 Alright guys, I'm gonna hit you up with a very unpopular opinion right now. Out of the entire A Song of Ice and Fire series so far, the worst book is A Feast for Crows. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. Now, just keep in mind, when I say A Feast for Crows is the worst book, I don't mean it's a bad book. I think it's actually decent. You know, I'd say it's better than okay, not quite good. But it's a decent read. You know, it goes by relatively quickly. There's still some fun stuff in there, but pretty much everyone who is a fan of this series is in agreement that, yeah, this one is the worst. And for just a couple of minutes here, I just wanted to talk about why exactly we feel that way as well as my own take on it, and basically just what it does wrong that the other books did right. Also, I just want to point out that there will be spoilers for this whole series as well as up through some minor spoilers for season 5 of the show. So if that thing bothers you, then please be aware of that. I think I forgot to give a spoiler warning in my last Top 10 Game of Thrones things. I'm sorry about that. So it's kind of impossible to talk about A Feast for Crows without mentioning A Dance with Dragons, which is the next book in the series. This one was supposed to be combined with Dance with Dragons. It was supposed to only be one book at the beginning. But George R.R. Martin just decided, okay, we'll just have to split it in two because there's too much story. And granted, this one is extremely long. It's 976 pages, is this copy? And my copy of A Dance with Dragons is a similar length. So at first it seems reasonable that he'd want to split it up like that. But then you look through it and you realize that a lot of the stuff in this one, not so much in A Dance with Dragons, but in this one, a lot of the stuff there is just really boring. Because the thing is, you know, this series, it follows multiple characters that are in various places and doing various things, and the timeline is kind of vague, but it is generally understood that it's happening more or less simultaneously. So this one takes place at the same time as A Dance with Dragons, but for the most part, these are the boring characters that no one really cares about. The War of Five Kings is pretty much over. Yeah, I threw the book over there in between takes, don't worry about it. But the War of Five Kings is pretty much over by this point. It's winding down, it's not quite done, but they're really just cleaning up at this point and trying to get rid of some of the bandits and shit that are wandering around. So now that plot line is wrapped up and you'd think, okay, well, Cersei and Tommen are now in control of the Seven Kingdoms. But the thing is, a pretty substantial chunk of this book is Cersei being the Queen Regent and trying to, you know, consolidate power, get things back under control, and just being really bad at it. And I mean, that would have been fine if there were just a couple chapters devoted to it, but it takes up a huge, huge portion of this book. And well, quite frankly, it's both boring and annoying. It's kind of neat to get a little more insight into Cersei and how she operates and, you know, finding out about the prophecy that she got when she was a kid and yet learning a little more about that. That's okay, that's fine. I don't mind delving into her head a little bit here, but I just feel like that seeing her just be such an idiot really does detract from her as a villain. Like, it makes all the heroes, all the people that she's killed over the years, it makes them just seem a lot stupider and a lot... No, that's it. It makes them seem a lot stupider. And there's also no following of Tyrion's story after he left King's Landing or of Jon's story up at the Wall. And I mean, that's more of a personal preference thing because to me, those two are my favorite characters, my favorite POV characters. But I mean, a lot of other people are bothered by that too. And taking two of your most popular characters and just leaving them out of a book altogether, that's gonna upset some people, you know? Like, maybe it seems a little inconsequential on the surface, but it really is just disappointing, I guess. And then we've got Brienne's storyline, which is mostly just her going on a wild goose chase. Because, I mean, in the last book, The Storm of Swords, it was her taking Jaime to King's Landing in order to try and exchange him. And then she was gonna try and find Arya and Sansa and bring them back to Lady Catlin. But in this one, she's just looking for Arya and Sansa, but the thing is, we as readers know that she's looking in the wrong places and that she's not gonna find them doing what she's doing. And so it just feels completely pointless. And, again, I get that from her character perspective. It doesn't seem that way. She's like actually investigating and she's like, oh, okay, this is a lead, let's go look for it. But from our perspective, it's stupid, okay? I mean, maybe it's building up to something because we see her again briefly in A Dance with Dragons, but, I mean, just, it's just dull. It makes that character again seem like an idiot, because Brienne is one of the more heroic characters in this. And just like when we show how Cersei is an idiot, it makes all the people that she's defeated seem stupider. This makes Brienne seem really stupid. And then we also have the storylines at the Citadel and at Dorne. And the thing is, the Citadel one doesn't take up that much time, but it's not very interesting to me. Okay, the only thing that I thought was kind of interesting is when it's talking about how the Maesters might have helped kill dragons to get rid of magic altogether. I thought that was kind of cool, but that's also a very brief moment. And the Dorne storyline, I just hated the Dorne storyline. I really did. What is the point? There was no real build-up of Dorne or how it would be important before this. And really, this sort of ties into how this book is where the lack of focus begins. Like, that was one of the biggest problems that I've had with this series is that as it goes on, there's less and less focus. Because the show, for all its flaws, it is narrowing the scope down in the past couple of seasons. It has taken this broad, huge, expansive story, and it has tied up some of the plotlines, and it's now pulling everything together towards one final confrontation. And in the books, it does the opposite. Like, after the War of Five Kings ends, and basically where Feast for Crows begins, it instead of narrowing things down and working towards, okay, what is the final confrontation going to be? Is it going to be with the others? Is it going to be with Daenerys coming over trying to take over? Instead, it's expanding it even more. Like, it has Daenerys trying to consolidate her control over Slaver's Bay and not doing great with it. It has all that stuff with Cersei that I talked about. It doesn't really talk about the wall in this one, but it just, there's so much stuff in Dorne, obviously. I can't believe I forgot that already. And it introduces Dorne. It introduces all these new people and it introduces what their plans are. And just, there's so much stuff here that we just, I didn't care about. I really just could not bring myself to really care that much about Dorne. And again, for a lot of people complaining about how the show butchered the Dorne storyline, really what they did was just cut it out, cut a lot of it out. And I prefer that by a lot. Because for all its flaws, again, at least the show has this scene. But was there what? There was a woman more beautiful than I am. Was there? I like that scene. It's pretty good. There's a lot of character development and plot in that scene. I would go so far as to say that around 40 to 50% of this book could have been cut out altogether. And a lot of the remaining stuff could have been trimmed. Like, A Dance with Dragons has a little bit of a filler problem as well. There's a lot of stuff there that could be cut down, that could be trimmed, that could be pulled out. But really at the end of the day, I feel as though these could have been one book. These could have remained as one storyline. And well, that's... Yeah, that's it. Of course, in the name of fairness, I do want to talk about some of the good stuff in this book because, like I said, it's really not that terrible. I did enjoy most of Jamie's chapters because, essentially, he's going through a personal crisis when this starts. Like, we see it from the outside in a storm of swords. Well, no, we see it from the inside a little bit too. But anyways, he's going through a personal crisis and realizing that, you know what, I am a bad person. And he's sort of known that for a while, but now is when he's starting to try and actually become a better person. And in this book, this is when he's starting to realize that, you know what, Cersei is making me a worse person. She's making me worse than what I want to be. And even though I love her, which in a way that I shouldn't love her, I think I need to move away from her in order to better myself. And I think that that arc that he goes through is pretty great. That is one area that I will say that these books did better than the show, actually, because the show kind of stretches it out over a longer period, so it's not quite as impactful I didn't feel. I liked the stuff with Sansa in there because Sansa... I mean, I haven't hated her chapters in the first three books, but she did come across as a little whiny. And I mean, I get it, she's a kid, and she's in a really terrible situation. So I'm not saying she's not well within her rights to be whiny. She is. But it is nice in this one to see her becoming a little more intelligent, a little more politically savvy, and picking up on schemes and actually helping to manipulate people and stuff. I did enjoy that. So her chapters were... even if they weren't like in the middle of all the politics of King's Landing, they were still pretty enjoyable. And of course, Aria's chapters are pretty great. Like, there's not that many of them, but watching her go across the world and training to become this magical assassin, it's... I mean, it's pretty great. Like, yeah, I would say this is... this and the show did this about as well as one another. I should probably stop comparing this to the show because this is more about the book. But anyways, the point is, like, I thought that that storyline is really good. It's not over yet in the books, and I am disappointed that it wasn't expanded upon into Dance with Dragons, because I feel like, you know, if they only had a couple of chapters of it in here, they could just have a couple in there, but whatever, at the end of the day, it is cool to see Aria becoming... growing up, we'll say. Well, she's just growing up, she's becoming more self-sufficient, that sort of thing. So that's about all I have to say about this. I mean, I think overall, again, this book is not terrible. It reads pretty quickly, you can breeze through it relatively easily, and there are still some good moments and some good characters in there, but at the end of the day, it does not continue the story in a satisfying way, and it doesn't conclude anything either. Where the story should be narrowed, it expands upon it, and... Well, no, that's the biggest thing really. It's expanding when it should be moving towards something bigger instead. I actually meant to say better. Wait, not bigger. It's expanding when it should be narrowing towards something better. It should be combining things and finishing things out. That's a better way of putting it. So be sure to comment and subscribe and all that stuff that I'm supposed to say here, and thanks to all my patrons, I'll put their names up. Ooh, yeah, you guys are the best. You really are. You should check out my page and stuff, and that's it. I'll see you for the rest of a song of Ice and Fire Month. Bye.