N.B.: My copy of A Dance with Dragons is due back at 8 p.m. tonight, and so tomorrow's entry will be based on the same book. Infinite Jest will return, though. And a new book will find its way into the line up as well.
The Wildling town Hardhome is surprisingly like the early American colony of Roanoke. Not in that the Wildlings were there to settle a brand new land, or sent by any queen to do so, but in that it disappeared under quite mysterious circumstances. Hardhome's vanishing was a great deal more destructive, but both stand as settlements that for some strange twist in fate floundered and failed.
The other thing to grab my attention is Martin's restoration of Theon. It happens, of course, through the actual meat of each of his chapters, but more so through his shifting chapter headings. It's nothing major to change these headings, but that they do change is novel. Up to this point, the chapter headings have seemed to be hard and fast. Also, coupled with the increase in the glimpses we get into characters' heads, these different headings don't just signal change of role and social place, but they also shift the story a bit more into the internal.
More than ever, snippets of past conversations and remembered questions are being repeated to great effect - from Tywin's "Where do whores go?" to Reek's various rhymes with his name. They're not ground breaking literary devices, but their presence adds greater depth to Martin's story. The only danger is that through repetitive use his characters become flat.
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