This post contains spoilers for the already-published ASOIAF books
The fifth book in George R.R. Martin’s epic A Song of Ice and Fire series hits shelves next week. A Dance With Dragons has a lot to live up to considering its predecessor was published in fall 2005 to lukewarm response, following a dense Book 3 that had more major plot developments than the other books combined. So Book 4 was a bit of a disappointment, truly, considering it didn’t address essentially the three storylines that fans love most and introduced a bunch of new characters who, while seemingly integral and somewhat awesome in their own right, were not Tyrion, Dany, or Jon Fucking Snow. Imagine if Alf had a full season with no Alf. And you don’t even know where Alf went. He’s just not around. Oh, they mention him. So we know he’s still part of the story. We just don’t get to see him or what he’s doing. Imagine that, you guys.
So, will Book 5 do the fans right? A good start will be if ADwD does not contain any of these things:
Catelyn failing to take out that bitch Cersei, despite being undead
Rickon calling his own banners, and it’s really cute
A tearful goodbye when Dany sends her dragons off to college
Jaime spending all his time inventing the hand transplant
Bran using his wolf dreams to look up Meera’s skirt
Arya deciding that being a proper princess in a castle is actually ideal
The Mereenese knot is literally a knot in Samwell’s breeches lacings
An appendix that’s just a graphic drawing of a direwolf mating with a dragon
Ned’s ghost shows up and he still doesn’t regret how it all went down
Jon, fucking snow
