“Martin has produced — is producing, since the series isn’t over — the great fantasy epic of our era. A Dance with Dragons is the fifth volume out of a planned seven, and in many ways it’s the best. After five volumes Martin is, if anything, a better writer than when he started. If you’re watching A Game of Thrones on HBO, you’re forgoing the great pleasure of Martin’s deft prose. … But the real power of Martin’s work arises from his extraordinary skill as a plotter. A Dance with Dragons follows, by my count, 11 major story lines, as well as assorted minor ones, each with its own rhythm, written in its own voice, and each playing off all the others. Martin will never win a Pulitzer or a National Book Award, but his skill as a crafter of narrative exceeds that of almost any literary novelist writing today. He raises and raises the stakes, long past when any other writer would have walked away from the table, and just when you think he’s done, he goes all in.”
Others: Publishers Weekly: “heart hammering”, Io9: “live[s] up to the near-insurmountable hype”; Daily Beast: “darkly enthralling”, his “finest work yet, a taut and relentless masterpiece that reaffirms the reader’s obsession with the panoply of unforgettable characters that Martin has created, and the brutal, glittering, terrible world in which these novels are set”.
THIS BOOK. I NEED IT NOW.
