Quote:
Originally Posted by Hawk
Dany gets a little bit of an unfair rap IMO. Her story in book 2 is a very small part only covering 5 out of 70+ chapters. The House of the Undying chapter is excellent and full of interesting visions and prophecies, the rest are fine, but perhaps not thrilling. Still, we are only talking about 4 chapters.
In book 3, I thought Dany's story was excellent and a lot of fun to read. So I can't see how she had three consecutive bad books. Plus she is not even in book 4 at all, so she's not boring in book 3 or 4. I also liked her story in book 1 a lot. So really it is book 5 that is the biggest issue with Dany.
Her chapters in Book 5 did have some tedious parts, and she certainly makes some mistakes. But she is a young girl trying to be a queen, and GRRM will try to make his characters' behavior realistic under their circumstances, even if it makes them less fun to read about (he does this with all three of Dany, Tyrion and Jon in book 5, especially the first 2/3 of the book).
So my Dany summary would be:
Book 1: Dany's story is good and interesting
Book 2: Dany's story is only a small part but finishes strong with House of Undying
Book 3: Dany kicks butt and takes names, I enjoyed her a lot in Book 3
Book 4: Dany's not in book 4
Book 5: Dany's story drags in this book until she finally flies away on Drogon near the end
To me, Book 5 is her only real weak spot.
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See, I think her story is tedious in book 3. I guess the idea is that she's growing into her power and maturity, and I suppose I'm supposed to give her the benefit of immaturity when I'm getting tired of watching her say "I'm the mother of dragons, you'll do what I want" over and over and over again, but it just seems like a meandering shitshow of a story. It's just her trying to prove what a badass she is, but fairly often failing miserably. The only parts of her story that I actually like are Mormont and Ser Barristan's roles in them.
Book 2 is interesting for her until she gets to Qarth for me. I'm not even all that amazed by the House of the Undying chapter. Maybe I need to read it again, but it just seemed too frenetic and disorganized. I just wanted to be done with it.
She went from an extremely promising character in book 1 to just another demanding but ultimately over-matched 'King' by the end of book 5. Look at it this way - has she been any more successful or less entitled than Joffrey as a ruler? The only distinction is that she !@#$ed her way to the top of a Khalasar before relying on a shaky birthright. And while her motives are determined to be more 'pure', she's still all about killing folks to take over a country because she feels its hers by birth.