Fire & Blood
By: George R.R. Martin
Grade: B+
You got to love him. Only Martin could drop a 700 page history of the Targaryens (instead of the book we all want) and then only get to the halfway point of the history! And a vast amount of that is the previously published Dance of Dragons history. Er… I can’t even be angry because it’s Westeros. It’s dragons. I ate it up.
Fire & Blood is also very Martin in both good and bad ways.
I’ll start with the bad.
The Dance of Dragons stuff is interesting but like I said- I read it before and most people who would buy a book like this probably have as well. It’s also where it starts to get long with pages and pages of names being thrown at you and battle tactics and so on and so forth.
Plus quiet frankly it’s where most of the Targs and a whole lot of the realm start to come off as awful. The dragons are dying so thats not cool. And no one ever really recovers. I honestly wonder- just from a publishing view if that shouldn’t have been severely edited since this is a pretty dry history he could have said oh, for more in-depth information look at this account yada, yada.
But would that have pissed people off?
Also rape is mentioned mainly off page but it’s mentioned so much still! As are child brides and women dying in child birth. But I suppose Martin can’t exactly go back and put the genie in the bottle on those issues when they were still happening around the time of Game of Thrones.
(Aging everyone up in my opinion was a big benefit of the show.)
But on the good side there are a couple of instances of that being called into account. Mainly by female characters. One Princess threatens her stepfather for killing her mother with the constant breeding and a much loved Queen blames her husband for forcing their daughter to wed to young after she dies in child birth. So I’ll give points for that.
In fact for all the issues it’s the female characters in Fire and Blood that really stand out. I especially loved Queen Alyssane who wrote laws, toured, went to the Wall, held women’s councils, got the law of First Night revoked, etc. Etc. I actually teared up a little when they started talking about what age had taken from her. Of course Rhaenyra fighting for her throne when they passed her over for her brother. But there are others sprinkled throughout like a Joanna Lannister fighting off the Ironborn for years in the West, Nettles the young girl who rides one of the wilder untamed dragons and disappears and a woman sailor lover of one of the Princesses who may be the way Dany wound up with those eggs.
That’s another fun bit. Tidbits here and there that you want to hear more about. There’s one awful death that involves Valyria gives Maesters nightmares and left me like, “Oh, I want to hear more about Valyria!” I also want to read about the Dornish. The Blackfyre Rebellion, finish Egg’s story, see more from across the seas and get the bloody She-Wolves of Winterfell already!
Maybe that’s the most impressive thing about A Song of Ice and Fire- it’s a fully functioning world full of so many stories that could be told so many characters great and small that could have their due that to an extent it’s even escaped the grasp of the author.
Recommend: Yes. But this is more of a die-hard fan kind of book.
I for some reason never read the previous stuff, so it was all new to me, but if I HAD read all the previous stuff I would not be keen on paying ful price for this bad boy lol. As it was I wasn’t really keen on it! I liked the immersive dive into Westerosi history but the violence against women and everything being a downer all the time DOES get old. I know it’s his calling card now, but still… oh and little things bugged me. Like why do all the dragons die so young? I expected the oldest and hardiest ones to be several hundred years old, but most of them died younger than I would expected.
Alysanne was awesome. And yes the little bits. One of the more chilling moments for me was when the enormous kraken came up and took that ship. I was like- yikes! I need krakens in ASoIaF now. And also yes to the Blackfyre rebellions and the She- Wolves!
The kraken was cool 🙂 How much fun would it be to see Euron and Victarion get eaten by a kraken? Probably while laughing or doing something mad the whole time!
I think the dragons died too young probably because most of the riders were morons and couldn’t stop using them to fight wars.
Oh my gosh some of those riders were IDIOTS! And I would LOVE to see a kraken take down the Victarion brothers. 🙂
ENJOYED THE BOOK WITH A GREAT ENDING, CHINA
china.alexandria@livingthedream.blog
I was going to read it but I found that this all history with no dialogues, whatsoever! Though, after reading your review I think I might actually read it! Who doesn’t want to know more about the Targaeryns, mad as they all were! Since you recommend it for all the die-hard fans, I suppose I should read it! I’d also love to know more about Queen Alyssane, Valyria, and especially Jaqen H’ghar! Besides, I wouldn’t have minded if you put in some of the spoilers! 😀
AND YES, YOU GOT TO LOVE HIM!
I think it was less dry than the Princess and the Queen where he originally did this format. (Until it gets to that part sadly.) But I mean at this point I’d take Winds of Winter as a history if that’s the way he wants to write now 🙂
hehe I totally understand why you ate this up 😉 It’s a pity it had so much stuff from dance of dragons tbh. It’s really great that the female characters really stood out though 🙂 And I really agree with you about the most impressive thing being the world building too 😀 Awesome review!
I’ve just ordered this book from the library, and whew, had no idea that they had all that stuff about battle tactics, I don’t really care for that. I thought it was mostly Queen Alyssane, and I’ve been reading so many wonderful accounts about her on Quora that she became the number reason that I wanted to read this book. Either way, I’ll probably skim read the parts I don’t like for Alyssane’s parts. Are there separate sections for each story, or is it a linear chronology of the history of the Targaryens?
It’s linear. Alyssane and her husband probably have an equal part to the Dance of Dragons stuff though- dance comes at the end though so by the end I was a bit worn down by it especially since I’d already read it.
I wonder if the dance of the dragons storyline will be resurrected through Cersei and Dany or Dany and Jon. I will be surprised if it isn’t.
Sad to think since that pretty much wiped out the dragons. But I’m not sure their making it through the series anyway 🙁