The Centre Cannot Hold

Books read this week: A Storm of Swords (Parts I and II) 8/10 (George R R Martin), A Feast for Crows 8/10 George R R Martin)

A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows are the third and fourth volumes in the Song of Ice and Fire series, and they are just as good as the first two; the fifth volume comes out in a week or so, and I am very much looking forward to it.

I said that the plot of A Clash of Kings could be summarised as It Gets Worse. The plot of A Storm of Swords can be summarised as: you thought the worst was over? Fuck me were you wrong. A Feast for Crows is slightly more cheerful - although possibly because things had reached a point where they could only get better, really (well, without the total and eternal triumph of the antagonists). The book itself takes an interesting new approach; Martin has sent off (or killed off) the majority of his usual viewpoint characters, so there is a slew of new characters for Martin to slay. It means I don't get to see some of my favourite characters until book 5 (Tyrion FTW!) but I do get to spend some time with other entertaining characters, like  Cat of the Canals (who is slowly turning into a mixture of Hit Girl and Wednesday Addams) and Littlefinger. Littlefinger is amazingly excellent - he has just the right combination of evil, charm and brains that one sees in the very best productions of Richard III. Whether he's casually pushing his homicidal wife out of a window and blaming the minstrel, or musing on how he knew Cersei would be a bad queen, but he never thought she'd be that bad, so he'll have to move up his timetable he is always entertaining, and always underestimated; the section where he's given the most impregnable castle in the Kingdom because "he's just a genius, a financial wizard and a master manipulator - what harm could he possibly do?" is up there with Cersei's "give the Church a private army - yes that's an excellent idea. What could possibly go wrong?" as one of the funniest moments in the series.

I expect things to look up in the next book, mainly because all the stupider members of House Stark have been culled by now; also, although they share with their historical counterparts the Percies a knack for picking the wrong side in civil wars (I don't think England has ever had a civil war where the Percies picked the winning side) it has to be said that the Percy family are still Dukes of Northumberland today. I also expect that by the end of the series there won't be a Frey or a Bolton left alive (nobody likes a traitor. And killing people at a wedding is a big no-no, for pretty much all medieval societies).

The series as a whole provides perfect, well researched examples of How Not To Be A King. Pretty much everything Machiavelli tells you not to do? Someone does it here. To do well, a medieval king had to be many things; loved, feared, respected, impartial, courageous, intelligent and solvent. Lacking any of the seven could be disastrous; this is something Ned Stark is smart enough to see in the first book (and I think he is one of the smartest characters in the series, although, much like John of Gaunt in Richard II, his death at an early stage in the proceedings is dramatically necessary). None of the rulers in the rest of the series so far can manage the heptet and so they are all doomed. Some (like Cersei) lack all seven - they're proper fucked (which is another of Cersei's problems - and exactly why she shouldn't have handed soldiers over to the church). I have to admit, it took me an embarrassingly long time to make the tansy=abortifactant link in A Storm of Swords, although I did make it before Martin started dropping his painfully obvious hints - something he seems to have got worse at as the series goes along. Bran's fall in Game of Thrones is shocking because it is so unexpected - whereas there is so much foreboding before the Red Wedding (and so many clues dropped) that all that's missing really is a soothsayer screaming "beware the ides of March!". This reduces the impact of the betrayal, because we all (except the characters, because they are literally too dumb to live) know that it is coming.

I am very much looking forward to the fifth volume, and to catching up with some of my favourite characters (although I shall miss Littlefinger very much - so very stylish and so very evil).