Book Review: A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin

I waited six years for this book to come out. That’s right, six years.

The reviews were just glowing prior to its release and after having read this book, they make me wonder if any of those reviewers have actually read A Game of Thrones, which is far and away a better novel than A Dance with Dragons can ever hope to be. Still, there is hope. I will not blow smoke up someone’s behind over this novel. If you are a fan of the series, you should read it. This is a climactic piece. There are so many storytelling elements that get put into play here that you will find yourself slogging through chapters that you would normally skip, simply because you know there are pieces to the puzzle inside. Overall, this is a good entry into the series, but I am not going to sit here and tell you that it was the best book I’ve ever read, because simply put, it wasn’t. It also wasn’t the worst. The problem with it isn’t that it’s not a good book.  The problem is that A Dance With Dragons suffers from pacing issues and it fails to recapture the sort of storytelling that had fans clamoring for Martin to finish this book for six years.

I have felt a little sad since A Feast for Crows was released. The book was bland and dull, it had none of the characters I was interested in reading about in it. It ended on a good cliffhanger though and I love to hate a good cliffhanger, but that’s about all it had going for it. I have wondered, since then, if Martin has lost some of his earlier panache. I know that the fans have worn him down terribly because it has taken him so long to produce this promised book that was originally going to end the series, but I don’t think it’s an excuse for a substandard product. It took him six years to write this book, it should be elegant! It should be engaging from page one, and unfortunately, it’s not.

For those of you who do not wish to read spoilers, please skip to the end.

The prologue and early couple of chapters are decent. I loved that the book opened with a frightening scene that introduced us to the cruelty of the Others and I also loved that we were able to catch up with Tyrion, Daenerys and Bran right away, but after that is where the story sort of flops around for a while.  It was hard not to skip ahead. These early chapters are also very slow. I feel that several of the early Jon chapters could have been condensed into one. It would have increased the pacing and made it easier for me to get through the chapters in between. It wasn’t until almost half way through the book that I stopped dreading the chapters from Jon Snow’s point of view. Jon Snow has been a character that has intrigued me from his introduction in A Game of Thrones. His story has been a very sad and poignant one to follow and I have to say that I was more than a little outraged that I slogged my way through all of that political mudslinging to do with Jon and the Wall and the cast of cut throats that he was trying to keep in line only for Martin to kill Jon off at the end of the book. I felt like those chapters were a complete waste of my time. His death was so poorly treated that I wouldn’t have made note of it if I hadn’t been waiting for Jon to get uppity and come down off the wall to save someone. Martin had plenty of time to make Jon’s death a tear jerker or at least create some kind of emotional connection to it with the reader. Instead, I was left thinking, “Oh. Crap. There goes another Stark.” And then I moved on. The chapters with Tyrion are slow to read too, but for Tyrion, that’s actually a good thing. That character plays the long game so you know that while he may be getting taken along for a ride, he is happy to collect whatever crumbs he can along the way and those crumbs will matter later.

Where this book really shines is with the chapters on Daenerys. Her story has always been one with the potential to explode like a powder keg and for those of you that haven’t read it yet, I cannot bring myself to spoil her pages for you. These were written the way I wanted Martin to write and this part of the story gave me that emotional attachment that got me through the boring parts of this book, because Daenerys and her dragons start making a complete spectacle of themselves, just as we had hoped they would do from the day the eggs were gifted to her. I cried and at one point, I got up from the table where I was reading and shouted, “YES!” to no one in particular. If every chapter in this book had been written with this level of care for storytelling, I could give you a glowing review of this novel too.

Sadly, I can’t give you that glowing review. I actually had friends mention to me that they felt that Martin must have hired a ghost writer for the first three books because the quality of the writing went so far down hill for the last two that Martin must have been forced to write them himself, which was why it was taking so long for them to get done. It’s clear to me why those thoughts cross people’s minds. Martin’s writing is definitely not what it was. I hope that it will improve with The Winds of Winter and that maybe this was just a place where Martin was telling the pieces of the story that he had to tell and perhaps not the ones that he wanted to tell. Writing climaxes and combats and of maidens and magic is so much more intriguing to a writer than laying out some boring setting and putting down bread crumbs. Much like you, writers also want to know how it ends. I have been there so many times with my own writing that I find it hard to blame Martin for having a book that was just okay. He’s already given me three amazing works to enjoy, somewhere along the line, some of the works in this series had to be not quite as good as the others. I definitely think we’re in that place.

Music Review: Evanescence

I don’t normally do music reviews, but I love Evanescence and I’ve been waiting for their new album for months, ever since I heard “What You Want” a few months back. I really, really loved 2003’s “Fallen” but I was so unimpressed with “The Open Door” that I didn’t even bother to buy it. I really felt like “The Open Door” relied too much on the success of “Bring Me to Life” and didn’t bring enough originality to the party. Even if this album was a flop for me, there is one thing about Evanescence that cannot be denied. Amy Lee has an incredible vocal talent. I don’t care who you are, if you disagree with me on that, go get your head examined. Her vocal talent should always be the showcase of an Evanescence album, that and it should always have a drummer that really enjoys his job and that powerful, throbbing bass or a piano thrown in there for some additional auditory interest. On this issue, the album does not disappoint.

I am not going to do a track by track run down here, what I will tell you is that there is more good here than bad, and there is some good to be had in every track on this album. This album is track for track better than “The Open Door.” The stand out tracks here are “My Heart is Broken”, “Lost in Paradise”, “The Other Side”, “End of the Dream”, “Oceans” and “Never Go Back” and the hauntingly beautiful “Swimming Home”. I love “What You Want”, but it’s pretty typical fare for Evanescence. Even so, this will be the song I am blaring when I’m blowing down the back roads at potentially illegal speeds in the middle of the night. This many winners on an album beats my usual requirements for purchasing an album in its entirety. It has to have more than four tracks that I will listen to all the time in order for me to spend 10$ on it.

If you go buy the Deluxe Version of the album from iTunes, it comes with four extra tracks, which, IMO are well worth the 3$ premium you pay to buy this edition of the album. “New Way to Bleed” by itself is worth the three bucks. “Say You Will” is a higher energy entry into the album than I expected. It’s much more upbeat and has a majestic, classic rock sort of feel to it. “Disappear” is not my favorite, but it’s still good stuff. My favorite of the four bonus tracks is “Secret Door”, but I’m a sucker for strings. Here, you can find some painfully beautiful harp, cello, piano and violin paired with Amy Lee’s vocals. It’s truly a beautiful piece and worthy of your time.

To make a long story short, I don’t feel like my thirteen dollars were wasted. I have purchased more than one album in my life that I listened to and felt like I’d just wasted an hour of my life. I’ve spent the last two hours listening and re-listening to the tracks on this one and I feel as though it was time well spent.

My recommendation?

Click on the album cover below and buy it.

…And Jazz Makes Three.

He had to give up his 11 year old dog.

I could tell this wasn’t a choice, there were tears in his eyes that he was fighting desperately to hold back the entire time we talked. No, this wasn’t a whim of a decision this guy was making because he was uncaring, uneducated or even just stupid. This was a guy that truly loved his dog, worked hard to do right by her and then something happened and his life changed, and this meant her life was changed forever too. Can you imagine parting with your dog after raising her and loving her for 11 years? She is loved by your children, by you. Of course you want to be there when her time comes, but your life falls apart for whatever reason, and suddenly, you have a choice to make and it’s the worst decision you’ve ever had to make.

You can put her down, when she’s still running around, chasing squirrels and being very happy, or you can re-home her.

What the hell kind of a decision is that?

Sadly, there are no resources for pet owners who are in these circumstances that allow them to keep their dogs.

So, he chose to re-home his girl and posted her on Craigslist.

I get told frequently that I am a glutton for punishment because I look at PetFinder fairly often. Mostly I check to see if there’s a dog that truly tugs at my heart strings, because I want to have three Labs.

Why?

I have no clue. There’s no good reason for wanting three. I’m very happy with two, but my heart just seems to be drawn toward the number three, so I look. For almost two years, I haven’t found anything worth writing home about. There was Snow, whom I loved, but it was not meant to be with her. I accept that sometimes, life throws us twists and turns and that at the end of the day, things work out precisely as they are intended to do and often times, it is absolutely for the better for us all.

Recently, I chose to stop looking for that third dog on Craigslist, because I decided I was content with my two and reading the stories of this person or that person dumping their dog for this stupid reason or that stupid reason really, really wore me down. This included one instance where I saw someone actually post that they were getting rid of the dog because she did not match their new furniture. I’d heard the story from shelter workers before, but to see it in black and white on Craigslist, that people actually do this thing was something else.

Really?

I mean… really?

I think you can understand why I stopped looking.

This is where my best friend enters the picture.

Jen looks at Craigslist when she’s got spare time. She looks for jobs for my teenage son who is having a really hard time finding a job in this economy. She’s really incredible actually, because she’s a busy full time mom of two girls. She’s home schooling and still, she finds time to check Craigslist for jobs for MY kid.

What a gal, right?

Sometimes though, when a dog tugs at her heart strings, she sends me the link to see if there’s anything I can do. I’m NOT some kind of animal rescue maven, but I have a couple of friends here who know a lot of dog lovers. I know which shelters you take your dogs to and which ones you avoid and I know how to put people in touch with the few dog rescues that there are on our side of the state. Jen’s only ever forwarded me links for two dogs anyway, so it’s not like this is a frequent occurrence. The first link got pulled from Craigslist before I could contact the owner, and this other link was forwarded to me just a few weeks ago.

It was for an 11 year old pure bred black lab who was in need of a home. They were looking at either rehoming her or praying that someone could give them another option besides having to put her to sleep. Jen thought I could help. I joked about it with her later and asked her if she thought I had some kind of magical dog rescue button and she said, “Well, actually, yes!”

We had a good laugh over that.

Really, Jen knows that I have a soft spot for seniors and in ultimate truth, the truth she does not share frequently with others, so does she.

This guy sounded desperate in his post. She could sense it. When I read his post, I sensed it too.

So, I talked to my husband, who talked to Miss Lucy and then I sat down and talked to Mugen. They seemed pretty okay with the idea. Lucy even gave us kisses when we asked for her blessing, so we took that as an omen and made a choice. We decided that if the dogs got along, we would adopt her.

As a general rule, I have very cruel words to say towards the people who dump seniors, but this situation is different. I’m not going to talk about Jazzmin’s previous owners after this. Please know that they are GOOD people. They got into a very crappy situation and they made the choice they could live with when it came to their dog. They chose to re-home her, rather than put her to sleep. It was a crappy choice to have to make, but I believe that these folks chose this, because they wanted what was best for her. I am sure that they will always wish that things could have been any other way. This is all I have to say about them and the situation that led Jazzmin to my door other than this: Jazzmin has been loved. She has not been abused, she is a confident and happy girl who loves to be around people. She is well trained. To be brutally honest, I got a hell of a deal on this dog. She may be old, but she minds better than Mugen. I’ve been working on the stinkerbutt for two years now and he *still* doesn’t have his CGC.

Lady Jazz could probably walk out with one in twenty minutes flat.

I know that it may seem silly, me adopting another old dog, because I have spent a lot of time on an emotional roller coaster ride with Lucy and I have posted about her and her problems a lot. I have struggled to make sense of my feelings regarding that, and I shared them with everyone I could and perhaps I did so a bit too loudly. I am scared that I will lose her soon, scared enough that I sit next to her and hold her and cry sometimes, but really that has not stopped me from enjoying every single moment of the time we have shared. Lucy has brought so much laughter and love into this house and into my life, that I do not regret adopting her, even after the roller coaster ride and the cancer treatment. No one in this family thinks we made a bad decision when we adopted Lucy. We’re all positively in love with her. She is a gift.

So, when I think back on the time that my husband and I made the decision to adopt Lucy, I think of all the things that I would have missed out on if things had gone any differently. No matter how hard it has been, I would never change a single thing. There has been so much more good than bad and when the time comes to speak of her in the past tense, I won’t remember anything bad about my sweet yellow girl.

That’s what led us to the decision to meet with her previous owner and pick her up on Sunday. I freely admit, this may not be the smartest move I’ve ever made, because we’ve committed to repeating a process that has brought me a lot of pain and a lot of sadness, but we’re doing it because I asked myself the question, “If I don’t, what am I missing out on?”

Missing out on Lucy being a silly silly belly belly girl is just about the worst thing I can imagine. There is no doubt in my mind or in my heart that my life would be worse without her in it.

After getting to know Jazzmin, I can’t imagine her doing anything except adding to the joy in our lives.

Go ahead. Call me a glutton for punishment.

So what?

I wear the label with pride.

At the Phone Store Last Night…

We were shown an Android phone. My husband considered it briefly for our teenage son and I took one look at him and shook my head and said “No. I don’t want to have to deal with you getting frustrated over supporting the thing.” The salesman stood behind my husband and caught my eye and gave me a knowing smile.

That really said it all for me. I am told that a certain carrier’s Android phones suck, but to be honest, I have said similar things when looking at Blackberries or WebOS devices at other carrier’s stores and gotten a similar reaction. To me, that says that Android isn’t “better” than iOS.

Heck. It’s not even cheaper, most devices we saw were priced well above the 199$ it will cost you to get an iPhone.

I probably won’t understand the appeal of Android, ever. I suspect I will be using an iPhone until someone comes out with these cool wafer thin touch screen phones that fit in your wallet right next to the one dollar bills in the bill slot. It would be the phone that you almost throw out with your old receipts.

Cool, right?

My First Weekend With iPad 2

The Apple Store employee had seemed a little disappointed, my husband said, that he did not need to activate the device for me, but Apple’s process for activating devices is so easy, and always has been. You plug it in, you open iTunes. You register and you name your device. Then you do your first sync, which can take a while, especially in my case. I have the white, 64GB wifi only iPad 2. And I loaded it with 33GB of data on the first sync, mostly TV shows that I am actively watching, but also all of the universal apps that carried over from my iPhone app library, which is quite extensive. So, my first experiences with the iPad 2 are much like my first experiences with any iOS device, and this is a good thing. I knew exactly how to get it going, I knew how to activate it myself. I did not need to read the user’s manual (though I encourage newcomers to iOS devices to do this).

Once I got it loaded up with all of my stuff, I spent some time just holding it. One of the things that I disliked about iPad when it came out were the hard edges on the device. My husband keeps his in a rather large case that’s suede lined on the inside and has a hand strap on the back that you can hold the iPad with, and the Apple case that came with iPad upon release was just a piece of garbage. The corners on it were sharper than the ones on the iPad itself. It was like using your iPad through some sort of sick torture device.

The iPad 2 is a totally different animal. It feels like it belongs in your hands. It’s as though they designed it for you to actually hang on to it, which is a big step up from the first gen unit. The smart cover is just flat out superior to the Apple case for the first gen iPad. It’s actually useful and is stable. I have no problems folding it up and balancing the iPad in one position or another and the first gen Apple case was anything but stable. In fact, I’m considering just buying the back half of the invisible shield for iPad 2 when it’s released, because I don’t think I will need or want another cover, that’s how impressed I am with the smart cover.

I loaded on a few of the apps I’ve heard so much about. Friendly for Facebook and Twitter app for iPad were the first two iPad specific apps I put on and then I downloaded Flipboard, which has just completely changed how I get my news and information. All you other news apps can just eat your heart out, Flipboard blows the doors off of any news aggregator app I have played with to date and my God this thing is quick. The load times for apps is just staggeringly short compared to the first gen iPad. My husband watched as I flipped open apps and closed them and navigated my way through things and was just impressed by the speed increase. To me, the motion felt very natural, but I have to admit that I am a long time iOS user. It behaves precisely as I expect it to based on prior experience with iOS devices. We even ran speed tests on the two devices and the speed tests showed my iPad 2 doing things in half the time that it took the iPad to do them. That’s a really nice improvement on the previous gen device.

When I finished playing around with all of that stuff and got the iPad set up the way I wanted it, I called up my daughter on her iPod Touch using FaceTime. We do this from time to time across the house, just to play around with FaceTime and it’s a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the cameras on the iPad 2 are not all that awesome. I love that I have the camera at all though, especially since my husband has taken to calling me on FaceTime over his lunch break and I am lacking in some sort of cool stand for my iPhone 4 so that I can talk to him and bustle around the house at the same time.

Maybe a better camera is something that will come along with future iPads, like the retina display, which is already being rumored for iPad 3, but for right now, it’s not here. So for picture taking. I’ll stick with my iPhone 4 and Camera+.

I was a bit worried that the white border around the screen would distract me from watching video on my iPad, but it really doesn’t do that at all and the new speaker sounds good enough that I did not feel it necessary to get my headphones out of my bag so I could watch a show while I was alone in the room.

Everything else is the same as it was with the first gen iPad and while that may seem a bit lackluster for some, the first gen iPad remains exactly as Steve Jobs described it 11 months ago, magical. IPad is singlehandedly responsible for taking the floundering tablet market and turning its frown upside down. That sort of feat truly is nothing less than “magical”, especially in the midst of an economic downturn.

If you’re looking for a tablet in today’s market, there is nothing that compares with the iPad 2 in terms of capability, usability and price. Maybe something will come along later, RIM’s PlayBook looks very promising, but until they actually release the device to market, iPad really has no competitors to speak of and everything else is too expensive, encumbered by requiring you to sign up for a two year contract with a cellular service, just to get the device in the first place or it’s just a knock off of the iPad that will set you back significantly more than an iPad will.

Oh, and did I mention that I haven’t put it down yet?

To the Apple Store at Riverpark Square in Spokane, Washington: You were incredible. You did a great job at managing the line. You kept the sidewalk clear for passersby and you provided cold people with hot chocolate and bottled water to keep them going as they waited for you to prepare the store for their entrance. I never saw a single Apple Store employee treat anyone in the line with anything less than respect. Spokane’s local news media completely ignored the launch of iPad 2, but your excellent work did not go unnoticed by those of us that watched the line from the skywalk above the Apple Store, or by the people that actually stood in that line.

Chillin’ in the Dining Room with a Straight Up G

The furniture guys were here.

They were moving the new sofa into my family room. We had the carpet guy in on Monday. Lucy was in surgery while he was here and I was sort of grateful that DH and I had finally decided to get around to doing the carpet and replacing living room furniture, because I had something to distract me from sitting here worrying myself into an ulcer while waiting for the vet to call. It ended up being a very pleasant experience with the carpet installer. We chatted the entire time he worked on the carpet. He turned out to be a dog person too, his breed of choice is English Bulldogs and he drove about as far as I drove to get Mugen, to get his puppy. So we had a lot in common. Talked about all sorts of interesting things and I got some great dog friendly vacation ideas for this summer, which I am really thrilled about.

Today, it was the furniture guys and this is the last step in the family room re-do until next pay day. We had planned to spend money on wall art and all this other… froo froo stuff, but Lucy’s need for surgery came up out of nowhere, so.. we have our priorities. Surgery first.
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Not in the Cards

Some things… just cannot become part of the plan, no matter how much you might want them to.

It’s become to clear to me that fostering Snow is one of those things. I am going to continue to visit her as I am able and work on socializing her with friends and family that are able to come with me when I have time to visit her at the shelter, but I can’t bring another dog into my home right now. There is a very narrow window of opportunity for such things when you have a dog in your home with cancer.

I visited Snow for a week, about the time she was ready to do a trial run in my home for the weekend, Mugen picked up kennel cough. I contacted the shelter, let them know I was still interested but could not stress his system or risk Snow getting sick by bringing her into my home when Mugen had KC. They agreed. I am now Snow’s placement partner. Her adoption fee at the shelter is paid in full. I told them I would come back when Mugen is well, but that until then, if they found alternative placement for her, to pursue it. I did intend to go back if she was still available, but as of this moment, he still coughs a couple of times a day and hasn’t finished his run of meds. So it was going to be probably one more week of not being able to visit her. Mugen is recovering very well, and after discussing it with my vet, more than likely picked up KC from a neighbor’s dog, that’s our suspicion. Moral of that story? If your dog is coughing, don’t walk them!

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Doggie Rehab: Part 2 of 2.

It is unfortunate… but my adopting Snow or fostering her does not seem to have been meant to be.

Somehow, after several people expressed unwarranted concern for Lucy’s well-being that her vet and her oncologist did not share (perhaps because they have actually met me and my dog.. just a thought to consider) over me intending to do all I could to help Snow… Mugen is the one that got sick.

Mugen picked up kennel cough. Likely from me bringing it home to him from the shelter and in spite of the fact that I did everything I could to keep disease out of my home. I suspect that Snow picked it up somehow and hadn’t presented with symptoms just yet and then someone in my family (which could include me) passed it to Mugen through contact with her but I haven’t received a return phone call from the shelter to confirm my thoughts… and to be honest, I don’t blame them for not calling me back. IF Snow does have KC, they have a potential outbreak on their hands and are dealing with that and should be.
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Doggie Rehab: Part 1 of ?

So… Snow and I have been chillin’ at the shelter.

Her name’s totally getting changed btw… it’s happening. Period.

Every day that I have seen her since I started visiting her has seen drastic improvement. The shelter staff have worked with her, I have worked with her. She is starting to get to the place where she wags when she sees me. This is all intensely awesome and amazing progress. Snow is making progress a lot faster than I expected she would. I really thought it was going to be a couple more weeks before she was ready for us to foster her.
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Introducing Snow.

An anonymous person dropped off a very scared Lab mix of some kind at the animal shelter on Saturday.

Lab mixes get dropped off at the shelter all the time, but I witnessed this dog getting dumped. I knew of the owner. I live near the shelter. I had watched this puppy grow up through pictures and worst of all, I know what happens to my chosen breed when they hit about 7 to 10 months of age, particularly if they are a black mixed breed variety of Lab, and therefore, no longer cute.

Black Labs at around this age get dumped.

Labs have this excellent reputation for being the perfect family dog. No one tells people that as puppies, these guys are holy terrors. Some common nicknames I have heard for Lab puppies include, “Spawn of Satan”, “Demon” and my personal name of choice, “Shark”. One of the most common phrases I have heard used to describe what a grown Lab was like as a puppy is, “I thought there was something wrong with my dog.”

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