“Lord Randyll is of the view that you might benefit from a good hard raping.” -Ser Hyle

I like Brienne and all, but her chapters are becoming hard to get through.  She’s interesting but what she’s doing is just so pointless from a reader’s viewpoint, at least right now.  Maybe in the end it will all come together.

They head to Maidenpool with the heads of those she killed last time.  There’s some of this and some of that, and they end up heading out in search of Sandor.  I’m still not convinced that the person who is acting as Sandor is really him, all we’ve been told is that there’s a man wearing his dog helmet.  It’s probably not him.  Though at this point in the series the surprising thing would be to have it actually be him, there is always so much misdirection and false information it would shock me if something like this ended up being very straightforward.  In any case, I hope Sandor’s not dead.  Arya needs to take him down, but he earned a free pass last time.

Davos has been beheaded?  What the fuck?  As usual I need to treat this as unconfirmed rumor, unless a POV character is reporting it first hand, news like like this cannot be trusted.  It can’t be true, he’s too awesome.  But then again, there have been other awesome folk in these books…

There is lots of other news, but nothing that struck me as really major.  Ships continue to be built, Tommen continues to be a normal little boy, Oseny has still not boned Margaery, and Cersei orders a new master at arms from Dorne.

Qyburn brings her news of what Dany has been up to, but Cersei doesn’t care, again.  Nothing new to the reader, just slave uprisings and dragons.  I wonder what she’s actually up to these days… Qyburn also asks for some women to be part of his experiments.  There had better be a good payoff for this, the bits of information we’re being fed about his dungeon of horrors sounds too good to just let go.  Gregor is likely still alive down there, and now he’s taken at least one other woman, and says he needs more.  Whatever he’s up to, it’s no good.

Later Cersei tells one of her knights to kill Bronn.  Not explicitly, just to arrange an accident.  Haven’t heard from him since Tyrion left, I guess we’ll find out his fate soon (soon, ha!  could be 2000 pages from now).  Oh and Tommen has some kittens.  Poor kid, he is not real Lannister material.  Not that that’s a bad thing.  Cersei also talks about her childhood visit to Maggy and the prophecy that still hasn’t really been explained.  There’s a 50/50 chance of it being awesome or a total let down, whenever we do get around to those details.

“In the game of thrones, even the humblest pieces can have wills of their own. Sometimes they refuse to make the moves you’ve planned for them. Mark that well, Alayne. It’s a lesson that Cersei Lannister still has yet to learn.” -Littlefinger

Ok, confession time.  I missed this one.  I mean, I read it, but when I was doing these write ups I just skipped right over it.  So here I am a few weeks later trying to recall the details.

A bunch of Lords pay a visit to the Eyrie.  They demand that Petyr give them lil Robert.  Petyr says nay, give me a year to fix this place up.  One of the men nearly attacks him.  I truly thought it was the end of Littlefinger.  But, it turns out this guy was hired by Petyr to act out, so that to save face the others would agree to hsi terms.  Classic Littlefinger.  So now he has a year to look after Robert and set things the way he wants them to be.

“Too stupid to learn and too stupid to give up.” -Arya Stark

Arya is training to be a man with two faces, or some such.  This was an excellent chapter, lots of info about the Braavosi, and lots of Arya doing her thing, learning, talking about Syrio, and being kind of badass in general.  In the end they send her out into the world to continue training, it’s the only way she’ll learn the language properly.  It feels like it’s her last chapter in the book, I sure hope it’s not, but she’s covered a decent amount of ground and is about to begin a new part of her journey.  

So far she might be the most interesting part of this book, or maybe MAYBE Cersei, but only because she’s in the thick of things at King’s Landing and King’s Landing is always the most interesting.

LONG LIVE SYRIO FOREL.

Well that didn’t go as planned.  So much for Arys, who is now one head and a couple limbs lighter.

Like the Iron Islands chapters I find it kind of hard to get into these, since the characters here are a late addition I’m not invested in them, yet.  At least what’s happening in Dorne is interesting and might matter, the Iron Islands have so far proven pointless and should just sink into the sea.

Still, I find it hard to follow everything that’s happening here.  I get the basic story, but they talk about so much else, and so many characters that I’ve never heard of before, I just can’t keep straight who is where and what they’re doing.  I’m just going to power through and hope that it all makes sense in the end.

Arianne and Arys follow through on their plan from last chapter and get Myrcella out of Sunspear, intent on crowning her the rightful queen.  Myrcella is a bit surprised by all this, but just goes with it because she really doesn’t have any other choice.  Arys made up a story about her having chicken pox to keep people away, and put another man in his armor.  Should buy them a few days.  NOT THAT IT FUCKING MATTERS ANYWAY BECAUSE HIS HEAD COMES OFF.  That wasn’t anger, it was just excitement over decapitation, I can never get enough of it in these books.

They get to the boat and are greeted by Areo Hotah and about a dozen crossbows.  He wants Arianne and Myrcella, and will kill anyway who gets in his way.  Arys tests this and finds out that Hotah wasn’t joking.  Areo takes the girls and says that someone betrayed them, someone always talks.  But who?

“It’s me she come for. She dreams of me every night, when she sticks her fingers up her slit. She wants me, lads, the big horse missed her merry Shags! I’m going to fuck her up the arse and pump her full of motley seed, until she whelps a little me.” -Shagwell

“You need to use a different hole for that, Shags.” -Timeon

Poor Nimble Dick, it is sad to see you go.  But that’s what happens when you come up against Shagwell.  Well, unless you’re Brienne, who was once again awesomely badass in slaying three dudes.

That was really the important part of the chapter, after pages and pages of walky talky.  She’s still no closer to finding Sansa, and now have some intel that she was heading toward Riverrun.  Oh bother.

Ser Hyle, one of Randyll’s knights, has been following her for quite some time.  First Pod, now Hyle, who else is on her trail?

Oh look, more Iron Islands bullshit.  The kingsmoot happens and Euron wins.  There is mention of Dany’s dragons.  That’s all I’m going to do for this one.

As a reader, I do not give a shit about anything that happens on the Iron Islands.  I’ve been given no reason to think that they are in any way significant.  They rebelled once, Eddard put them down, and they’ve been quiet ever since.  And now every third chapter is devoted to some Iron Islands bullshit.  I’m sure that it will be very important later, but right now I just can’t wait to get through them and back to King’s Landing.

The Iron Captain = Victarion (just fucking call the chapter Victarion).  He is Balon’s older brother, “the king by rights” as Stannis would say.  At least in the Iron Islands.  And no one fucking care who sits the Seastone chair because it’s just a cluster of fuck all islands with no importance.

The kingsmoot (or queensmoot if you ask Asha) is getting started.  But it doesn’t yet, because that would be way too much happening in a single chapter, best to spread it out.  Asha tries to get her uncle to name her Hand, and he says he won’t.  Yawn

Qyburn presents Cersei with Gregor’s skull, which took quite a while to clean up due to its hugeness.  They’re sending it to Dorne.  Now why wouldn’t they just send Gregor’s head, dipped in tar or some such to preserve it?  Probably because it’s not his head, no other reason to do this.  Poor guy is likely still strapped to a table in the dungeon undergoing gods know what kind of magical medical experiments Qyburn has going on.

Then it’s time for our annual “now that the fight’s done this is who gets what” meeting.  We hear from the Vale, where some men are amassing at the base of the Eryie planning to oust Littlefinger.  Cersei says they shouldn’t harm Petyr, not to protect him, but because it doesn’t matter to them who rules in the Vale and they just do not want any unnecessary trouble.

There is talk of rebuilding their naval fleet, and cutting off debt payments to the Iron Bank of Braavos until things calm down.  I have a feeling that this will snowball into some serious shit.  They also talk about the fake Arya, so long as Ramsay marries her he can make a reasonable claim to Winterfell.  Also, Cersei dismisses the “rumors” of dragons across the sea.  I hope she remembers this moment as she’s being rendered extra crispy by Drogon and his bros.

There is a passing comment about Davos, it seems he has been captured and is in a cell somewhere :-(.  Then it’s time to talk Wall.  Cersei doesn’t like that Jon Snow is Lord Commander, so her and Qyburn put together a plot to kill him.  They will send 100 men to the Wall, including Osney Kettleback, who is tasked with doing the deed.  But first he’ll need to get caught bangin Margaery Tyrell, so as not to raise suspicions about him being sent north.  Cersei promises him some sexual healing upon his return.  But she’s pretty sure the Black Brothers will make sure he doesn’t make it back.  I wouldn’t be surprised if this plan succeeded, GRRM is all about killing major characters.

I almost forgot about the dead dwarf!  At the beginning of the chapter Cersei is present with the head of a dwarf.  Unfortunately he has a nose.  Guess not everyone knows what Tyrion looks like, bad time to be a dwarf in Westeros.  I’m thinking this is the same dwarf that Brienne ran into, because why else would we have been treated to a few pages of otherwise pointless blather in her chapter?  I mean, it’s still pretty pointless, but at least we know it won’t happen again.

250+ pages in and Tywin’s funeral is FINALLY over.  Jaime is seeing him out the God’s Gate, thinking that it really should be the Lion’s Gate (it should man, someone dropped the ball here).  Him and Cersei have a little fight over Cersei’s choices for council, and they adorably pretend that they will never fuck again.  Later that night Jaime has another looksie at the White Book, this time focusing on Criston Cole, the Kingmaker.