GRRM Geekery

I'm almost finished with A Storm of Swords and I have to say I'm rather impressed.  I will admit some people's POV stories aren't as strong as they were in the first two books (Dany's in the first and Arya's in the second), for a book in the middle of a series, it certainly isn't falling into the Middle Book Lag.

Jaime is a POV character for the first time in ASOS, and his story is excellent. Tyrion's chapters, as always, are wonderful. It's interesting that a lot of things that happened in the first book for Tyrion and Ned come back to repeat themselves to just Tyrion in this book. Then again, there is a lot of Trickster theme in the Tyrion story, so the fact that patterns repeat is appropriate.

Plotwise, there is a lot of good writing. Minor plots end, most often not in the way we assumed they would. Things that seem really obvious to happen next somehow never work out. And, of course, several Starks get so close to each other, within yards of each other in one case, but never reunite. All the while, the real dangers are getting bigger and scarier. We have major death from the Others in this book, as well as some glances at what old magic is capable of.

Overall, I think this has been my favorite book.  The first one was good, and the second one, while it did have some issues, was excellent in the Tyrion and Arya chapters. A Storm of Swords is great.  I think the way he added POV characters and settled some of the issues brewing from the first two books have been quite well done.

And yes, I know this has just been a post of my geekery, but I'm just so happy about this right now. And expect more. There are some elements of GRRM's work that I wish to discuss in detail.  I'll do that later though. For now, I want to get back to reading.