them. To the point of ranting. The TV series oddly has made Cersei more palatable and less mwahhaha evil. Thank god! Something that always bugged me in the books. I don't know if she gets more interesting in Feast or not - since we're in her pov finally in that book. But I haven't read it yet. I have to take lengthy breaks between them. Because they are so incredibly grim.

Have you met the father yet? Tywin Lannister? Storm really develops the Lannisters as does Feast apparently.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I've been really delaying bothering to speed up to reach "Feast" because virtually everyone I know who loves the books says to hold off until Dance comes out because Feast apparently drags some.

And the only reason I can think of Davos being around at this point was to give Stannis's story (why not make Stannis a POV character, I don't know). Other than that... I've got nada.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Oh! I didn't know you were down there. Although, I was up at Sandestin so it still would've been like 5 hours away.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

That's been the plan since general consensus seems to be it's kind of frustrating.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I think I just really got pissed off on Tyrion's behalf at the end of CoK (and I know that things get absolutly no better in SoS's so...it's causing me to slow-up.

I don't see anyone trumping Tyrion for me in the books though. I do find Arya and Sansa story interesting (strange because they're so different) but jeebus they've more or less thrown Arya into an assortment of variations on concentration camps anre are clearly, slowly making her buggy. So... yeah... bleak.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I didn't understand why we were following Davos around either initially. But You will most likely understand why we're in Davos point of view sometime around page 1100 or thereabouts. And why Stannis isn't a pov also becomes very clear around that point. He's a mysterious figure in some ways.

I'm not reading Feast until this summer or fall. Dance is coming out in July.
The way I'm reading these books, I figure I'll always be safely one to two books behind Martin. Assuming of course he ever finishes them. There's three more to come apparently. And the man writes slowly.