A Dance with Dragons Review

About a week ago I finished reading A Dance with Dragons, which is the fifth book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, or more commonly known as Game of Thrones. So time for a review! And of course, there will be spoilers.

First off, I've found that with every book so far, each one is much better than the shows. And I'm not even saying this as a bookworm that will always defend the book. I normally get really excited when a book I love is being made into a movie or a show (though that rarely happens...) I watched the complete first two seasons, but I've only watched a couple episodes from the third and fourth, mostly because I don't get HBO on my TV and I have to find them on the internet. The first season followed the book fairly well, as far as I can remember. Then it deviated from there... By the time I started watching the fourth season, I got really confused. It's been a while since I've read the fourth book, but I know that the whole scene with Theon/Reek is wrong, because I just read it in the fifth book. Not to mention Ramsay Bolton is way too good looking. He's supposed to look like a drooling fish. Nothing is supposed to look good about him. But this is HBO, so nothing can actually be realistic, and all the glamour and sex scenes have to be hyped up. By the fifth book, I could probably count the amount of sex scenes in the whole book on one hand. (Sorry to disappoint the viewers, though I doubt you'll actually be disappointed)

But anyway, back to the book. One thing I have to clear up is the timeline. Martin originally wrote the fourth and fifth books as one book, but realized it would be massive, so split them into two books. Instead of just cutting it right down the middle, he re-ordered it so certain characters would appear mostly in the fourth book, and other characters would appear in the fifth book. That's why there is so much Cersei, Arya, Brienne and Jamie in the fourth book, and barely any of them in the fifth. I think the show tried to meld the two books together so that it makes more sense, and that's the only thing they did right. (Don't even get me talking about Tyrion's nose!)

But int he end, there is only one thing I can really say. Damn you, Martin! Stop playing with my feelings!