I would not diminish on purpose the crimes perpetrated against Dany and I am not faulting her actions in response, I will point out that by page 230 she is not always crying out in pain when taken by her Khal. Is this Stockholm syndrome she's experiencing? likely, nothing romantic about her life, she has been brutalized from the beginning, and yet survives, this is why she is a great character, her emotional strength as well as developing physical strengths are propelling her forward.

It had to be the black dragon with eyes of molten magma and the roaring flame from the dragon's mouth!!! It's a fairy tale, afterall !!!

I too was rather fascinated by some of the imagery of the wall and the characterization of the people manning it and the attitudes of everyone else toward it.

Everybody is afraid of what lies beyond the wall. Nobody wants those things to be able to cross over into their part of the world. Yet, nobody is willing to take up arms to protect it, leaving the job to criminals and people escaping punishment for their crimes. It sounds a lot like a scathing rebuke on our world, how we want to keep the bad things away, but many are unwilling to lift a finger to contribute to the overall effort to make things better.

We are so calloused that we just go on believing things will always be at least as good as they are now and no meaningful contribution has to be made to protecting what we've got. I'm not talking about natural resources and all that stuff, I'm just talking in general how we prefer to turn a blind eye to anything that makes us uncomfortable, and hope that it goes away.

I know I'm generalizing, and not everybody is like this about everything. But I think to some extent, we all do this at one time or another and play the denial game.

I agree with "gesler0811"...it's our "silent majority" that never speaks up and then, when things get really bad, they/we say "why didn't somebody do something about this", or we actually pick a group of people and blame them for inaction.

The way this thread is going reminds me of the following:

Whose Job Is It?


This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody,

Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and

Everybody was asked to do it. Everybody was sure Somebody would

do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody

got angry about that, because it was Everybody's job.

Everybody thought Anybody could do it but Nobody realized that

Everybody wouldn't do it.

It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when

Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

LOL...good joke...cute!
I've finished the next assignment section, chapters 24-31. I know all of you who are so fascinated with this book won't like my next statement, but I actually am getting a little bored with it all...the same intrigue is continuing on and on without any resolution.
I'll keep on reading ...

I felt the same way, sometimes the details just seem to drag on. Think of this, we're just about half through the story. Some things will conclude and others will be dealt with in the coming books.

Taylor wrote: And then there's Jon on the Wall with his new troupe of brothers, These guys on the wall are like our modern Army infantry standing watch on the 38th parallel in Korea, the war has been over since 1952 but the situation is still very serious and dangerous, its national security.

That is a really interesting comparison. I was stationed in Korea around 15 years ago (in Seoul, not at the border) and knew quite a few people that were stationed on the border. Young men (no women stationed up there at that time, probably still not) who hated being sent to Korea for a year far away from friends and family. The war seems like the distant past to young soldiers until you get there, similar to how a southerner in the book might believe it's a ridiculous waste of time to guard a wall to keep imaginary beings from the northern wastelands out. But once you're there you start to see things. I can't speak for today, but when I was there shots were fired across the border from the northern side and when I went to the shooting range it was within hearing distance of the North Korean mics blaring propaganda through most of the night. You start to take things a little more seriously when you get close to it. I certainly didn't understand the history of that particular war until I went there! (And a side benefit is that I now understand MASH a whole lot better than I did as a kid!)

And Crystalline, I feel ya. These books can take a bit of slogging through sometimes. I definitely look forward to chapters about certain characters and dread chapters about others.

As for general stuff in the books comments, I guess I didn't take Jon Snow to be looking for action or giving anything up to go the wall. He seems to be quite aware that Catelyn Stark has never liked having him around and that his prospects as a bastard were not good. It was very unusual that he was allowed to grow up in his father's home at all, especially one so full of honor as Eddard Stark. Ok, I just had a speculative thought about this, don't read it unless you've either read all the books or love wild guesses about plot twists. My guess is no where confirmed in the first 5 books, but it popped into my mind because of information from much later books.

Spoiler

Eddard Stark keeps remembering throughout the book his sister begging him to promise her something but it never says to do what. I highly doubt that it was as simple as being buried at Winterfell. It is hinted in later books that she chose to run off with the Targarion guy and was not kidnapped as King Robert believes. Could Jon Snow actually be Lyanna Stark's child by that Targarion? I have no idea, just a thought that occurred to me. It is entirely possible that I missed or forgot some other clue. It just seems odd that a man so obsessed with honor would not take his wedding vows seriously.

scrumfish, your spoiler is interesting. I have read all five published books, and I must admit this idea never occurred to me. It does have merit, though.

I don't get the feeling that Eddard Stark "is so obsessed with honor". He leaves his dying son and his wife, who is half alive from grief, sitting day and night at Bran's side, not eating or sleeping, and takes the position as the King's Hand. That's an honor to his personal gratification and ambition (called career now) that he won't refuse. And there have been so many "honorable" men who have succumbed to beautiful women and good sex throughout history. And especially in those times, where it would have been so easy to do due to attitudes about women being just mere possessions and the right of any knight to "go whoring". Oh, and there was no birth control then...
As for my reading subsequent books...hmmmm...not so sure that's going to happen. I may be tempted to watch a DVD or two just for comparison...