First some A Dance with Dragons stuff. I read a bunch of it while riding the shinkansen and at Michi's family's second house, since there is little to do each day after dark falls. I actually stayed up until 2AM last night to finish it, and I need to go to bed early today to make up for the lost sleep.
It was a pretty good book. It is certainly up to the same high standards as his previous releases, and as ever the tone, description etc are on target.
Some of the plot devices seem to be getting a bit stale, though. A character thought to have died before the first book even began is brought back and his existence is explained by having been switched places with another baby. A similar ploy was used in the second book, where two characters are "executed" for trying to escape, when in fact their executioner was unable to find them and used some poor peasant bodies instead. And actually, another character was pretend executed, with yet another body double taking his place in the current book. And in the previous book, another character's place is taken by a look alike, and that look alike continues her role in this book. And yet another character is "killed off," only to have it later revealed that he is still alive, and a sorceress used magic to swap his and another character's appearance (so that the other character was actually killed). I think you get the idea.
From reading his blog, it seems that timing and pacing were major troubles for him in the writing of it. At the end of book 3 and/or 4, several characters were all making their way toward one of the main characters, and it seems that GRRM sweated the details of who would arrive when, in what order, and what the consequences would be of arriving at different times and in different orders. As I read the book, I could almost feel this. The same storm or set of storms messes with the ships of several characters, causing them to arrive earlier or later than they had planned. Some characters encounter mishap after mishap, only to finally make it within mere feet of their goal and still not quite accomplish it. Some make it to their goal, and arrive too late to achieve it. Half of them haven't even arrived, but are still en route or have abandoned their quest as of the end of A Dance with Dragons. I suppose he got the timing he wanted, but parts of it feel very contrived. Perhaps the delays of some characters will be given meaning in the later books.
Lastly, there are the cliff hangers. As a fan who has waited 6 years to find out what happens to his favorite characters (all three were excluded from the last volume), the prospect of facing another 6 years waiting to see if some of them have really truly been killed off is not high on my list of things I want. One of my favorite character's last chapter ends with him being stabbed in the stomach and between the shoulder blades by some of his own men-at-arms. This character has been in the books from day one, and to me at least, I had always envisioned him shacking up with one of the other major characters and ruling the world together in happiness and peace. But now it seems he is dead, maybe.
This should not have surprised me. Other characters were growing more and more frustrated with his actions, and some of them warned him to keep more protectors around himself. Like other characters that GRRM has killed off in the past, most notably the blood bath in A Storm of Swords, where several major characters were killed. And of course even in the first book, GRRM infamously pulls no punches and has the central character executed, as many of you will have seen in HBO's adaptation, Game of Thrones.
I can only hope that he will be rescued and healed in the mean time.
Oh well. The 3 day weekend was pretty fun. We did some gardening work, which for me involved pretending to be a squirrel and cutting off more branches that were shading the backyard. And after than we did a BBQ on Saturday which was delicious: grilled strips of beef, chicken, onion, eggplant, carrot, and potato. Sunday was devoted to hiking up Mt. Azuma. I got sunburned on my hands, my upper arms, the back of my neck, and the lower half of my legs, despite slopping on plenty of SPF 50 sunblock before we even started. Some of it must have sweated or been rubbed off, because the sunburned areas are only in patches. I also got bit on my ribs by some crazy insect. As I was hiking, my left ribs started to hurt when my backpack strap pressed against them, and I figured the bag was just poorly designed. Turns out there was a bug which was biting my skin there and I didn't notice until I had to pull the thing off me in the shower. It refused to let go and I had to try three times to get it off me. It looked a bit like a small spider, but I'm not sure what it was.
That night, we also watched Norwegian Wood, a movie based on the partly autobiographical book by famous Japanese author Haruki Murakami. Nowhere near as compelling as the book, but compared to the usual mess that the Japanese make when making a movie these days (and especially when compared to the crap is gets produced when adapting a book or comic into a movie) it wasn't bad. Not as compelling as A Dance with Dragons, which I also brought along with me to read on the shinkansen and when we'd finished the day's grilling, hiking, and gardening. But still decent.
I got to play with my new Android phone a little bit, but it seems like other smartphones it can't hold a charge for longer than three or four days. I ask you, what use is a smartphone with a built in compass, GPS locator, and thermometer on a multi-day wilderness trek if I have to plug it in at night to be able to use these functions? Still, overall a cool tool.
Lastly, it seems we have the contract for our new place taken care of, so it only remains to wait a few weeks and then I move my stuff in, and the weekend after that, she moves her stuff in. We had planned to talk about house rules this weekend, but between me having my nose glued to A Dance with Dragons and the grilling, gardening, movie watching, and hiking, we felt that our plates were full. I will push for next weekend.
Below, please enjoy some of the pictures of the trip.
Cheers,
