First, being written effectively, doesn't make the character sympathetic or interesting (Bella Swan, anyone).

Sansa started out being petulant and naive; as of Crows she is less so, but right now, the reason to follow her POV is to see what Petyr Baelish is up to. My estimation of her may change based on what she learns from her time with him and what she does with it.


Cersei isnt nearly as clever as she thinks she is. All her schemes are poor man's Batman Gambits and never seems to be paying full attention to what all the players around her are doing, which is fine because then I get to enjoy watching it come back to bite her in her incestuous bitch ass; this is a positive change. She will now either die (preferable) or be horribly scarred (acceptable). That Jami bailed on her makes me respect him more.


As for the Greyjoys; their religious views and how they practice baptism are interesting to me, but the characters are not. Martin might be getting ready to do something worth paying attention to with them, but in book 4, they are wasted space.

Areo Hotah, Victarian, Asha, Euron, and Arianne were all really boring, and weren't involved in anything worth reading about in nearly as much detail as they received. I would gladly have had all of their stories cut entirely, or at least been secondary characters in more interesting characters' stories. Asha, for instance, would be pretty interesting as a secondary character, but her chapters are obnoxiously boring.

Cersei's only interesting because of the effects her horrible decisions have. Following her as she makes them is dull and obnoxious. Again, let's see that through the perspective of someone who is actually interesting. Sansa is a shitty character. Period. Her persistent Naivete doesn't make a damn bit of sense given what she's been through, and despite Petyr being awesome, her chapters are unpleasant slogs of stupid bullshit with the occasional bright spot of Petyr being a creepy conniving bastard.

Being utterly boring and seriously lacking in worthwhile content means those chapters are, in fact, neither well written nor worth reading.

Lets go with Brianne then. Sure, she didn't exactly accomplish much, but the setting was fleshed out greatly due to her work - plus, given book 5, it looks like she has wrought some change in Jaime Lannister, who seems to be rising in power and importance.

She could have been interesting but in the end proved entirely unimportant.



She didn't accomplish anything. Shes at best a textured plot device. She comes from nowhere, goes nowhere, gets nothing done, then dies at the hand of a more interesting character. Your time is just as wasted with her as it is with any of the Krakens.

You know what? Read book five - I can't really go into this further without bringing in spoilers.

Fair enough. I'm working on book 5 now.

Her impact on book 5 doesn't make her any more interesting in book 4. Really, DoD really only reinforced just how incredibly worthless she was throughout FfC.

Brienne has a significant impact on Jamie which we see in the effects of in Storm and Feast. She is also a plot device to show us that Sandor is alive and Caitlan has become stone heart. I think she help wrap up a few other plot threads. Does she accomplish anything in Feast? Not that I remember. Nor is that a bad thing. Remember feast is the Dénouement of Storm and the exposition of Dance. It has it's own arc's but over all they are very small bumps on the larger arc of the series. It did develop both her character and the setting at large.
@Bear, What I don't understand is why you think her being unimportant makes her uninteresting?
@Vep, I agree importance != interesting, but that said, she is an interesting character. One of the few true knights we've met, a woman completely out of place in her time. Why do you think she is worthless?

Onto the krakens. First, learning the history and politics of the islands was quite interesting. It was very well developed setting that was presented to us through three different sets of eyes each sharing a common history but unique enough to show different sides of the events and the traditions.
Why the characters are interesting. They share a worldview that is not only uncommon in their world but ours as well. They believe in a type of honor that is foreign to most of us. Why Asha in particular is interesting. She is Brienne only she has found her place in the world. She is an accomplished warrior and captain.
Why is she uninteresting? How bout the other two Greyjoys?

Cersei - exactly. We finally get to see how out of her depth she is. We watch her descend into a similar madness of power we can imagine that the old king Aerys had. Watching her make arrogant move after arrogant move, punishing interesting and sympathetic characters, and getting away with it makes us hate her more and more, until finally she gets what she deserves, and we all rejoice. That scene would not be worth shit if we cut her earlier chapters in this book.
I don't understand why you would call those chapters dull. Annoying, because of her arrogance, cruelness, and stupidity, sure, but again, that is the emotion Martin is trying to arose.

Areo Hotah- You're just wrong vep. He's an interesting character. He shows us an entirely new setting from an outsiders perspective. Plus he's a bad-ass.

Arriane- I will admit, I didn't like her chapters, but as a character, she is entirely worthwhile. An entirely new player in the game of thrones. Competent, pretty, ambitious, and not overly cruel. And she isn't even the best one at in Dorne. Yeah, definitely a worthwhile character.

Sansa- Bear exactly. We are watching a very significant change in the what was the least impressive and usually most disliked of the stark characters. We begin to see her grow, not only into a woman, but perhaps a schemer herself. She's learning the game of thrones from the master player. Furthermore we finally get to see what Petyr is doing. We can almost peak behind the curtain at his plans, but we are given more than quick glimpses. Her chapters were my favorite to read.
@vep, she is no longer naive. If you can't see that you're missing the entire point of her character, which is why you think she's shit. As a person I might be inclined to agree with you, but as a character she is now in my top 5. I'm guessing you also dislike Caitlan?

Try to do something useful. Get captured, beaten, insulted for being ugly, and threatened with rape. Probably get rescued. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat. Ugh. I get it. Please just die, because you're clearly far more incompetent than people seem to think you are. That's why she's worthless. Also: "True Knight" is synonymous with 'fucking moron' in this setting.


The Greyjoys as a whole and the entirety of their culture are completely disinteresting to me. One hundred percent. Great, they're sort of viking-like, only a bit more bastardly in some ways, and a bit less bastardly in others. Meh.

There is one individual in the family I do like to read, despite generally wanting to kick him in the balls with spiked boots: Theon. That little piece of shit's always stirring up shit in an entertaining fashion, starting with a good idea and execution then completely failing to follow through properly.

I can't imagine why you wouldn't. One chapter of that might have been alright, but it's the same string of stupid ideas for stupid reasons on and on and on. You might as well just replace all of her chapters with 'Cersei is a stupid tramp again.' copy and pasted across the pages. The screwups she makes are much more interesting when viewed through the eyes of the other characters, and I'd rather it have only been shown that way. I also failed to get any sort of enjoyment out of her humbling. It's long, obnoxious, and at that point I just wished she would die quietly out of sight so I didn't have to put up with her any more. Then I wold rejoice. Martin did this right with Joffrey: He was also a vicious, arrogant idiot who was vastly out of his depth and screwed up everything he touched, but we were never subjected to his perspective, because it's much more interesting to watch that sort of thing from the outside.

Blah blah I don't like the Dornish.

She's still pretty naive, and through 3.75 of the books she was incredibly naive, to the point of being a goddamn idiot. She's getting less naive, less stupid, less obnoxious, but she isn't anywhere near tolerable yet. Sansa is the worst character in these books for my money. I'd rather read a dozen books of nothing but bullshit going on in Dorne, when I don't give half a shit about Dorne, if it only meant Sansa got written out in a hurry. As to Caitlin: I actually kinda liked her, although this new development seems pretty lame. She was a generally nice person with one hell of a steel streak hidden under that well-bred exterior. While I generally avoided getting any kinds of hopes up for anybody in this series, Caitlin and Tyrion are the two I couldn't resist expecting great things of. Man, oh man, did I love the time they traveled together.

The sooner Ramsay gets a blade through the eye socket, the sooner things will "pick up" for me.

I love the books, and his writing style, but I want to see more combat and less psychodrama. There's only so much more of Theon's mangled teeth that I can handle.

On first blush, that might make me appear shallow....but I've read several thousand pages, and 1% of it has been steel on steel.

I'm due for some revenge....and for fuck's sakes, get Daenerys out of Meereen, or else drop a daisy cutter on that squalid city.