A Feast for Crows Part I (Spoilers, ASoIaF)

I had to look up the title of this book again; this is my major problem with reading on the Kindle, I can never remember the damn titles of what I'm reading.

But I predict there will be many crows in this book, both Night Watch ones and real ones!

Let's get to it:

Isn't Aeron a kind of a chair or an Intel chip or something? -- I really don't feel like the Iron Islands have a viable economy. -- All these religions are pretty clear that the dead don't stay dead. So, probably lots more dead people who aren't dead.

GRRM has a big vocabulary. I don't usually look up words this often.

I'm not thrilled with this Dorne chapter ... Too much early worldbuilding. I want to get back to the story, GRRM wants to give me ALL THE INTERESTING DETAILS of ALL THE DISTINCT CULTURES he has created. As a normal thing I'd probably like this because I like worldbuilding, but it's getting hard to keep track of all this stuff and it just feels a bit oppressive to have to decode an entire new culture AGAIN.

I keep reminding myself, I just have to stick it out through first 50% for it to start picking up. First 50% is self-indulgent world-building, second 50% is galloping plot. Sort-of like The Brothers Karamazov! Same length, even!

OMG this Brienne chapter is ennnndless and repetitive. Do you suppose she’s looking for a girl of three-and-ten with auburn hair and blue eyes? Also, I’ve gathered from a few tiny hints in the text that she’s abnormally tall and horse-faced, and self-conscious about it. (Is this where he started getting too famous to be edited?)

I finally looked at a map because I was so confused, and I had the Eyrie and King’s Landing both on the wrong side of the continent, along with Harrenhal. And I thought Casterly Rock was somewhere in the middle. I also had literally no idea where Highgarden was. I didn’t think next to Dorne. Man, now my brain has that twisted feeling. The map said that Westeros was "about the size of South America," which -- no. Just no.

Arya reciting her list again. Bet she gets to kill Cersei.

Predictions are getting harder with all these minor characters that I forget who they are ... They might be important but I can't recall prior mentions. Like who the hell is Lancel? (Or rather, what the hell happened to him?)

Brienne's new arms must have belonged to someone significant

Was the Hound definitively dead? Well, I guess no one in this book is really DEFINITIVELY dead. But I refuse to believe the Hound is dead until someone burns his body or his corpse rots in full view in King's Landing.

I'd crew Asha's ship. (Not in the dirty way.)

OMG there are ten million new POV characters. Okay maybe three. But still!

Arianne is a damn liar. That's like not even a prediction, that's just a fact. Nobody loves you, Arys Oakheart, and you are a major illustration of the fact that God only put enough blood in a man's body for one head to work at a time.

These plots all feel really disconnected from the first set of plots. Like I've started on an entirely different series, almost, such as when an author writes a trilogy, then goes back later and writes more books during the same time but from minor characters' points of view (*coughAnneMcCaffreycough*). I've sort-of forgotten why we care who wins the Game of Thrones as long as it's Not Cersei. Is this book the one where he starts wandering off and indulging his love for extreme detail at the expense of central plot?

Awwww, Podrick Payne is back! I hope he's a cutie patootie on the show because he's a cutie patootie in my head.

Prediction: Tyrion turns up in the east with Dany. He's been missing for A LOT OF PAGES, and I still think Varys (and his nominal y) is playing a long game for the Targaryen.

Wow Cersei is bad at queening. This is a little heavy handed.

Ohhhh they're settling the Golden Companions on The Gift. (I guess this is a prediction because they haven't outright said so yet? But really it's just the reader having a few pieces of information from several widely-spaced chapters -- Stannis wants to resettle The Gift, and the Golden Companions have taken ship north, and the Golden Companions lost their homeland or something a long time ago -- that the people in the book don't have all of yet.)

Is Jaime going to be making kings later? Speaking of Jaime, he and Cersei missed a prime chance for corpse-adjacent sex. I guess it's really over!

Damphair is a dumb name. GRRM has a way with names but Damphair is dumb.

(30% ... just finished the Brienne chapter where she kills Shagwell, et al, and gets set on the trail of Arya instead of Sansa)

(I also wasn't texting my predictions to my nerd interlocutors during this one because I was mostly reading it late at night while up with a sick child and I didn't want to wake anyone else with an ill-timed text!)