Yeah, I also felt that the cast had reached its optimal size in the second book. By then, all the characters except Daenerys and Jon Snow were tied together by a common plot line, and it wasn’t too hard to see how those two could eventually be folded back into the main strand. Then came the proliferation of one-off viewpoint characters, existing characters were scattered, new ones introduced and supposedly dead ones resurrected until just about every part of Westeros had some piece of the action. The narrative’s cohesion has been stretched to the brink, some plot lines only come up every dozen chapters or so, and I wouldn’t have been able to remember what was going on without resorting to our faithful online chroniclers.
With only two books remaining, some of these plot lines will just have to be aborted as the action is refocused on a few central elements for the grand finale. For all the talk about Martin’s supposed delight in offing his characters, I’ve found him curiously reluctant to put a definitive end to some of the less consequential strands and their protagonists. I’m not going to give examples as most of them would still be spoilers at this point, but unless there’s first-hand confirmation of someone being killed, the corpse being incinerated and the ashes scattered all over the Narrow Sea, you can never be sure they won’t make another appearance.
1 Like
