A Feast For Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire #4)

Author: George R.R. Martin
Goodreads rating: 3.99/5
Pages: 1058

With A Feast for Crows, Martin delivers the long-awaited fourth volume of the landmark series that has redefined imaginative fiction and stands as a modern masterpiece in the making.
After centuries of bitter strife, the seven powers dividing the land have beaten one another into an uneasy truce. But it's not long before the survivors, outlaws, renegades, and carrion eaters of the Seven Kingdoms gather. Now, as the human crows assemble over a banquet of ashes, daring new plots and dangerous new alliances are formed while surprising faces—some familiar, others only just appearing—emerge from an ominous twilight of past struggles and chaos to take up the challenges of the terrible times ahead. Nobles and commoners, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and sages, are coming together to stake their fortunes...and their lives. For at a feast for crows, many are the guests—but only a few are the survivors.

This book actually kind of disappointed me. It seemed to me that this book's sole purpose was to build up to the next book. It had it's interesting moments but it never really moved fast enough to me. The chapters, especially Brienne's, moved at a snail like pace. Jaime's and Cersei's chapters were good, I also enjoyed Arya's, but overall, everything that happened was kind of meh...

There weren't even a lot of "Oh my gosh that did NOT just happen!" moments which really disappointed me. The ending was interesting but it didn't throw me for a huge loop (maybe a little one, but compared to the endings of the other books... snore). I can count maybe 2 moments (maybe 2.5) that I came close to the "wow did that really just happen" type of feeling... but like I said, that's sad compared to the other books.

As far as characters go, most of my favorites weren't even in this book (Tyrion and Daenerys for example) but I made do with Cersei, Arya and Jaime's chapters (I liked Cersei's and Jaime's chapters mostly. Frankly their drama was what kept me going through the book.) One very annoying this was what I called the "nameless chapters". These are chapters in the book that wasn't titled by someone's name so you spent the first part of the chapter figuring out who it is (mostly it's some random person who isn't a main character and, to me, I didn't really care about...) The chapters did provide some useful information though, but it was annoying to have to try and figure out who's talking.

The book therefore gets 3/5 stars from me, which makes me sad since I do like the series. The lack of excitement and any exiting happenings compared to the other books plus the annoyance from the "nameless chapters" brings it way down, though the 2 (or 2.5) exciting "omg" moments that did happen, along with some Cersei/Jaime drama (plus a nice set up involving Sansa which I hope to hear more about in probably the 6th book), keep the score from going any lower. I really hope the next book is as good as I hear people saying it is and hope it's enough to redeem this one.

The Courts Decision: