NB: This post is intended for readers who have not read FeastΒ or DanceΒ yet. If youβve read the entire series already, click here for the SPOILER-FILLED veteransβ version of this reading order, which also includes a very thorough explanation of how I came up with it, plus an ongoing list of updates and tweaks made to the order.
Are you reading A Song of Ice and Fire for the first time? Have you heard that volumes four and five, A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, cover the same time period but split up the characters, so that most of the people who appear in Feast donβt show up in Dance and vice versa? Do you think youβll be one of the people that finds this really frustrating? (Iβm not, I was perfectly happy with the books as-is and recommend them as such, but I know y'all are out there.) Are you interested in recombining the two halves of the story in hopes that itβll make for a more satisfying reading experience? Hereβs how you do it!
To combine A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons into one giant megabook, keeping almost everything in order both within the timeline of the story and in the chapter order that author George R.R. Martin intended, use the chapter list below.
NOTE: Though youβll be switching back and forth from book to book at strategic points, youβll almost always be reading the chaptersΒ withinΒ each individual book in the order they appear. The only exceptions, which you have to rearrange in order to avoid having one storyline spoiled by the other, are ADWD Chapter 7: The Merchantβs Man, which youβll be saving for much later in the story, and AFFC Chapter 41: The Princess in the Tower, which youβll skip ahead to much earlier before skipping right back. Iβve placed instructions regarding these chapters in bold below.
The explanation: When I first created the original version of this reading order, I was in the middle of a re-read of the series and had just finishedΒ A Storm of Swords.Β At a certain point along the way I got to thinking about how to approachΒ A Feast for CrowsΒ andΒ A Dance with Dragons. Now that both books have been published, there are options available to us that never were before. George R.R. Martin famously took years to finishΒ FeastΒ afterΒ Storm came out, and infamously took even more years to finishΒ DanceΒ afterΒ FeastΒ came out. As we know, this came down to several problems. First, heβd intended to have a five-year jump in the narrative following the conclusion ofΒ Storm, but after about a year of writing he realized it wasnβt working and had to start over. Then, once heβd started over, he discovered that while the five-year jump didnβt work for most of the storylines, it worked really well for a few, and it was hard to get them right without it.
ThenΒ he realized that he had way too many characters and way too much story to fit in one volume as planned, and he needed to decide how to split one volume into two β should he tell half the story for all the characters, or (nearly) all the story for half the characters? (He chose the latter solution.) Finally, he struggled with something called βThe Meereenese Knot.β To discuss this Iβd have to get a little bit spoilery, but it boiled down to how to get a whole bunch of characters to the place where a certain other character was, and in what order, and whether to have all of them get there by the end of Dance, and what to do with the character toward whom theyβre traveling while theyβre on their way.
As youβd quickly discover were you to read FeastΒ as written, fans who readΒ StormΒ when it came out had to wait a decade to find out how the stories of many of their favorite characters continued, since Martin decided to save those charactersβ storylines for Dance β despite the fact that in story time, many of those storylines pick up almost immediately after we left them. Even someone like me, who was late to the party and first read the series about a year, year and a half beforeΒ DanceΒ ended up coming out, had a delay. In my case it was a delay long enough to read the entire series, then read it over again, then have a month or two to wait beforeΒ DanceΒ came out.Β Between the real-world delay and the weird sensation of following half the charactersβ stories for a while in Feast before looping back in time to catch up with the other characters inΒ Dance,Β reading that latter book can feel a little wonky for some readers.
Hereβs where it changes.
Right now, for the first time, the only real-world delay necessary to endure between reading, say, Jonβs last chapter inΒ StormΒ and his first inΒ DanceΒ is the amount of time it takes you to read the entirety ofΒ FeastΒ and get to the beginning ofΒ DanceΒ after youβve finishedΒ Storm,Β since Martin split the characters up between the two books. But since we now have access to both books at once, whatβs to stop us from folding the stories back together, re-readingΒ FeastΒ andΒ DanceΒ simultaneously? They cover the same timespan βΒ FeastΒ starts a little earlier with some of the material centered on the Ironborn, andΒ DanceΒ goes a little later with everything in the final third or so of the book, but they mostly overlap. Moreover,Β as my colleague Stefan Sasse has persuasively argued, the two books areΒ thematicallyΒ as well asΒ temporallyΒ congruent. Several groups of characters split between them have storylines that parallel, echo, or comment on one another in revealing ways.Β In other words itβs quite possible, and profitable, to consider them as one giant book. Why not make it so? Figuring that ASoIaF fandom has covered every possible base β not just first, second, third, and home, but bases I donβt even know exist, like fifth, nineteenth, and quarmty-secondth β I asked around and discovered that several proposedΒ A Feast for Crows/A Dance with DragonsΒ merged reading orders are out there.Β In trying to pick one over the others, I had a few criteria in mind.
I want to read something thatβs in rough chronological order, rather than following half the characters to (nearly) the end of the story, then going back to the starting line with the other half of the characters. Thatβs the whole point, obviously.
ButΒ I donβt want to read something thatβs inΒ strictΒ chonological order, to the point where people are radically re-ordering the chapters even within the context of a single book. I want something that preserves Martinβs original flow as much as possible given the caveat that once the decision was made to split the books he wrote them with that in mind, not something that puts the 9th chapter ofΒ FeastΒ featuring Character X after the 20th chapter ofΒ FeastΒ featuring Character Y because thatβs when it technically takes place. If Martin had wanted to roll out the chapters in strict chronological order heβd have done so, up to and including putting the first few chapters of both books somewhere insideΒ Storm.
I did this differently for my original reading order, which is geared toward people whoβve already read the books. But for the purposes of this new readerβfriendly version, Iβm willing to make an exception to #1 & #2:Β Chapters can be read out of order if that helps preserve mysteries from one storyline that would otherwise be prematurely spoiled by another.Β The fewer changes necessary to accomplish this, the better.
This isnβt a narrative concern but a logistical one: I want a guide thatβsΒ easy to follow and easy to fiddle withΒ if I feel like fiddling with it. Clearly labeling each chapter with the book, character, chapter number for that character specifically, and chapter number for the book overall will make it easiest to do that. On some level itβd be nice to understand why this particular order was assembled and suggestedβ the methodology behind it, any problems the compiler feels they solved or failed to solve, and so on. Not necessary, but nice.
None of the proposals quite fit the bill, so I ended up making my own version instead.
[NOTE: Consider all the following linksΒ SPOILERY.]Β For the basic framework I took this list by SFFChronicles messageboard member Orionis, then reordered the chapters so that you bounce back and forth between the two books but never read chapters from within one book or the other out of order. From there, I crowdsourced refinements to the list via my original post, both for actual fixes (i.e. I messed up the timeline because I switched between the books too quickly or too slowly) and to make sure the chapters flowed in a pleasing way. I relied very heavily on Atanvarnoβs listΒ (explained here) as well as his direct feedback for these refinements, particularly the changes necessary to preserve the reveals.
The end result seemed to fit my five criteria better than any of the other options:
It hasΒ roughΒ chronology, so you pick up with most every character across the board at roughly the same time afterStormΒ left off and keep going with all of them until they each run out of chapters.
It doesnβt haveΒ strictΒ chronology, so youβre not radically re-ordering the chapters despite what Martin felt was the best reading order when assembling the books originally. (I even kept big chunks of chapters together rather than flipping back and forth on a chapter to chapter basis β at first this was just a coincidence, but thinking about it, I think itβs a good way to maintain Martinβs original narrative flow.)
It does the bare minimum of reshuffling necessary to preserve mysteries and avoid spoiling reveals.Β I only had to list two chapters out of order to keep the one big spoilable reveal intact.
Itβs clearly labeled andΒ very easy to read, understand, and even alter, if you want.
Iβve explained my methodology to an almost embarrassingly comprehensive degree, soΒ you can understand what the heck I did here. Much more on how the list was created can be found in the original post, which again is spoilery for anyone who hasnβt already read the books. It contains an extensive list of updates and tweaks Iβve made to the list since originally posting it as well.
Happy reading β youβve got a long road ahead of you!
