A Feast for Crows

Book 4 of A Song of Ice and Fire

By: George R.R. Martin

Narrated by: Roy Dotrice

Length: 33 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

The complete, unabridged audiobook of A Feast for Crows.

HBO’s hit series A Game of Thrones is based on George R. R. Martin’s internationally best-selling series A Song of Ice and Fire, the greatest fantasy epic of the modern age. A Feast for Crows is the fourth volume in the series.

The Lannisters are in power on the Iron Throne.

The war in the Seven Kingdoms has burned itself out, but in its bitter aftermath new conflicts spark to life. The Martells of Dorne and the Starks of Winterfell seek vengeance for their dead. Euron Crow’s Eye, as black a pirate as ever raised a sail, returns from the smoking ruins of Valyria to claim the Iron Isles.

From the icy north, where Others threaten the Wall, apprentice Maester Samwell Tarly brings a mysterious babe in arms to the Citadel. As plots, intrigue and battle threaten to engulf Westeros, victory will go to the men and women possessed of the coldest steel and the coldest hearts.

©2005 George R.R. Martin (P)2011 HarperCollins

Critic reviews

"Fantasy literature has never shied away from grandeur, but the sheer mind-boggling scope of this epic has sent other fantasy writers away shaking their heads… Its ambition: to construct the Twelve Caesars of fantasy fiction, with characters so venomous they could eat the Borgias." ( Guardian)

"Truly epic...with its magnificent action-filled climax, it provides a banquet for fantasy lovers with large appetites." ( Publishers Weekly)

More description than story

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

This book goes wayyyy too slow. Wayyy more description than story. It seems that the book was read deliberately slow. Too many I needed to listen to this at double and sometimes triple speed!

Would you be willing to try another book from George R. R. Martin? Why or why not?

Yes, the others were really great.

Same problems as every other by this narrator

The narrator still can't decide how he wants to say names he's already said at least 1000 times. Gives the same character different accents between chapters (or even within one). Really careless reading.

The book is the least interesting/compelling of the series so far. You'd think the introduction of new POV characters would be refreshing like it was in book 2, but it's not. Jaime's backstory reveal is relatively interesting but Cersi comes across as one dimensional by comparison. Brienne's character concept is good, but her actual POV is terribly dull for the most part. Even more boring as are the randos like Areo, Arys, Aeron and Arianne. Along with Jaime's chapters, Arya, Samwell, Sansa and Asha largely carry the story.

Even for the good characters though, you have to look past the baffling/jarring inconsistencies in narration to see the upsides. Often a challenge...

Is this really Roy?

I didn't want to believe the reviews of this book, but it is just amazing how bad this is when compared to the previous 3.

The fact that the first 3 books were so good and well read by Roy makes it even worse.

The story is not so bad, it ignores a number of character stories left hanging at the end of book 3, and introduces a lot of new characters so it feels like a parallel story at times, but if I were reading it for myself then I imagine I would enjoy it as much as the first 3 books.

The problem is Roy's performance, just utterly abysmal.
The majority of the characters from the previous 3 books now have totally different voices / accents (the change in Arya Stark & Petyr Baelish are particularly bad). He pronounces names and places differently as well, "Red Wine" becoming "Red Win" for example, he even changes the pronunciation of names in the same sentence! (For Brienne, first he says "Bree-enn" then in the same breath it changes to "Bry-een".)

I am praying that the 5th book is better as I need to know the story, but this one is so bad I am actually listening in 1.5x speed to get through it quicker.

Not as good as the one before or the one after

It’s a bit of a waste to spend so much time inside Cersei’s head, IMO, as we do in this book. It doesn’t feel like the story is truly moving or that the world is being established further, like in the previous book, where the world building was superb. It’s a bit of a stop gap, the next book is where all the interesting bits are. Still, good enough to pass the time.

Disappointing in both narrative and narration

Some books are a delight and pleasure to listen to, to the point where you don't want to stop listening and are sad to finish them. Others you merely endure because there's something you want to accomplish by finishing them. This book was solidly in the second category for me: i want to know what happens in the ASOIAF saga, and i want to have the proper context for A Dance With Dragons, so i kept listening to A Feast For Crows despite rarely enjoying the experience.

For me, the word that best captures the plot of this book is "tedious". Many of the main characters (Jon, Bran, Tyrion, Danaerys) ended A Storm of Swords in interesting/exciting places, and i was looking forward to seeing where their paths took them next. But none of them got a single dedicated chapter in A Feast for Crows, and several were barely even mentioned. Instead, we get chapter after chapter of Cersei scheming, Brienne wandering from town to town, and assorted side plots of minor characters' political machinations. It felt a bit like watching The Phantom Menace, where the viewer/listener has to take it on faith that the intricately dull plot they're sitting through will be justified in a later movie/book when the actual payoff happens. The difference is that an audiobook lasts 30-40 hours rather than 2-3, so you lose a lot more of your life to this process of setting up plot dominoes. (Of course, it's entirely possible that all this setup isn't actually leading somewhere more interesting, but that feels depressingly pessimistic even for an ASOIAF fan.)

And then there's the narration. I still regard Roy Dotrice as a masterful narrator, but there were quite a few points throughout this book where his performance baffled and/or frustrated me for one reason or another. His pronunciation seems to have gotten much more inconsistent since the last book, for one thing: is it CAT-lyn, or CAIT-lyn? PEE-ter, or puh-TYRE? brae-EEN, or bree-EN? tie-RELL, or tuh-RELL? I haven't watched the show so don't mind him deviating from the HBO pronunciations, but i found his varying pronunciations confusing and taxing to listen to. Worse, though, was the voices. I would assume that a narrator for a popular book series would keep some sort of record of how they voice each character (again, for the sake of consistency), but either Dotrice doesn't do that or else he decided to ignore it for unknown reasons. I first noticed it with Dolorous Ed in an early chapter at the Wall, confused to hear him sounding so different from how he did in the first three books, but decided not to worry too much since he's a minor character. When i reached Arya's first chapter and heard her brand new Irish accent, though... it was a bit too much for me. I stopped listening for a week, and it was only by checking out John Lee's narration of A Feast for Crows that i managed to get through that chapter and continue with the book. (His voices are much less varied than Dotrice's, which was a benefit in this particular situation.) Littlefinger is another prominent character whose voice received a significant makeover in this book, transforming him from a lithe and mischievous manipulator into a dime-a-dozen gruff brute of a man (only in voice perception, not in actual character development). I switched over to the Lee version for his chapters as well.

There were some aspects of this book that i did like, including the greater development of many female characters and the full adoption of several characters' undercover aliases. And having just started A Dance with Dragons, i can confirm that there is a light at the tunnel, as the first couple chapters return us to characters who were conspicuously absent from this book. But A Feast for Crows itself goes mostly nowhere, in my view, and takes a long time to get there. If you're like me and just want to get through it, i recommend listening at a higher speed so that less of your life is spent on it.

Disjointed and Confusing

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

Die-hard fans that can overlook the limitations of the narration.

Would you be willing to try another book from George R. R. Martin? Why or why not?

I want to get this one over with so I can move on to the last.

Would you be willing to try another one of Roy Dotrice’s performances?

As long as it's better than this one.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from A Feast for Crows (Part One)?

The scenes aren't the issue.

Any additional comments?

I don't have a problem with the changed name pronunciation, or the different accents. The thing that really frustrates me is that it seems like that rather than reading a story, the narrator is reading a series of sentences that don't necessarily relate. The timing between passages is pretty bad - with new chapters sounding like a continuation of the last sentence. The timing is just off and the tone of the reading is like, as I said, reading a list of sentences.

Hoping that book 5 is better.

=( Honestly Very Disappointing =(

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

A better Storyline and slight improvement on the narration

Has A Feast for Crows (Part One) turned you off from other books in this genre?

Possibly

Would you be willing to try another one of Roy Dotrice’s performances?

Yes. He is a great Narrator

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from A Feast for Crows (Part One)?

Half the Book

Any additional comments?

I have bought all 6* of A Song of Ice and Fire audiobooks, All narrated by Roy Dotrice.
Firstly to notice the voices of some of the characters have changed, and the narrator is not consistent with pronouncing the characters name (e.g Half the Time He says Brieene properly, but the other half he calls her Bryan.....)
I enjoy Roy Dotrices Performance , on the pass 4 books in the series, he was very consistent and it was very well done if not perfectly done, but he has noticably slipped on his performance on this book.
Primarily the Story itself, its not as enticing, exciting and amazing the previous 4 books has brought us, Most the story told through A feast of crows is told through, unexciting secondary characters and just expands and explains events of the previous books, which just paves the way for the last book.
My final thoughts on this book is, Disappointing; Boring Storyline and slightly inconsistency in the narration from a rather great narrator.
I only recommend the purchase of this book for true fans of the series.

(>O.O)> Thanks for Reading my Review =) <(O.O<)

Can't get past the narration

What did you like about this audiobook?

The pov character of Cersei is interesting, she is such an important character in the series it feels like the audience is now privy to some new insights

How has the book increased your interest in the subject matter?

I am sad to say this is probably the least interesting book of the series, it is extremely difficult to connect emotionally with the characters but that's probably because the choice of characters used, being either new characters or secondary characters instead of the primary characters we have grown to love

Does the author present information in a way that is interesting and insightful, and if so, how does he achieve this?

This book is a little off track and probably needs to be edited a bit and perhaps combined with book five

What did you find wrong about the narrator's performance?

I found the narration in this book unbearable to the point that I had to switch to hard cover. I actually don't believe this is Roy Dotrice or if it is then it wasn't him in previous books. I can live with the fact everyone sounds like pirates, I can forgive him for giving siblings different accents even though common sense would tell you that families that have lived together all their lives should sound like they are from the same country, but when I got to arya stark and the voice was the one used for mance Rayder I couldn't listen any more. I never understood why mance sounded like an old Irish peddler woman, I thought that was was pretty bad given his power and presence he is supposed to have but why is arya now Irish? And low class? Would it be too difficult to listen to previous narration and keep some consistency? My recommendation is to listen to the demo before purchasing this audio. So disappointing.

Do you have any additional comments?

Overall I love these books, books 1-3 were amazing and I think the last two will be of the same standard

Just get on with it please!

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

Someone who has a HUGE attention span would enjoy this

What could George R. R. Martin have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Mr. Martin could just continue the story line from the first 3 books and stop introducing new characters. It got tedious and lost the plot.

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

The narrator could have listened to the first 3 books to remind himself of the voicing of the characters and the pronunciation of their names - Cat-lyn for 3 books then suddenly its Kate-lyn just to mention one example. Ugh.

What character would you cut from A Feast for Crows (Part One)?

I've forgotten them already.

Any additional comments?

The series started out so well and really sucked me in. I want to know how the story ends but not in so much convoluted detail. I'll wait until someone can give me a synopsis, I won't be buying any more of this series.

All round disappointment

Of all the books so far I found this one the most frustrating in many ways. There is so much background information on family ties etc with characters we had not yet met and very little on what was happening with our favorites.

As for the narration - terrible. The narrator couldn't even make up his mind about how to pronounce Catlyn - keeps chopping and changing to Katelyn. Most irritating. The accents too just didn't marry with the previous books or the characters - it made it very difficult to follow the story line with voices constantly changing.

If I was asked would I listen to this book again it would have to be a noncommittal yes - but only as it is part of the series - most definitely not for the drawn out story line or narrating.