This is an amazing epic story that keeps you listening and wanting more and more. The characters are so treacherous it is very exciting to continue to listen.

There are so many characters in this book it can be hard to remember who is who sometimes, and while I like them all in various ways, I think I am most interested in Aria Stark, Tyrion Lanister and as of this last book, Jayme has become all of a sudden interesting. However, Tyrion was absent through much of this book and I am wondering how he will reappear in the last.

Up until this book I would have said this was one of the best narrators I have heard, but all of a sudden he is pronouncing the names differently than he had in the first 3 books (over 120 hours) and it was super annoying. Cat-lynn for books 1-3 and Kate-lynn for this, Pa-tire Balish (1-3) Peter for this, Br-eye-een for the first -third and Brianne for this,

This book made me so angry and outraged at one point it made me lose sleep! The whole series is like that. The treachery know no bounds and there are wrists and turns everywhere. It is great fun

I am excited to see how it end, but frankly I don't see how he is going to wrap up all the loose story ends in only 40 hours. There are a lot.

The voices of some character are all wrong: Sam and Aria for two. This is super annoying to me. I don't know if I'll make it through this book four. I wish I'd know this, I probably would not have bought it.

Every time Aria speaks in this book I find myself expecting to hear her refer to the old god's as "magically delicious". This new voice is a complete departure from her voice in the first books.

And while Roy Dotrice's apparent inability to remember how he pronounced a name not only in other books but even earlier in the same paragraph is distracting, the story itself is as solid and well written as I have come to expect from Martin.

Dotrice chooses to use a mix of both his former pronunciation and the new in this book, most notably as follows.

CAT-lin and KATE-lin

Bry-EEN and BREE-en

Pee-TYR and PEE-ter

A-ria and ARI-er ("I've lost my Lucky Charms")

If he decided to pronounce Catelyn as Caitlin I could adapt but he switches constantly between the old and new pronunciations so it is difficult to become settled into listening to the tale.

(SPOILER ALERT!)


Maybe a little disappointment is inevitable, but Book 3 set up so much, and Book 4 delivered on very little of it. There are chapters and chapters of narratives from Sensa and Sam, who are doing...pretty much nothing. There's an interminable boat trip. There is endless scheming in the Vale. We see Cersei elevating the church and obliviously running the kingdom into the ground. Jamie's self-loathing and attempts to make things right gets many chapters. Significant secondary characters in earlier novels are (apparently) killed -- which we've come to expect -- but their deaths occur "offstage" and are related by others very briefly.

No chapters about Tyrion or whatever happened to him, either. Stannis and his ambitions barely get mentioned. Whatever is going on at the Wall is barely discussed.

I have to wonder if Martin got his first big royalty check right before writing Book 4, which seems pretty self-indulgent and serious "padded." I just read that HBO is going to divide Book 3 between two seasons of production. I'm pretty sure they could dispense with all of important events in Book 4 in three, maybe four episodes.

No, but if Book 5 is as rambling and ennui-inducing as Book 4, my "Song of Fire and Ice" obsession will be over.

The funeral at sea for the maester presided over by Samwell.

A huge disappointment. There's very little dramatic tension in the novel, and almost all of the new characters introduced here are far from compelling.

I apologize to the other "A Song of Fire and Ice" fans who may strongly disagree with my reaction, but this is my very honest response to the book.

This story really lags in places and introduces a TON of new characters while completely igoring some of the most interesting characters from the previous books. The author crushes all hope whenever possible and gives the reader nothing, and no one, to cling to. I find myself having no reason to continue to follow the plot. Expect all respectable characters to die a brutal death and all evil or deeply flawed characters to succeed, if only for a short time. All of the characters are severely injured whether it be physical pain or emotional pain, no one is safe! This book is filled with pain, sadness, injustice and detailed descriptions of each.

Martin could allow a decent character to achieve a goal once in a while. Readers like to relate to the characters and he brutalizes every one of them which makes the reader feel brutalized, hopeless and ultimately DEPRESSED!

I enjoyed several characters until Martin savaged them and then killed them off. He really knows how to detach his audience...brutalize or murder their favorite characters. It's easy to let go of the plot when that happens.

This book inspired me to search for a different author.

When the third book ended everyone who had been anywhere near the wall made it clear that almost nothing else mattered. So how much of this book takes place anywhere near the wall? Almost none.

Once he sends off Sam and Aemon, John Snow isn't heard of for the rest of the book. Tyrian Lanaster isn't heard from at all. Nor are Stanis or Davos or the red woman. Sansa Stark is slightly less of an airhead, but just as boring. A large part of the book takes place in Dorn, and while some of the new characters are slightly interesting, it's mostly irrelevant. But the biggest problem is Circe Lanaster. About a third of the the book follows her and she spends all of it being a whiny self centered bitch, and worst of all not being very interesting when she does it.

Jamie does some personal development stuff I won't ruin, Aria does some interesting stuff I won't ruin, Brienne wanders around completely failing to do anything useful, Sam goes sailing, and everybody else plays politics (boringly). That's it. That's the entire plot. That took 31 hours. The last 2 hours had some other interesting stuff happen, but it's not enough to redeem the rest of it.

And to top it off Roy Dotrice has completely forgotten how he pronounced anything in the first 3 books. The accents are worse if anything, and good luck telling any of the Dornish apart.

Seriously, what happened? I genuinely want to know. With a decent editor you could get this down to 5 hours without losing anything interesting.

I guess Roy Dotrice must have just completely forgotten how he pronounced half of the characters names in the last three books he read, it's seriously driving me crazy, He's pronouncing Catelyn: Katelyn, Brienne: Bernie, Petyr: Peter, and a whole slew of other inconsistent pronunciations. I literally cringe at every mispronunciation. But besides that the book is fine, I'm only a few hours in but i couldn't take the rampant mispronunciation anymore. I guess all we can do is stick it out and hope Dotrice remembers how to pronounce the names in the remaining books.

Imagine my surprise when I was clicking around for something new in the epic fantasy section and my eye just happened to see Roy's name on the splash page that shows the new releases. Like so many others I bought the John Lee recording of this story some years ago and found it to be a terrible listen. Many, many, many of us begged for Roy Dotrice to record this story, and now here it is.

I have accepted after listening to Dance that I will not hear the same powerful performance that we were so lucky to have on the first three books, and I am ok with that. Time marches on mercilessly for all of us and those recordings were many and more years ago.

This performance is much, much better than the last recording of Feast and for me its like I get to hear the story for the first time . THANK YOU for doing this.

I'm only a few hours in, and this book completely lives up to my expectations (based on the previous 3)! Lots of clever humor so far too.

BUT has Roy Dotrice gone crazy? He's pronouncing the names of a few characters inconsistently! Within the span of 20 minutes, he's pronouncing Catelyn as cat-uh-lin (as in previous readings) and also as kate-lin. And how can he mispronounce Brienne, especially after reading her oft-repeated reply to Jamie "My name is Brienne!"

I wouldn't dream of listening to this series read by anyone else, but geez - what's going on here, Roy?

Loved the first 3 books with Dotrice reading them, but just about had to quit listening when Arya and Danni had different voices in this book - agh! They sound like old crones now. Also, the pronunciations are off for several characters which is annoying too. This is the weakest of the series in storyline (too many new people with too many minor tie-ins) but the narrator definitely needs to get back to voicing Arya and Danni like young women, not old hags.