A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin

1) I think it's appropriate to be drinking red wine while writing this. Who didn't drink in this book? No wonder everyone made dumb decisions, they were all drunk.

2) This audiobook was so long that I forgot what happened in the beginning (and middle) of the book so I looked it up for assistance.

I started Feast immediately after A Storm of Swords and was so disappointed. I wanted more of what Storm brought me, instead I was thrust into this other timeline of people I didn't care about. I've been keeping up with the HBO series and decided to come back to Feast to see if I liked it any better. Why yes, I did. Now that I was further along with the series, I enjoyed going back to hear the back stories and in-between stories of some of the characters I now really love.

Yes. I know the books < > the show.

So we start with Lord Tywin being killed by Tyrion (YAY!) and Tommen on the throne with his crazy-ass mother, Cersei, as Queen Regent. The show didn't show us much in Tywin's after death scenes but Feast goes in to all of it. ALL of it.

We get many chapters of Sam Tarly heading to the Citadel on orders of Lord Commander Jon Snow to become a maester. Gilly is with him and we get very long descriptions of the boat trip and all of Sam's adventures. He had more adventures in the book than he did in the show, so yay Sam.

One of my favorite characters from the show is Brienne of Tarth and she's featured fairly prominently in the book but I have to admit to despising "A highborn girl of three and ten, fair face and auburn hair" because it was repeated ad nauseum. But I did enjoy Brienne's adventures with Pod. I'm not happy with how Brienne's story was left to us so I sincerely hope something more happens in the next book.

The Dornish women were really featured, which was a bit surprising, as they didn't seem like such big characters in the show. Who knew the craziness that was happening in Dorne??

Jamie the Kingslayer is out on missions from his sister Cersei, but when she needs him most, he's doesn't respond (good for you! She crazy!). I was happy that the High Sparrow dealt with Cersei in the same way I was familiar with. What is with that woman?

Lots of main characters were not even mentioned in Feast, but we did get some glimpses into Sansa and Arya Stark. I'm looking forward to A Dance With Dragons to keep catching up.