Book report: "A Clash of Kings"

After I tackled "A Game of Thrones" in BLAP 58, concentrating on Early Installement Weirdness, I recently completed my reread of "A Clash of Kings", and so I want to give you my report here. Of course, you know the book, I knew the book, so I'm not reciting the plot and tell you it's a damn good book, but I'd rather make some stray observations.

 

The first thing that comes to mind is that while the scope of the book expands a bit, it's still fairly narrowed, compared to the sprawling epic of the Feastdance. "A Game of Thrones" was tightly confined to the plot in King's Landing, with two storylines more or less self-contained (Jon and Dany), one giving us the walking camera on Winterfell (Bran) and one being physically remote yet intricately linked (Catelyn). 

 

In "A Clash of Kings", we get two new perspectives: Davos, who serves as a walking camera on all things Stannis that Martin wants us to know, and Theon, who serves an integral function in the story and is the first big departure from Martin's original outline. Let's tackle these two newcomers first.

Davos, as many have remarked before, is mostly a camera on legs in this book. It's only in "A Storm of Swords" that he will get a real character arc of his own. This shouldn't be miscontrued as saying that Davos is a bad character or something; it's just apparent, especially in contrast to Theon, that his motivations are pretty bare-bone. He's loyal, he's truthful, and that's about it. 

 

Davos gives us a view on a Stannis that is hard to square with the Mannis the fandom loves so much. He's very much the antagonist of the book, if not the outright villain (that spot is reserved for Joffrey), but we are supposed to feel the same uneasiness about the middle Baratheon that Catelyn feels. The book succeeds in that. It's never possible to unequivocally root for the Baratheon victory, try as we might. 

 

This is further complicated by squaring off the two most likeable characters of each side in the Battle of the Blackwater. Tyrion for the Lannisters and Davos for Team Burning Heart gives us no clear side to root for, an effect that is certainly intended and that works masterfully. I don't want to waste any words on the quality of the Battle itself; others have done that to much greater effect. It's a favorite for a reason. 

 

Stannis, once again, is at best a dark grey character in this books (ironic, given Melisandre's monologue about people being either black or white). We are with him because Davos, who is clearly coded as a good guy, is with him. But if Catelyn's perspective was the only look we had on Stannis, the only perspective, it would be pretty clear he'd be in the "bad guy" camp. It will need the catastrophe of the Blackwater to change him into something better, forcing Davos' question from the beginning of "A Storm of Swords" whether his sons' lives where just a lesson for a king. Were all these dead just ingredients for a character arc? It's a nagging question, and one is well adviced not to think in these terms in our reality. 

 

If you think your life is following a neat trajectory, you might just be Theon Greyjoy, who is the second new POV here. He's insufferable, and clearly written as such. His journey through humiliations down into the darkest abyss is incredibly compelling. There's no way we could ever root for him, and the capture of Winterfell, as Steven Attewell pointed out in great detail, required some heavy-handed authorly intervention. 

 

It's this weighing on the scales that Martin still needs to do that's making "A Clash of Kings" not as good as the middle part of the series, simply because such weighing is largely unnecessary in the Feastdance, where things happen more organically out of the choices of characters. But Winterfell NEEDS to burn, and Theon is just the person fate has chosen to make it happen. 

 

In the hands of a lesser writer, this would be a bolt out of nowhere, done mostly for shock (WHAT, THEON DID THAT?!). Here, Martin invites us to follow every step of the way, to emphasize with Theon (but never sympathize!) and understand where he's coming from. He has a giant chip on his shoulder, and it's not really his fault. His story is also a story of the failure of many people around him, although of course, his own character is still to blame the most. Jon Snow, the obvious comparison, took a very different route with a comparable starting position. 

 

The most obstruse part of "A Clash of Kings" is the Hornwood crisis and the character of Ramsay Snow aka Reek. Even knowing the story and having read it many times, it's easy to lose track of what's happening why, and this obfuscation is intended on Martin's part. It's essentially only in the aftermath of the Red Wedding that the reader is able to fully understand what the hell happened there. I'm a bit on the fence if this is a good decision, but that's the structure of that plot. 

 

Ramsay's function, on the other hand, is pretty clear. He's the devil. He lures Theon to the Dark Side, bit by bit, dropping venom in his ears and defeating all of the (stunted, admittedly) better angels of his nature and overcoming the angelic voice of Maester Luwin, almost ritually slaying him in the end. When Theon murders the miller's children to cover up his mistake, he's taken a dark road without return, and when the devil comes back to collect his due, he's doing so in style, in demonic attire and amidst a burning inferno. 

 

The rest of the book remains surprisingly tight. Winterfell, more or less checked in regularily in "A Game of Thrones", now has a more direct connection to the main plot and becomes a stage for it once again with Theon's plotline. Bran's awakening, the great introduction of the Reeds and the subsequent fall of the castle are woven together in a triumph of storytelling. "The North" therefore becomes a story location in its own right, a place that gets lost in the ultimate chapter of the book, with Bran wistfully looking back in a broken, but not dead Winterfell. 

 

Catelyn remains her function as a connecting tissue, first giving us a look into the war in the Riverlands and the politics of it, whereas later she provides the necessary viewpoint of Renly's death and Stannis' assencion before returning to the Riverlands in time to witness the Battle of the Fords and to free Jaime. Her plot is cleverly laid out so that she organically arrives at the right time in the right place, and on top of that, she has a personal arc driving her on a relentless downward slope that will only become worse in "A Storm of Swords". 

 

Here, we can already see the seeds of the later Nemesis that she will become in her role as "Lady Stoneheart", and this is another thing about "A Clash of Kings": unlike "A Game of Thrones", there are a lot of seeds and threads that clearly lead to future books. Martin has a much better grasp of where he wants his story to go, not in detail, of course, but in principle. 

 

Unfortunately, this is less the case with Arya's storyline, which is the weakest of the book. She simply has too many chapters which are too repetitive in the beginning. The part in Harrenhal makes up for it, of course, with the view on Roose Bolton, the Bloody Mummers and of course Arya's use of her "murder genie" (Attewell) Jaqen H'ghar. 

 

The last part of the big political plot happens in King's Landing, where Tyrion is at the height of his power and really enjoying it. And so do we readers. There's something immensely entertainting watching Tyrion do all the stuff he does, be clever and outmaneuver Cersei. However, as we rereaders know, he's already laying the ground for his own destruction. 

 

Much of what will come to haunt him in the trial of "A Storm of Swords" and lead to his political impotence and unlikeability on the following volume is already started here, and Martin continually gives us subtle hints about Tyrion's darker aspects, which will come to the fore in "A Dance with Dragons" and, presumably, "The Winds of Winter" on the one hand and the rottenness of the cause he serves on the other. It's easy to forget, read from Tyrion's perspective, just how rotten the whole Lannister regime is. Whatever Tyrion does, it's in the service of an utter psychopath. Never forget that. 

 

Jon and Dany, once again, remain apart, their stories now completely severed from the rest of the plot. Jon's adventures beyond the Wall mostly take the form of a thriller in the mold of John Le Carré or Tom Clancy, an agent in foreign territory, trying to achieve intelligence and navigating a dangerous space. As I argued in my guest appearance on the NotACast, this passage also subverts ours (and Jon's) expectations about the wildlings, preparing the ground for the plot of "A Dance with Dragons" especially to follow. 

 

A general theme of this book report, to me, is that the plot is much more important for later books than it was in "A Game of Thrones". So many actions characters take, so many events begun, will not come to fruition until later books. This was different in the first volume, which was much more self-contained. 

 

On the other hand, the focus is still tightly set on King's Landing, the gravitational center of the political plot. Even if the characters are not there, it's the point where their aspirations are concentrated. Dorne is still mostly mentioned, Robb is off camera for long stretches of time, the Vale is practically mute, the Stormlands as well (aside from Storm's End), the Reach is present as an army but not as a region, and so on. 

 

The scope will widen a bit in "A Storm of Swords", but it will become truly epic only in the Feastance. Viewed from this perspective, "A Clash of Kings" is much more sophisticated than "A Game of Thrones", but it's a far cry from the abilities Martin will display in the middle part of the saga. It's impressive, really.