ALL LEATHER MUST BE BOILED

Feastdance: The Combined Reading Order for A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons

Hang on to your hardcovers, fire up those ebooks, and arrange the dulcet tones of Roy Dotrice into an appropriate iTunes playlist: Today Stefan and I are discussing the combined reading order I came up with for reading A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons simultaneously. As you’re no doubt aware, the concerns that kept these two novels apart — they cover the same period of time, only with different characters at the forefront — were primarily IRL logistical ones. Weaving their chapters back together creates a very different reading experience, revealing aesthetic and thematic unities that make it well worth the effort. For both Stefan and myself, this has become the method of choice for reading this second-act section of A Song of Ice and Fire. In this podcast, we’ll explain why.

Here are a few links you might want to take a look at as you listen:

My original combined reading order

My new-reader-friendly combined reading order (this preserves the Dorne reveal; I actually prefer this one now)

My entire series of “Feastdance” posts on reading the two books together and what I got out of it

Stefan’s essay on the two books’ parallel themes for Tower of the Hand

Happy reading and happy listening!

Mirror here.

Previous episodes here.

Podcast RSS feed here.

iTunes page here.

Home blog here.

Because I’m an idiot, I misread a suggestion that led to one of my recent updates to the combined Feast/Dance reading order, and made a change that in retrospect makes a certain reveal more spoiled, not less. I don’t like that idea, so I’ve undone the change. Sigh. (Thanks to Gardner for the tip.)

I’ve just made a pair of minor tweaks to the combined Feast/Dance reading order, which are now reflected in both the original version and the new-reader-friendly version. They’re both simple “read this, then that” one-to-one chapter swaps: The first involves the preservation of a certain reveal involving Jon, Sam, and Gilly; and the second involves a way to smooth a certain set of transitions between the Lannister siblings. Click the link to the original version and scroll down to Updates 06 and 07 to find out what I did and why.

I almost feel bad changing this around now, since it’s been so widely linked and reblogged and made into jpgs and whatnot, but hey, it’s a living document.

My combined Feast/Dance re-read had at least one deleterious effect on my appreciation of the books: I don’t much care for the shifting chapter title thing at all. Its application is inconsistent enough to obscure more than it reveals. Here, let’s take a look and try to figure out the reasoning behind it.

Maybe they’re used to differentiate the Dorne and Iron Island subplots from the main storyline: Arys, Areo, Arianne, and Quentyn move along the Dorne storyline, while Aeron Damphair, Victarion, Theon, and Asha comprise the Ironborn material. They all get shifting chapter titles. So perhaps this is a relic of when GRRM was considering setting those sections apart as introductory novellas. But this doesn’t cover Jon Connington or Barristan, who also get the shifting titles.

Okay, so they’re used to differentiate minor characters from major ones, or maybe it’s characters who haven’t had POVs before from characters who have: First, let’s do ourselves a big collective favor and not quibble over the definition of “major” and “minor.” I think we’ve all got the gist of it. Well, this would then cover Arys, Areo, Arianne, Quentyn, Aeron Damphair, Victarion, Jon Connington, and Barristan. But Cersei and Melisandre are new POVs and they don’t get the shifting chapter titles. Plus, Theon and Arya and Sansa are old POVs and they do get them.

Well, maybe it’s for characters whose identities shift throughout the course of the narrative. That’s true enough for Quentyn, Theon, Arya, Sansa, and Jon Connington, all of whom use fake names. But so does Tyrion, and there are no shifting chapter titles for him; you can’t say “Welll, that’s because he’s a main character,” because so are Sansa and Arya and to a lesser extent Theon. Meanwhile there are no aliases to be found for all the other characters on the list. You might could argue, as the chapter titles themselves seem to, that the other characters whose titles shift are experiencing a less literal, more internal or emotional change in identities. That’s partially true, at least — but it’s also true of virtually every POV character in the entire series, since they all go through changes. Meanwhile, Areo and the Damphair probably change less than anyone else in these books, and their names change.

Now, Martin has said that someday this’ll all make sense and I’ll take him at his word, but it’s a rather unsatisfying device in the meantime.

The single biggest a-ha moment I’ve had in considering Feast and Dance as two halves of a whole came when this essay by Stefan Sasse pointed out the parallels between different storylines from one book to the next. Cersei’s attempts to rule King’s Landing in Feast are echoed by Jon at the Wall and Daenerys in Meereen in Dance; the men seeking Daenerys in Dance mirror Brienne seeking Sansa in Feast. But that’s truly just the tip of the iceberg. Martin festoons the disparate storylines of the Feast/Dance megabook with common themes and plot points. The result isn’t a sterile clockwork of symmetry, but rather a cubist look at the issues that drive Martin as an artist and thinker from every possible angle. 

Here are the parallels I noticed. If you can think of any examples I missed, please add them in the comments.

The Princesses in the Tower: Sansa, Arianne, Cersei, Asha, and Brienne are all held in captivity at one point or another. Broaden your scope to include y chromosomes and you’ve got Tyrion, Davos, and Theon, too. Broaden it to prominent secondary characters and you can throw in Jorah, Val, the Sand Snakes, Myrcella, and Margaery. And with the exception of Brienne, who only spends a single chapter in someone else’s power and much of it in a semiconscious state, all of the involved POVs include lengthy reflections on life in this reduced state. That is to say they offer meditations on being on the receiving end of power in its most direct state, short of actually being killed by someone.

The Quests: Davos, Tyrion, Victarion, Brienne, Bran, Quentyn, and to an extent Samwell and Jaime are all on lonely journeys to get somewhere or find someone. They offer constructive comparisons between one another (different goals, different motives, different levels of success) and with the tales of knights errant that animate both the imaginary life of people within their world and the fantasy genre of our own.

The Rulers: Daenerys, Jon, and Cersei are all new and relatively untested commanders-in-chief of their respective governments. They are all presiding over a time of relative peace surrounded by war in the recent past and on the visible horizon — they rule in the eye of the storm. They all institute radical changes to their respective systems. They all suffer for it. They all end up out of power. (And they all start their storylines by being unceremoniously roused from sleep.)

Cruel Tutelage: Arya, Sansa, and Theon all spend their chapters learning at the hands of some of this world’s deadliest men: Arya and the kindly man at the House of Black and White, Sansa and Littlefinger, and in a much different fashion, Theon and Ramsay Bolton. A very direct representation of the way ideas of power are passed from one person to another.

Second Bananas: Davos, Barristan, Victarion, and Jon Connington are all defined almost entirely by the monarchs, actual or would-be or feigned, that they serve. (This is also true of Areo, though he’s so stoic and stolid in his allegiance to Prince Doran that, honestly, he can barely be said to be a character, at least not in the sense that he is driven by internal conflict and unrealized desires the way the other guys are.) They offer a window into the lives of those directly behind the people with their hands on the levers of power, how it can be both fulfilling and frustrating.

The North/South/Harpy/Spider/Watch Remembers: Five major storylines center on secret conspiracies to bring down a ruler. The plots of Wyman Manderly in the North and Doran Martell in Dorne are virtually identical: Two powerful Houses beginning with the letters “Ma,” located in latiudinally remote regions of the Seven Kingdoms and led by infirm lords, pretend to be loyal allies of the Iron Throne — going so far as to imprison its enemies, over the objections of outspoken young female members of the House — all the while secretly plotting to restore fallen rival monarchies in order to avenge family members slain by agents of the Lannisters, which intention they reveal with kickass catchphrases. Meanwhile, Cersei (and Kevan!), Daenerys, and Jon all contend with conspiracies as well, involving people close to them secretly working to take them down. It’s a dog eat dog world out there and a lot of the biting goes on where you can’t see it until the teeth are in your neck.

Voices of the Gods: Jon, Asha, Tyrion, Victarion Bran, Cersei, Arya, Barristan, and Daenerys all interact directly with people who purport either to have a direct line to their respective deities or to be best positioned to speak for them here on the mortal plan. (Respectively: Melisandre, Aeron, Moqorro, Aeron and Moqorro, the Three-Eyed Crow and the Children of the Forest, the High Septon, the Green Grace, the Green Grace again). Melisandre and Aeron, in turn, are those people. They provide a unique perspective on the rise of fundamentalism, fanaticism, and politicized/militarized religion, currently on the rise among the worshippers of the Seven, R’hllor, the Drowned God, and the gods of Ghis. In the case of the red god and the old gods and possibly but not probably the Drowned God, they also offer evidence of direct supernatural intercession by what are believed by their followers to be deities.

Rise of the Unpeople: Lady Stoneheart, Ser Robert Strong, Varamyr Sixskins, the Three-Eyed Crow, Coldhands, Victarion Greyjoy, and apparently Melisandre all live beyond what would otherwise be their lifespans thanks to direct supernatural intervention, as of course do the wights, who operate offstage for the duration of both books except for Varamyr’s prologue. (Daenerys does too, if you count her fireproofitude; Moqorro does too, if you count his ability to survive for days and days alone at sea.) Though each case is different from the others, and they all in turn are different from previous examples like Khal Drogo, the Undying, and Lord Beric, all of these examples are…unpleasant. They paint magic as a pretty sinister force no matter its provenance or purpose.

You Have to Remember Your Name: Theon, Arya, Sansa, Quentyn and his comrades, Jon Connington and his comrades, Tyrion, and apparently Melisandre all use aliases and/or assumed identities, voluntarily or not. Tyrion and Arya (and Quentyn, I think) use several. Expanding out to secondary characters, you can add Gregor Clegane/”Ser Robert Strong,” Catelyn Stark/Lady Stoneheart, Jaqen H’gahr/”Pate,” Mance Rayder/”Rattleshirt”/”Abel,” Sarella Sand/Alleras the Sphinx, Jeyne Poole/”Arya Stark” Brynden Rivers/Bloodraven/the Three-Eyed Crow, Rorge/the Hound, Lem Lemoncloak/the Hound, and ???/Coldhands. On a more fundamental level, several primary and secondary characters use supernatural means to either change their appearance or literally inhabit another body: Arya, Mance, Rattleshirt (obviously not his choice), Melisandre, the kindly man, Varamyr, Brynden, Bran, Jon. And on the level of the text itself, multiple characters have shifting chapter headings that rarely if ever reflect their real name: Aeron, Areo, Quentyn, Arya, Sansa, Asha, Theon, Arys, Victarion, Arianne, Jon Connington, Barristan. This is on the micro level what the mutability of history is on the macro level: an indication that poles shift, that even something as fundamental as your personhood can be altered from within or without, and that society is built from millions of individual decisions to be and behave a certain way, and to either allow or prevent others from building trust that the way you are will remain constant. There is no universal, unchanging law that governs the world. We make it up, by consensus, as we go along.

Another major theme that emerges when Feast and Dance are read in tandem is the mutability of history. This is a big one, and it manifests itself in several ways.

The most obvious example is the notion, first advanced by Samwell Tarly during his discussion of the history of the Night’s Watch and the Others and later echoed by Hoster Blackwood as he tells Jaime the history of the Blackwood-Bracken wars, that the accepted version of Westerosi history is wildly inaccurate, from the basic timeframes involved on down.

This idea is further complicated later on when Marwyn the Mage and Lady Barbrey Ryswell Dustin separately introduce us to the idea that the maesters, whose order is responsible for the keeping of time and history, have their own, secret, possibly sinister agenda. This not only calls into question the stories we’ve learned, but the story we’re reading. If Marwyn and Barbrey are correct, much of what we’ve learned about dragons, magic, the Targaryens, the Starks, and Robert’s Rebellion may be either bogus or only very partially true.

And that’s far from the only “everything you know is wrong” moment. We learn that the worship of the old gods was once a much bloodier affair. Heck, we learn what, or who, the old gods really were/are. We learn that regionally famous heroes from Crackclaw Point to the Sisters loom just as large in the imagination of those regions’ residents as Brandon the Builder or Lann the Clever or Azor Ahai, though they’re totally unknown elsewhere. We learn that greyscale may be as deadly as anything else we’ve encountered in the novels. And so on, and so on. 

These “history lessons” impact the very fabric of the narrative. By my count, which could well be understating the case, some 48 of the 119 chapters in the combined Feast/Dance meganovel, or just over 40% of them, contain passages in which characters reveal previously unknown historical information, either in conversation with other characters or, less often, in their interior monologue. Far more often than not, when these stories aren’t literally contradicting previous conventional wisdom or revealing the grim truth beneath legends, they concern strife — the rise and fall of empires and houses and heroes and villains and kings and queens. Emphasis on the fall.

To wit:

1. Prologue (Varamyr): Varamyr recalls the rules of skinchanging
2. The Prophet: Aeron revives the Kingsmoot
3. Samwell I: Sam tells Jon about the unreliability of the Night’s Watch’s records and the timekeeping of Westeros overall, as well as info about the Others
4. Brienne II: Lord Rykker’s maester tells her about The Defiance of Duskendale and the fall of House Hollard
5. Kraken’s Daughter (Asha I): The Reader tells her about Urron Greyiron and the Kingsmoot Massacre
6. Davos I: Lord Borrell tells him about the fall of the Sister Kings
7. The Soiled Knight: Arys and Arianne talk about all the oathbreaking Kingsguards, the Dance of the Dragons, and the start of the Blackfyre Rebellions
8. Brienne III: the old man on the road tells Brienne about the late Ser Myles Mooton, killed by Robert during the Rebellion
9. Tyrion IV: Young Griff tells Tyrion about the rise and fall of the Volantene Empire
10. Tyrion V: Ysilla tells the history of the Stone Men
11. Davos III: Wylla Manderly talks about when the Manderlys were driven from the south
12. Aeron II: Aeron recalls the rise and fall of the Grey King
13. Brienne III: Nimble Dick talks about the kings of Crackclaw Point
14. The Queenmaker: Darkstar dismisses Garin the Great for leading 250K to death against Valyria
15. Arya II: The Kindly Man tells of the history of Braavos vs. Valyria and the faceless men
16. Cersei V: A brief bit about Jalabar Xho’s homeland situation
17. Tyrion VI: Haldon talks about the downfall of the powerful Triarch Horonno, and how the elephants beheaded his statue
18. Davos IV: Ser Barttimus tells Davos the history of the Wolf’s Den, including entrails in the weirwood trees as sacrifices to the Old Gods
19. Reaver: the history of those islands
20. Jaime IV: Jaime discusses the rise and fall of the Kingswood Brotherhood with Lady Amerei
21. Brienne VI: Elder Brother tells Brienne about the battle of the Trident
22. Tyrion VIII: Tyrion thinks about the Doom of Valyria
23. Cersei VII: Cersei remembers her rape by Robert
24. Jamie V: Gemma tells Jaime about the Targaryens’ struggles with the Faith Militant
25. Samwell IV: Aemon tells Sam about TPTWP/AA/Egg
26. Cersei IX: Maggy the Frog story
27. Princess in the Tower: Doran tells Arianne about the secret plot of vengeance
28. Bran III: Bran learns the secret history of the Children and Winterfell’s heart tree
29. The Prince of Winterfell: Lady Barbery tells Theon about her maester conspiracy theory
30. Jon VIII: Jon thinks about Hardhome
31. The Turncloak: Lady Barbery tells Theon about Brandon the Wild Wolf and Lord Rickard’s “Southron ambitions”
32. Daenerys VII: Barristan tells Dany about Aerys’s and Rhaella’s love life, including Joanna Lannister and the Holy Hundred guy
33. Alayne II: Littlefinger tells Sansa the recent history of the Arryn succession
34. Jon IX: Jon thinks a bit about the Iron Bank
35. Jaime VII: Jaime talks a little bit about strife among the kingsguard to Ilyn Payne
36. Samwell V: Marwyn drops knowledge bombs about the Maesters killing the dragons off
37. Jaime VIII: Lords Bracken and Blackwood and Hoster Blackwood tell Jaime a bit about the history of the Brackens and Blackwoods and the Teats; Hoster discusses the unreliability of timekeeping vis a vis the Andal conquest
38. Jon X: A wee bit of Thenn and Flint history as Jon talks to Alys
39. Daenerys VIII: a smattering of dragonlore and Dornish history as Dany talks to Quentyn
40. Jon XI: Val says that greyscale is death
41. The Queensguard: Barristan walks down memory lane
42. The Iron Suitor: a little bit about the Doom destroying the Isle of Cedars
43. Tyrion XI: How to kill a dragon; the dragon blood in House Plumm
44. The Griffin Reborn: The fall of Jon Connington at Stoney Sept
45. The Ugly Little Girl: How the Faceless Men switch faces
46. Tyrion XII: A little bit about the history of the Second Sons
47. The Kingbreaker: The ill-fated loves of House Targaryen; the Harrenhal tournament
48. The Dragontamer: A wee bit of dragonlore in conversation with Arch and Caggo — Aegon the Unworthy’s wooden dragons, slow growth in the dragonpit

Now, I’ve never kept track of this sort of thing in the other books, so perhaps this is par for the course. Certainly I’d expect Game to contain more than its fair share of historical information given all the worldbuilding it had to do. So this is, admittedly, a highly impressionistic characterization of Feast/Dance. But it certainly seems to me that history — unreliable, secret, grim history — is getting a push here that Martin never gave it before.

And I think he’s doing it with a purpose. Much more is being challenged here than our previously held beliefs about how long ago the Wall was built or what the Children of the Forest are like or how the Targaryens tamed their dragons. In all those stories of calamity and collapse, the characters tell us that despite the thorough romanticization of the past by many of them, that past was just as bloody and sad and disaster-prone as the present. To paraphrase Martin’s beloved William Faulkner, the good old days aren’t good. They aren’t even old. The greed and hubris and lust and plain old human fallibility that brought low so many powers-that-be over the centuries and millennia are very much with Westeros and Essos today. This says to me that whatever the outcome of the coming battle against the Others, the outcome will not be the restoration of the fallen world to the state of grace in which it once existed. That state of grace never existed at all.

The common complaint against A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons — Dance in particular because it’s so ostentatious about it — is that they build to a climax that never comes. Stannis doesn’t fight the Boltons and Freys at Winterfell. Dany and her dragons don’t fight the slavers and the Ironborn at Meereen. The Night’s Watch and the wildlings and the queen’s men and the Boltons don’t fight each other at the Wall. The Others don’t attack. We never learn the fate of Jamie and Brienne. Et cetera. 

That’s a fair complaint. But upon rereading the two books I feel like it’s also missing the point. Feast and Dance weren’t designed to have climaxes. They were designed to point the way to them.

Take a look at all the POV storylines and see how many of them end right on the verge of catastrophe or eucatastrophe:

• Jon is assassinated. Impending chaos at the Wall. Ramsay Bolton waits to be unleashed.
• Kevan is assassinated. Impending chaos at King’s Landing. Ser Robert Strong waits to be unleashed.
• Daenerys and Drogon stare down a Dothraki horde.
• Barristan and his council are about to be attacked by the combined forces of Slaver’s Bay, who in turn are about to be attacked by Victarion and the Iron Fleet. Also, dragons.
• The trials of Cersei and Margaery are about to begin.
• Jaime and Brienne head to their reckoning with Lady Stoneheart.
• Asha reunites with Theon and the Ironborn as the Iron Banker and “Arya” prepare to meet Stannis Baratheon.
• “Aegon” is about to attack Storm’s End.
• And God only knows what’s happening at Hardhome. 

Now, not all the storylines end this dramatically. Tyrion’s just angling to turn Brown Ben Plumm’s cloak rightside-out again. Samwell’s just preparing to be a regular old student at the Citadel. “Alayne“‘s just getting ready to participate in some high-stakes political gamesmanship in the Vale. And it’s not 100% clear what will the immediate next step will be the next time we see Arianne and Areo, or Aeron Damphair, or Bran, or Davos (though in the last three cases at least we know they’ll be in the thick of some serious shit in their respective necks of the woods).

You can also quibble with where some of the storylines are cut off in terms of their impact. For example, it might have been more dramatic to leave Barristan after he slew Hizdar’s guard and took the king captive and discovered the dragons had been freed, and leave the Dornishmen as Quentyn burned, than to have that last chapter where we learn what happens afterwards. And it might have been more dramatic to leave Tyrion as he presented himself to Brown Ben Plumm instead of resolving how that worked out. In both cases, excising the final chapters would have strengthened the parallels with how many of the other storylines ended.

But in the vast majority of cases, Feast and Dance lead us right up to the edge of major, major events and give us just a little push, so when we close the book we’re right at that weightless moment before we start accelerating down, down, down. No, there’s not really a climax to speak of. But Martin’s set things up in such a way that the entire next book will be a climax. When you read the storylines from Feast and Dance in tandem, the effort involved in setting the stage for The Winds of Winter in this way, and the skill required to pull it off, is impossible not to appreciate.

I finished re-reading A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, using the combined reading order I first posted here. (The new-reader-friendly version is here.) What a rewarding experience!

As smarter people than me have been saying for some time, Feast and Dance truly are best considered as two halves of one giant book, not just chronologically but thematically. Putting them back together so that each character’s storyline flows seamlessly through time and space without resetting halfway through reveals so much on so many levels.

Not least of those revelations is the true strength of this material. I was never a Feast-hater — given that the much-maligned Brienne chapters are among my favorites in the entire series, how could I be? — and I loved Dance as well, though I’m perfectly capable of recognizing and acknowledging the structural issues that turned many readers off of either or both. But wow, splicing them back together is like Jaqen waving his hand in front of his face and revealing something brand new beneath: a massive meganovel of truly astonishing scope; an enormously ambitious expansion and revision of Martin’s canvas; the moment in the series when the roller coaster crests the hill and begins the plunge, writ large.

I’m very glad I re-read the books in this way, and I’ll be blogging a lot about why. I’m using the Feastdance tag (I’d have called it “Feast/Dance” but the tag search can’t parse slashes, and besides, this makes it seem more like Flashdance) if you’d like to follow along; I’ve gone back and added it to a few pertinent posts already. (I recommend using this blog’s search function for it rather than the Tumblr tag search on your dashboard, which apparently really sucks.)

This’ll be fun.

I don’t know what it says about me that the first thing I do upon finishing the combined re-read of A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons using the reading order I myself developed is posting the evidence I compiled, over the course of months, that Ramsay cut Theon’s dick off.

My name. A scream caught in his throat. They had taught him his name, they had, they had, but it had been so long that he’d forgotten. If I say it wrong, he’ll take another finger, or worse, he’ll … he’ll … He would not think about that, he could not think about that.

—

If I had a tail, the Bastard would have cut it off. The thought came unbidden, a vile thought, dangerous. His lordship was not a bastard anymore. Bolton, not Snow. 

—

The crookback lord looked again and gave a sudden snort. “Him? Can it be? Stark’s ward. Smiling, always smiling.”

“He smiles less often now,” Lord Ramsay confessed. “I may have broken some of his pretty white teeth.”

“You would have done better to slit his throat,” said the lord in mail. “A dog who turns against his master is fit for naught but skinning.”

“Oh, he’s been skinned, here and there,” said Ramsay.

—

Reek had tried to bite his own ring finger off once, to stop it hurting after they had stripped the skin from it. Lord Ramsay would never simply cut off a man’s finger. He preferred to flay it and let the exposed flesh dry and crack and fester. Reek had been whipped and racked and cut, but there was no pain half so excruciating as the pain that followed flaying. It was the sort of pain that drove men mad, and it could not be endured for long. Soon or late the victim would scream, “Please, no more, no more, stop it hurting, cut it off,” and Lord Ramsay would oblige.

—

The other man had been a good rider, but Reek was uneasy on horseback. It had been so long. He was no rider. He was not even a man.

—

“A man would turn against me in your place, but we know what you are, don’t we?”

—

“Lord Ramsay treats his captives honorably so long as they keep faith with him.” He has only taken toes and fingers and that other thing, when he might have had my tongue, or peeled the skin off my legs from heel to thigh.”

—

“My lord,” he said, “my place is here, with you. I’m your Reek. I only want to serve you. All I ask … a skin of wine, that would be reward enough for me … red wine, the strongest that you have, all the wine a man can drink …”

Lord Ramsay laughed. “You’re not a man, Reek. You’re just my creature. You’ll have your wine, though.”

—

Ramsay slapped his face. “Take him,” he told his father. “He’s not even a man. The way he smells disgusts me.”

—

“M’lord. If I might ask … why did you want me? I’m no use to anyone, I’m not even a man, I’m broken, and … the smell …”

“A bath and change of clothes will make you smell sweeter.”

“A bath?” Reek felt a clenching in his guts. “I … I would sooner not, m’lord. Please. I have … wounds, I … and these clothes, Lord Ramsay gave them to me, he … he said that I was never to take them off, save at his command …”

“You are wearing rags,” Lord Bolton said, quite patiently. “Filthy things, torn and stained and stinking of blood and urine. And thin. You must be cold. We’ll put you in lambswool, soft and warm. Perhaps a fur-lined cloak. Would you like that?”

“No.” He could not let them take the clothes Lord Ramsay gave him. He could not let them see him.

“Would you prefer to dress in silk and velvet? There was a time when you were fond of such, I do recall.” 

“No,” he insisted, shrilly. “No, I only want these clothes. Reek’s clothes. I’m Reek, it rhymes with peek.” His heart was beating like a drum, and his voice rose to a frightened squeak. “I don’t want a bath. Please, m’lord, don’t take my clothes.” 

“Will you let us wash them, at least?” 

“No. No, m’lord. Please.” He clutched his tunic to his chest with both hands and hunched down in the saddle, half-afraid that Roose Bolton might command his guardsmen to tear the clothes off him right there in the street.

—

“What did your bastard do to him?”

“Removed some skin, I would imagine. A few small parts. Nothing too essential.”

—

“He knows who I am, though. Who I really am. I see it when he looks at me. He looks so angry, even when he smiles, but it’s not my fault. They say he likes to hurt people.”

“My lady should not listen to such … lies.”

“They say that he hurt you. Your hands, and …”

His mouth was dry. “I … I deserved it. I made him angry. You must not make him angry. Lord Ramsay is a … a sweet man, and kindly. Please him, and he will be good to you. Be a good wife.”

“Help me.” She clutched at him. “Please. I used to watch you in the yard, playing with your swords. You were so handsome.” She squeezed his arm. “If we ran away, I could be your wife, or your … your whore … whatever you wanted. You could be my man.”

Theon wrenched his arm away from her. “I’m no … I’m no one’s man.” A man would help her.

—

Ramsay smiled his wet smile. “Does she make your cock hard, Reek? Is it straining against your laces? Would you like to fuck her first?” He laughed. “The Prince of Winterfell should have that right, as all lords did in days of old. The first night. But you’re no lord, are you? Only Reek. Not even a man, truth be told.” 

—

Ramsay rose, the firelight shining on his face. “Reek, get over here. Get her ready for me.”

For a moment he did not understand. “I … do you mean … m’lord, I have no … I …” 

“With your mouth,” Lord Ramsay said. “And be quick about it. If she’s not wet by the time I’m done disrobing, I will cut off that tongue of yours and nail it to the wall.”

—

Lord Ramsay wanted his wife clean. “She has no handmaids, poor thing,” he had said to Theon. “That leaves you, Reek. Should I put you in a dress?” He laughed. “Perhaps if you beg it of me.” 

—

He wanted to hit her, to smash that mocking smile off her face. He wanted to kiss her, to fuck her right there on the table and make her cry his name. But he knew he dare not touch her, in anger or in lust. Reek, Reek, my name is Reek. I must not forget my name. 

—

She sat down next to him, too close, another of Abel’s washerwomen. This one was young, fifteen or maybe sixteen, with shaggy blond hair in need of a good wash and a pair of pouty lips in need of a good kiss. “Some girls like to touch,” she said, with a little half-smile. “If it please m’lord, I’m Holly.”

Holly the whore, he thought, but she was pretty enough. Once he might have laughed and pulled her into his lap, but that day was done.

—

Lady Dustin spoke up. “Take off your gloves.”

Theon glanced up sharply. “Please, no. I … I …” 

“Do as she says,” Ser Aenys said. “Show us your hands.”

Theon peeled his gloves off and held his hands up for them to see. It is not as if I stand before them naked. It is not so bad as that.

—

Roger Ryswell grunted. “If not him, who? Stannis has some man inside the castle, that’s plain.” Reek is no man. Not Reek. Not me. 

—

All quotes from A Dance with Dragons. Emphasis on “and that other thing” mine. The prosecution rests.

ciscocosta asked: The Dornish story seems to benefit the least from the Feast/Dance combination. There are some Quentyn/Arianne parallels -- filial duty is tops -- but it doesn't mesh as well as, say, the Cersei-Jon-Dany story. Thoughts?

I’m sure I’ll come back to this point once I’ve finished my re-read and start posting about it in earnest, but I was just thinking yesterday how much I liked the feel of the Dorne material in the combined version of the books. There’s very much a sense of the baton being passed from Doran and Arianne to Quentyn, particularly if you use the reading order that preserves the big reveal. You’re effectively reading a self-contained novella within the larger work. As I’ve said before, it reminds me of one of those late-seasons Sopranos storylines centered on a supporting character, where the impact on Tony’s storyline is either minimal or tangential but the themes reflect and resonate with those of the main story, as well as simply providing a showcase for a different kind of story, a different set of performances.

I suppose what I come away with from the Dorne material is that Prince Doran provides us with a study in contrast: Unlike virtually all the power players we’ve met so far, he’s not a man of action. He moves slowly and deliberately and secretly toward his goal. But it brings him no closer to success than Tywin’s ruthlessness or Ned’s openness.

As I reach the homestretch of my combined Feast/Dance reread, I’ve been thinking about my previous comments on Asha Greyjoy. I got roughed up a bit for them, as you’ll recall, though mostly over misunderstandings and miscommunications (on both sides) rather than the meat of what I was saying. One of those things was that only in comparison to massive creeps like her father and uncles, or the real monsters like Gregor and Ramsay, does she look like a moral actor. But in reading her chapters and those of her uncle Victarion, I realized that what I’d intended to be damning her with faint praise might better be understood — by me! — as actual, genuine praise.

Asha and Victarion give us a nice apples-to-apples comparison for what growing up Greyjoy can result in. Both of these people were born into the ruling family of the Iron Islands. They’re steeped in Ironborn culture generally and the Greyjoy lineage and legacy specifically. As you’d expect, they both enjoy and excel at warfare, and they both have a streak of arrogance and schadenfreude.

But with Asha, a streak is about as far as it goes. True, Asha’s motives for and enjoyment of her part in the conquest of the North don’t line up with any current just-war theory, let alone my own personal antiwar alignment, so I find it hard to get too worked up about her on those terms. But compared to the total-war conduct of Victarion, Asha really is admirable. She doesn’t engage in the slaughter (or sale!) of prisoners the way he does. No raping, no torturing, no blind eye to such crimes done under her watch (cf. Victarion allowing his crew to rape the maester, and then threatening to do more of the same before killing him). When she realizes war in the North is pointless, she tries to stop waging it. When Stannis has his cannibal prisoners burned alive, Asha can not only barely stand to look, she also reflects on her own culture’s cruel customs, recognizing them for what they are. She does not believe the Drowned God is on her side, giving her license to do whatever she pleases. She takes a lover, whom she treats as an equal, for fun and pleasure and companionship, not as a method of glorified masturbation in which the personhood of her lover is barely acknowledged. Her view of “the right thing” may be warped by her upbringing and her era, but that’s what she tries to do. One need look no further than Victarion for a most instructive/destructive contrast.

As my combined Feast/Dance re-read reaches the homestretch, the one crackpot theory I’m warming to a bit is the idea that Theon/Reek is killing people in Winterfell during dissociative episodes late at night. I always thought the lords were correct in their assessment that he was physically and emotionally incapable of violence anymore, but in the chapter featuring his escape with Jeyne/Arya he clearly has to hold himself back from murdering Rowan the washerwoman, and later picks Jeyne up and carries her over his shoulder while fleeing from the guards. Hell, maybe the mysterious man he meets really IS his alternate personality — I thought the fact that the man calls him “kinslayer” ruled this out given that Bran and Rickon were neither Theon’s kin nor actually slain, and Theon of all people should know this when talking to himself, but perhaps a part of Theon thinks/knows that the miller’s wife’s sons he really did kill were really his own offspring?

1. Prologue: ADWD 1
2. Prologue: AFFC 1
3. The Prophet: AFFC 2
4. The Captain of Guards: AFFC 3
5. Cersei I: AFFC 4
6. Tyrion I: ADWD 2
7. Daenerys I: ADWD 3
8. Brienne I: AFFC 5
9. Jon I: ADWD 4
10. Bran I: ADWD 5
11. Tyrion II: ADWD 6 [then SKIP Chapter 7, The Merchant’s Man]
12. Samwell I: AFFC 6
13. Jon II: ADWD 8
14. Arya I: AFFC 7
15. Cersei II: AFFC 8
16. Jaime I: AFFC 9
17. Brienne II: AFFC 10
18. Sansa I: AFFC 11
19. The Kraken’s Daughter: AFFC 12
20. Tyrion III: ADWD 9
21. Davos I: ADWD 10
22. Jon III: ADWD 11
23. Daenerys II: ADWD 12
24. Reek I: ADWD 13
25. Cersei III: AFFC 13
26. The Soiled Knight: AFFC 14
27. Bran II: ADWD 14
28. Tyrion IV: ADWD 15
29. Davos II: ADWD 16
30. Brienne III: AFFC 15
31. Samwell II: AFFC 16
32. Daenerys III: ADWD 17
33. Jon IV: ADWD 18
34. Jaime II: AFFC 17
35. Tyrion V: ADWD 19
36. Cersei IV: AFFC 18
37. Davos III: ADWD 20
38. The Iron Captain: AFFC 19
39. The Drowned Man: AFFC 20
40. Brienne IV: AFFC 21
41. The Queenmaker: AFFC 22
42. Arya II: AFFC 23
43. Alayne I: AFFC 24 [then JUMP AHEAD to Chapter 41: The Princess in the Tower]
44. The Princess in the Tower: AFFC 41 [now switch to ADWD and JUMP BACK to Chapter 7: The Merchant’s Man]
45. The Merchant’s Man: ADWD 7 [now switch to AFFC and JUMP BACK to Chapter 25: Cersei]
46. Cersei V: AFFC 25
47. Reek II: ADWD 21
48. Jon V: ADWD 22
49. Tyrion VI: ADWD 23
50. Daenerys IV: ADWD 24
51. The Lost Lord: ADWD 25
52. The Windblown: ADWD 26
53. The Wayward Bride: ADWD 27
54. Brienne V: AFFC 26
55. Samwell III: AFFC 27
56. Jaime III: AFFC 28
57. Tyrion VII: ADWD 28
58. Jon VI: ADWD 29
59. Davos IV: ADWD 30
60. Cersei VI: AFFC 29
61. The Reaver: AFFC 30
62. Daenerys V: ADWD 31
63. Melisandre I: ADWD 32
64. Jaime IV: AFFC 31
65. Brienne VI: AFFC 32
66. Reek III: ADWD 33
67. Tyrion VIII: ADWD 34
68. Cersei VII: AFFC 33
69. Jaime V: AFFC 34
70. Cat of the Canals: AFFC 35
71. Samwell IV: AFFC 36
72. Cersei VIII: AFFC 37
73. Brienne VII: AFFC 38
74. Jaime VI: AFFC 39
75. Cersei IX: AFFC 40 [remember, you can skip Chapter 41: The Princess in the Tower, because you already read it]
76. Bran III: ADWD 35
77. Jon VII: ADWD 36
78. Daenerys VI: ADWD 37
79. The Prince of Winterfell: ADWD 38
80. The Watcher: ADWD 39
81. Jon VIII: ADWD 40
82. Tyrion IX: ADWD 41
83. The Turncloak: ADWD 42
84. The King’s Prize: ADWD 43
85. Daenerys VII: ADWD 44
86. Alayne II: AFFC 42
87. Jon IX: ADWD 45
88. Brienne VIII: AFFC 43
89. Cersei X: AFFC 44
90. Jaime VII: AFFC 45
91. Samwell V: AFFC 46
92. The Blind Girl: ADWD 46
93. A Ghost in Winterfell: ADWD 47
94. Tyrion X: ADWD 48
95. Jaime VIII: ADWD 49
96. Jon X: ADWD 50
97. Daenerys VIII: ADWD 51
98. Theon VII: ADWD 52
99. Daenerys IX: ADWD 53
100. Jon XI: ADWD 54
101. Cersei XI: ADWD 55
102. The Queensguard: ADWD 56
103. The Iron Suitor: ADWD 57
104. Tyrion XI: ADWD 58
105. Jon XII: ADWD 59
106. The Discarded Knight: ADWD 60
107. The Spurned Suitor: ADWD 61
108. The Griffin Reborn: ADWD 62
109. The Sacrifice: ADWD 63
110. Victarion: ADWD 64
111. The Ugly Little Girl: ADWD 65
112. Cersei XII: ADWD 66
113. Tyrion XII: ADWD 67
114. The Kingbreaker: ADWD 68
115. The Dragontamer: ADWD 69
116. Jon XIII: ADWD 70
117. The Queen’s Hand: ADWD 71
118. Daenerys X: ADWD 72
119. Epilogue: ADWD 73