{"id":1293,"date":"2006-07-31T20:02:55","date_gmt":"2006-07-31T20:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1293"},"modified":"2006-07-31T20:02:55","modified_gmt":"2006-07-31T20:02:55","slug":"critic_at_large_5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1293","title":{"rendered":"Critic At Large: A Feast For Crows"},"content":{"rendered":"

It took me longer than it should have, but I finished George R.R. Martin’s A Feast for Crows<\/a>, the fourth volume in what’s expected to be the seven-volume Song of Ice and Fire epic.  I won’t go into too much detail because it’s pointless to delve into the plot unless one is familiar with the previous books.  I do agree with other reviewers that this is the weakest chapter in the series thus far.  It feels unfinished, mostly because some key characters (Tyrion, Bran, Daenerys) are completely absent and we must wait until the fifth volume (A Dance of Dragons) to see their stories continued.  But this criticism isn’t meant to imply that Crows is a bad book; far from it.  I’m not a huge fan of fantasy literature, but Martin is a pleasure to read because of his deft characterizations as well as his willingness to not be bound by the standard conventions of the genre.  Tolkien never would have dreamed of killing off Frodo or Strider, but Martin doesn’t hesitate to kill off major characters, which lends some gritty realism to a fantastic story.<\/p>\n

Next up: John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War<\/i> and Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation<\/i>.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It took me longer than it should have, but I finished George R.R. Martin’s A Feast for Crows, the fourth volume in what’s expected to be the seven-volume Song of Ice and Fire epic.  I won’t go into too much detail because it’s pointless to delve into the plot unless one is familiar with the […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-kR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}