Describing Dorne

Arianne's latest chapter in A Feast for Crows was typical of the chapters in Dorne. There's a kind of thin quality to them, the same sort of quality that a painting of a desert landscape has. There are some settlements here and there and some vegetation here and there, but the whole comes together to represent sparsity.

Yet, Martin uses this sparsity to get across the atmosphere of secrets under which Arianne lives, especially during her time in the tower after she and her band were found out while playing out their plot with Myrcella.

Of course, it's also crazy that Viserys was promised to Arianne, and that would have driven the last of the Targaryeans back into Westeros. But even Viserys didn't know about the match, apparently - which suggests to me that Martin might have been discovery writing earlier books. Hell, maybe he still is discovery writing the series, using what's come before as a sort of scaffolding for what comes next. 

Whatever the case with Martin's writing process, the outcome is definitely something to observe. Plus, it's refreshing to go through a chapter in which there aren't too many "handsome women" - every author has a phrase or two that they overuse, and this seems to be Martin's. At least, in Jaime's chapters. Though that phrase's overuse could also just be a matter of Jaime's disposition at this point in the series.

At any rate, the atmosphere of secrets with which Martin covers Dorne in this book is perfect. It makes it clear that there are things, important things, happening there, and it really does a lot to bring out a sense of the truth of these secrets.

Plus, this atmosphere makes the reveal at the end of the chapter really effective.