A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin

I have not slept for more than five hours a night in the last three nights.  There are currently two loads of laundry that are clean but piled in the baskets waiting to be put away.  We ate leftovers three times this week.  There is a tea party that has been set up in the living room for the past four days.  I can't remember the last time I made the bed. And before you all think I am turning this into some kind of ridiculous math problem, let me saw that all of this is unusual...all of it was so I could finish this book.

A Dance With Dragons is the 5th in a unknown numbered series by George R.R. Martin.  I had read one and two in the series long ago, and have finished 3-5 this summer.  Martin has a horrible knack for delaying publishing days, so who really knows when number 6 will be released, but when it is, I am ready.

This one had a slow start for me. I really like number 4 and was missing some of my favorite characters from that book.  (Number 4 and 5 are set to happen at the same time, but in different lands.) I took me awhile to get re-invested in the characters that I had been missing since book 3 and stop wondering what was happening to all the characters from book 4.  But around the 1/4 mark, the book really picked up for me...and that was when pretty much everything else around me stopped. (Except my 3 year old...because there isn't really anything that stops her...well, maybe a few episodes of Dora which I might be guilty of letting her watch when I was at a really good part and nap time was a few hours away.)

I was reminded in this book of some of my other favorite characters and found myself racing through the chapters hoping that the next chapter would bring me back to their stories.  Martin jumps around in his books from character to character, sometimes with long waits in between, so the need to keep reading can be strong.  Again, one of my favorite styles of book and Martin is a genius at it.  He has a great way of resolving something you were wondering about a previous character within another character's story.  I can't even imagine how he keep everything straight.

I gave the book 4 out of 5 starts on Goodreads.  I love the story lines (almost all of them) and it is amazing how he can make that many characters come to life for the reader.  What made it a 4 instead of a 5 though, was how wordy Martin can sometimes get about things that don't seem to be relevant to the story.  For example, the family trees he has in his books are incredible.  But, when you are introducing someone that isn't going to end up having a lot of impact on the story (read: die within the next few chapters) the whole page description of the person's lineage just isn't necessary for me.  When I am reading it I am actually hearing in my head "blah-blah-blah" and not really paying attention. If only happened once and awhile it probably wouldn't have knocked it down a star, but 4 stars was my first reaction so I am sticking with it.

And now, like all the rest of the fans of this series, I wait for book 6.   I am not sure what I am going to read next but I am probably going to wait a couple of days to start.  I need to maybe pick up around the house a little and there is laundry to be folded. But first...to the bed...not to make it, but to take a little nap.