Time for another book update! :D
Okay. Good news this time. Like, right after I last posted about the book it randomly turned around and actually started looking like a decent author wrote it.
Ned let him prattle on. After a time, he quieted and they rode in silence. The streets of King's Landing were dark and deserted. The rain had driven everyone under their roofs. It beat down on Ned's head, warm as blood and relentless as old guilts. Fat drops of water ran down his face.
Personally, I would have went with "running" down his face as opposed to "ran" as ran is past tense and doesn't sound as good, but that could just be me. And this is still far and beyond better than "Joffery moaned." Where was this author when that was written?
The book is still a mess though. It has continued to allude to either possibility being true concerning Tyrion's involvement or lack there of in the plot to kill Bran and at this point, I just don't give a **** anymore. I might have cared more if Bran was a deeper character or had any semblance of a purpose for existing, but he's only eight years old and despite having whole chapters dedicated to him he has thus far accomplished the following: been thrown out a window; woke up from a crazy *** dream/coma; complained about being crippled, which I can agree is something to complain about, but he was more whiny about it than anything else and it came off as more of a 'I broke my favorite toy' sulk than 'I'll never walk again.' Oh, and he also almost got killed by bandits in the forest.
Yeah, I really don't care if that guy really did try to kill him or not. And at any rate, it doesn't seem to matter at this point if Tyrion is guilty or not which really begs the question: why? Why keep giving the reader mixed messages about something that doesn't even matter? The only fathomable reason I can come up with is that the book wants to keep me in the dark as to where Littlefinger's allegiances lie, as he was the one to originally pin the blame on Tyrion, but due to a trickle down effect, I don't care about that either. He's been nothing but helpful to the Starks so far... so I fully expect him to turn on them at some point anyway. There's no reason to keep me guessing. And here's again another instance where the book fails and others succeed. Where a better story might have a subtle nudge as to whether Tyrion did or didn't do it and leave it up to the reader to catch it for themselves, A Game of Thrones just loudly states right in your face, "HE DID IT!... or
did he?.... Nah, he didn't do it... or
did he?..."
What else... oh yeah. I'm only just passed the halfway point and the story is already telling me with it's large amounts of symbolism and foreshadowing that the really cool **** is going to happen in a later book. I mean, yeah, I could have already guess that since book four recently came out I believe, but I just find it strange that the book has that now before we're anyway near the resolution of the book we're on. It'd be like if we found out the Empire was already building a second Death Star midway through A New Hope. It would have kinda taken away from blowing up the first one, right?
Also, Flayl, I don't know what you were smoking when you said that Jon Arryn's murderer got outed several books later. The exact person who did it has already been outed, unless the guy doing the finger pointing earlier was lieing, which wouldn't be surprising as well as annoying. And after going back and rereading what Bran learned in his first chapter it is indeed made clear that it was the Lannisters that were behind Jon's death and that the queen think's incest is the best, making the big reveal later kinda not very big... or revealing. Which, again, begs the question of why the plot demanded the Stark kid find out about it and forget it upon waking up? Was it just so they had an excuse to have another 'or
did he' moment when Tyrion showed them how to make a special saddle so Bran could ride a horse, the same person he supposedly tried to kill?
All in all, the book is getting better and I may continue on with the next one if only to give the story closure, but I still find it baffling why this thing is so popular when there are way better authors out there that deserve this kind of recognition and more.
