The Blue Board

WTF. You got screwed over. I just walked into B&N and bought a copy.

paperback. I got all 5 in a set, so the cover might not be like the one you pre-ordered.

I honestly can't remember anything from the books. I read all of them within a 9 month span. Since then I've read tons of other books. Sure it will all come back once the show hits.

Just finished A Feat for Crows. It was decent, but not nearly as good as A Storm of Swords.

FOC is by far the worst of the five.

Reading it is an exercise in character building.

Is Dwd similar? Hopefully the story of Jon Snow, Dany and Stannis has better pacing.

I'm not sure if I like how he chose to split the book.

Finished a few hours ago as well. I wouldn't even call it decent...

One of my friends told me it was her favorite before I started. I will no longer trust her judgment.

Might be. There is a heavy female focus in the book (trying to avoid giving anything away, as per the OP). My problem was just that the story was boring. The male chapters were just as boring as the female. Chopping the fourth into one set of characters and the fifth into another is just stupid, especially when the majority of the well liked characters with better storylines all fall into only one book.

AFFC is a result of that weird geographical split. I kinda liked it.

You guys might appreciate more if you think of it like this:

AGOT and ACOK interweave a complex plot, which has several large climaxes in ASOS.

Now what AFFC really does (I thought so, at least) is try to establish the status quo after the turmoil of ASOS. Brienne's chapters are really all about that, how the war is affecting some of the commonfolk. It feels more dull because it's missing 3 main characters.

ADWD is similar for the first half, but near the end the plotlines converge and the story starts to carry on. This is going to lead up to the two big battles that will start off TWOW.

AFFC and ADWD's first half are parallel chronologically, and then they merge later on in DWD. AFFC is hard to get through at first but it's really just a lot of setup for the upcoming game of cyvasse.

HER not being the key word. I hated that book and I loved the series.. Apparently his friend just happens to be female AND have bad taste in books.....it happens.