Game of Thrones/Ice and Fire Book Discussion - The Thread

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There has been a lot of discussion revolving around GoT/IaF in the TV show thread going on, and someone suggested a thread dedicated to only the books would be useful. So here it is. Everything to do with the books, down to the smallest details can be discussed here. You can talk about what you're looking forward to in Winds of Winter and present any theories you've heard or have come up with yourself.

Here are a few things I'm excited for off the top of my head:

• What's going to happen with the Daenerys, Tyrion, Jorah and Victarion situation? All the boys are looking for her.
• Davos' mission to find Rickon. Time to private eye stealth mission this bitch.
• How will Arya's newly honed faceless assassination skills cross paths with Westeros?
• I WANT TO SEE LOTS OF STUFF FROM THE PAST via Bran. Also wasn't it cool to know exactly who the three eyed crow was as soon as he was described, for those of you that read the Dunk and Egg novellas?
• How much more land are Jon and Aegon going to get their hands on? They seem pretty competent.
• What's next for Baelish and Varys? This whole series is just a fight between the two if you think about it ;)

A few theories worth discussing:

• Will Jon Snow be ressurected and become Azur Ahai? Is Azur Ahai the same person from "The prince that was promised" prophecy? The witch that Arya met with the Brotherhood was the one who said all of this to Aegon the Unlikely (Egg from Dunk & Egg). Who then married his grandson, Aerys the future Mad King, to his granddaughter, because supposedly this promised prince would come from their line. So, did Rhaegar rape Ned's sister? Did she have Rhaegar's child? Is Jon a Targ bastard and potentially the prince who was promised?
• Is Aegon the VI a real Targaryen? Is he Illyrio's son?

I just want to say that I LOVE Jorah. Everyone I ask says they hate him and that he's the worst guy but I see him as being so honorable and a man who is trying to right the wrongs he has committed. Love him.

I have a discussion topic to raise as well: Jon Snow's name. Was he named after Jon Connington? This is assuming Rhagar + Lyanna = Jon Snow:

Connington obviously was deeply in love with Rhaegar. However, it is unknown how Rhaegar felt towards Connington. All we know of Rhaegar is second hand accounts, and Connington doesn't explicitly say if they've ever actually been together. Perhaps, in some form (to whatever degree the reader wishes to believe) of love and respect that Rhaegar felt for Connington, he told Lyanna to name his heir Jon after Connington. He told her this before he left for the Trident, and this was what she whispered to Eddard while she died: to raise the baby as Jon and as his own son. This worked for Eddard because he could say that he named Jon Snow after Jon Arryn, a believeable excuse namesake which gives legitimacy in the eyes of others to Jon Snow being Eddard's son.

Aw shit, the second thread created that mentions me in the original post. Not that I'm counting or anything.

Regarding Time Lord Bran, I've never actually thought of that before. To be honest, I've always been a bit down on Bran's storyline across the books, mentioning how boring his shit is most of the time especially compared to his siblings (yes, even Sansa - who is basically a Disney princess in the realest of shit which oddly appeals to me), but the possibility to see into the past after eating, what some have theorized, "Jojen paste" is extremely exciting to think of happening.

Also, deep feels for Jorah. Tyrion just finding him at that whorehouse or whatever with a girl whose description nearly matches Daenerys' was both hilarious and tragic. If he looked like Iain Glen, he wouldn't have been friendzoned like that.

How about those last two books guys? I know a lot of people felt like they took a pretty big dip in quality, myself included, simply because of the lack of things going on. Not that I thought they were bad, they were certainly well written, but you can write really well about paint drying and it still won't make it more interesting. Do you think that George will be able to return to the same pace of the previous books for the Winds of Winter, or do you guys think that A Dance With Dragons and A Feast for Crows are just indicative of how fast he wants the story to move now? Towards the end of DwD I felt like there was a whole lot going on, but I'm still not convinced he's going to recapture the series in its prime.

@rjayb89:

The potential to see what happened in the past all over the Ice and Fire world is what excites me most about Bran's story, but what is this "Jojen paste" you speak of? Have I missed something huge? (Actually, I just read it. It's disturbing, but hopefully not true. I like Jojen.)

@xyzygy:

Oh, that's a good point you made about Jon's name. It's a bit of a stretch, but maybe a lot of the mysteries that lie in the past will be unveiled through Bran's new powers? Maybe he's the tool that will be used to connect all the dots?

@hunter5024 said:

I'm one of those dudes who doesn't agree at all with the "nothing happened" complaint, although I'd say the pacing was a bit slower than in SoS. I would think that as things are ramping up, stuff will be happening at a much quicker pace. The excerpts that have been released, particularly Victarion's chapter, left me pretty confident that Winds of Winter will be great.

Ned Stark is still totally alive. It's an absurd theory I am clinging on to.

@aegon: I don't know how I came across the theory, and it could be just that until Winds of Winter comes out but it was this thread that introduced me to the idea:

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/56772-jojen-reeds-fate-adwd-spoilers/

Just a ton of conjecture to make a point. Looking up "jojen paste" on Google point to more non-believers than otherwise, but it's something that definitely left an impression on me while I was hunting theories after I finished reading the fifth book.

I've actually heard this theory before. And I actually kind of half believe it. Varys visited him many times while he was being incarcerated, and the viewpoints of the main characters who saw him were not reliable (Arya was far-ish away in the crowd, Sansa was behind him) and varys has a knack for saving people long thought to be dead or lost in order to use for the good of the realm (Jon Connington, Aegon VI, Barristan Selmy, etc)

I really, really fucking want this theory to be true. He was an excellent character and did not deserve what that little fuck Joffrey did to him. I can't see why Varys would just let him die like that, but then, Joffrey did surprise everyone with his decision to kill him. But maybe Varys saw through that as well. He is Varys, after all.

Oh my god this is disgusting and awesome. Wow. Just wow.

@hunter5024: That's actually my position as well. While I found A Dance With Dragons adequate, inasmuch as it has the characters people actually like (Tyrion and Dany) I think A Feast For Crows is the weakest book in the series by far. Brienne and Sam are by far the least interesting POV characters, and while it's fun to see Cersei immediately start squandering away everything that the Lannisters had gained over the last 3 books that's only one character.

So what has actually been straight up confirmed for Winds of Winter? If I recall correctly, the two biggest cliffhangers at the end of ADwD are Dany being found and Jon being backstabbed after trying to get the Crows to go after Ramsey Bolton. I'm sure there have been chapter excerpts or whatever that have been released.

If this actually happened, I'd find it both hilarious and utterly horrifying. The whole point of Ned Stark's character is that he was too straightforward and moral in a world run on plotting and deceit and that's why he died (and it also established that anyone could die in these books). Bringing him back would almost be a jump-the-shark moment. But at this point, with Aegon and Jon Connington coming out of nowhere and Catelyn Stark being a crazy zombie lady, I will accept anything that these books throw at me with a straight face.

My favourite 'mystery' is whether or not tyrion's father is the mad king aerys. That would be cool!

Oh damn! I forgot to add that to the theory list. I was totally going to do that. But yeah, to expand, there are hints that Aerys was into Tywin's wife and that he might have raped her, so Tyrion could indeed be someone else's son like he claims.

@aegon: there's the mis-matched eyes that are frequently mentioned, the relationship between tywin, his wife and the king, his dwarfism could be due to targaryen inbreeding, he apparently has resistance to disease if you think about all the whoring and his encounter with the stone people. I like the theory anyway.

I originally would tell that to my friends who haven't read the books as a fake spoiler, but as I thought about it there are little nods to him possibly living. I believe it was in Clash of Kings when Catelyn receives his bones and mentions that they seemed too small to be Ned's. That was probably just some metaphor for him being a great man reduced to nothing more than a pile of bones, but I'll cling onto that as support for my theory. And like you said, once I read Dance with Dragons it seems anything can happen now. It's gotten so outlandish with the amount of characters have come back from either being dead, or being assumed dead.