ASoS 19: Tyrion 254

Oh it's all happening in King's Landing in this chapter! Quite the soap opera. There's a wedding to organise for Joff. Cersei is going to have to completely re-do the seating plan since it turns out Tyrells can't be sat next to Dornish men. The Lannisters have won another battle somewhere I've never heard of. Tyrell is convinced Rob Stark is going to be busy re-taking Winterfell, but Tyrell is not very good at war strategy, which means he's probably wrong and Robb will do something else surprising instead.

Littlefinger is heading off to woo Lysa to win her troops to the Lannister side. Oh so that'll be it: he'll meet Robb and Catelyn who are also heading that way to try to get her allegiance (if I'm right about that).

Greyjoy has offered to team up with the Lannisters as long as he gets to keep the North. Tywin is not having any of that and plans to ignore him and let the coming winter take care of him. Tywin is also not bothered with sending men to the wall. He's happy to let Mance Rayder keep Robb and Theon occupied. What's the betting that he'll come to regret that?

Tyrion is going to have to be Master of Coin. Since it was Littlefinger's idea, Tyrion suspects a trap. Probably the trap is that there is no money. They're spending it at quite a rate as far as I can see and the King's Landing finances were not in great shape to begin with. The tax take can't be all that great with all the burning of fields that's been going on. Still, this is Tyrion, so he'll probably invent some cunning way out of it, like fiat currency and fractional reserve banking...

Tywin has got wind that the Tyrells are planning to marry off Sansa to the crippled heir of Highgarden. He doesn't plan to allow that to happen. He wants to Cersei to marry him instead. You should have seen Cersei's face! Duff-duff, duff duff duff, da da da da.

But that's not the cliff hanger: there's more! He wants Tyrion to marry Sansa! And soon, before the Tyrells' plans are well known so that Mace can't take offence. Tyrion thinks she's a bit young, and probably won't be that into him. On the other hand, he'd be punching above his weight. And anyway, Tywin says once he's consumated the marriage he can wait a few years until she's grown up. So that's okay then. And Tywin thinks this means Tyrion will inherit Winterfell. Which is fine unless Robb starts having babies with a Frey.

It also turns out that Tywin knows about Robb's snubbing the Freys to marry a Westerling. Now Tyrion thinks the Westerlings are a bit daft to betray the Lannisters (and there's a cool story that the Lannisters so thoroughly destroyed another house who betrayed them that Tywin just has to send singers to sing about that to keep other houses in line -- that's how badass Tywin is). But Tywin thinks they're really thinking one step ahead, which means it could well be all part of a cunning plan. After all, Jeyne Westerling's grandmother was (or possibly still is) a maegi who deals in love potions which may have something to do with Robb's marrying Jeyne.

So to sum up Tywin's plans: Maergery Tyrell will marry Joff, Cersei will marry Willas Tyrell, Tyrion will marry Sansa Stark, Robb Stark will get killed in battle before having children and Theon Greyjoy is just so useless he will get killed by the Winter. This will leave the Lannisters inheriting everything. I bet it doesn't turn out like that, though.

ASoS 18: Samwell 236

Sam is trudging through the snow. Is this the first Samwell chapter? I think it is! Anyway, the camp was attacked by wights and Others (hence the three horn blasts from the prologue and Mance and Jon finding all the dead horses). Sam managed to send a message. Then he released all the birds, which ought to be a message in itself. But if no-one makes it back they won't know it was wights and Others.

He can't walk any more so Small Paul carries him. Paul lets slip that Chet was going to let him have Mormont's crow, but no-one seems to notice. And Paul gets killed by an Other anyway. Craven Sam manages to muster up the courage to attack the Other with the the glass dagger Jon gave him. Not so craven after all is our Sam. He ought to be pretty handy if any Nazgul turn up, too.

It turns out that dragonglass kills Others. Which is pretty handy. Also it's quite surprising that no-one knew that. Shouldn't it be part of the stories? Hopefully Sam makes it back to the wall because that could turn out to be very useful intelligence.

ASoS 17: Arya 227

Hot Pie stayed at the Inn to become a baker, since he was bored with all the travelling anyway. Arya and Gendry have gone with the outlaws to Riverrun. It turns out that the outlaws started out as the men Ned sent to harry GREGOR, under the command of Lord Beric. But GREGOR smashed them, and then they found out that Ned and Robert were dead. Rather than yeilding to the new king Joff, they decided to continue defending the smallfolk.

Lord Beric survived his injuries (he never dies) and continues to lead the outlaws, and their numbers have grown. They are the Rebel Alliance! Arya finds out she's being taken to Beric instead of Rivverrun, so she tries to gallop off, which almost works because she has a fast horse, but Harwin is a better horseman. Arya had better hope that Beric is as fair as they say.

Incidentally, it seems like Ned was doomed one way or another. If his leg wasn't broken he probably would have gone to face GREGOR himself, and would have been just as outnumbered and probably more dead than Beric.

ASoS 16: Sansa 220

Sansa is getting a new wardrobe courtesy of Cersei and/or Maergery. It turns out life is not so bad now that the Tyrells are in town and Sansa has lots of new friends who are nice to her. So much so that she's told Dontos she doesn't want to escape any more.

She sees herself as far more worldly-wise than the various Tyrell girls, since she has seen battles and her dad's head chopped off, and she has a point. She keeps warning Maergery about Joff but Maergery seems unconcerned and thinks her brother the Flower Knight, now kingsguard, will protect her from him, presumably by turning kingslayer and throwing the realm into new chaos. But how much has Sansa really learned? Despite Dontos' warnings that he's only after Winterfell, she thinks marrying Willas will be lovely. But he might well be just as much of a monster as Joff.

Anyway, she's got until the night of Joff's wedding to decide, because that's when Dontos' boat will be ready to rescue her. It'll be the best wedding Walford, I mean Westeros, has ever had!

ASoS 15: Jon 202

Jon meanwhile has been doing an admirable job of not thinking with his dick and staying loyal to the watch while working undercover. It's starting to slip, though: he likes some of the wildlings and he finds Ygritte's eyes and smile alluring despite her commoner looks.

Tormund has various hilarious tall tales to tell. Jon sees giants on mammoths. They all have a sing song. Ygritte is a bit sad that there are only a few hundred giants left in the world. Then everything happens at once: Jon is attacked by the eagle posessed by the ghost of a man he killed, and Mance finds the watch's hilltop camp. Except there are more dead watchmen than Jon told Mance were on the ranging.

Somehow or other Mance doesn't have him killed for lying, but instead tells him he's going on a mission tomorrow and he'd better prove himself by killing some watchmen. Ygritte also manages to persuade Mance that she and Jon are "dancing" under Jon's cloak at night. Which they haven't yet despite much snuggling for warmth, but now wants Jon to make her honest. I like Ygritte: she knows what she wants and she's persistent about getting it.

Edit to add: I just remembered Ben Stark's complaint when Jon first mentioned wanting to join the Watch, which was that Jon had not known love and did not know what he was giving up. What are the chances that when he finds out, his attitude changes somewhat?

ASoS 14: Catelyn 188

The Catelyn chapters have more intrigue than the Tyrion ones at the moment. Robb comes back to Riverrun. There's some drama in the yard involving some Frey boys trampling Robb's banner and leaving in a huff. It turns out it's because Robb got injured, was nursed by a pretty girl, and ended up marrying her. The Freys are annoyed because he'd promised to marry one of Lord Frey's daughters. Oh dear, the message here seems to be that much of history is written by powerful men thinking with their dicks. It does seem awfully plausible.

This lets Catelyn off the hook a bit for releasing Jaime. But Robb's overall position does not seem that great. Catelyn seems to have a cunning plan to get the Freys back onside and I think it might involve "Tansy" aka her sister. Is that really going to cut it though? Isn't she a slightly mad cat lady living in isolation at the top of a mountain?

Also Robb is sending his wolf off to the kennels because some of his wifes people don't like it, and it doesn't like them. Catelyn thinks this is a bad sign, and I think she's right. GRRM is clearly telling us that the wolves were sent by the gods, and I'm fairly sure that this whole game of thrones business boils down to various gods vying for power.

Meanwhile Edmure is in deep shit. I remember being a bit suspicious back when Riverrun was celebrating its victory over Tywin. Turns out Robb's plan all along was to draw Tywin east and keep him distracted. Instead Edmure delayed him and he ended up preventing Stannis from taking King's Landing. Oops. Still, it wouldn't have hurt Robb to keep Edmure in the loop on his plans. "Just follow orders" is all well and good until events happen and you have to make decisions. Robb will learn from this, hopefully.

ASoS 13: Arya 173

Arya, Hot Pie and Gendry get caught stealing vegetables from a dead man's garden by Lem, Archer/Anguy and Tom of Sevenstreams the singer. After a bit of parley, Arya realises they can't escape the archer, and they go with them to a nearby Inn where they are promised food but I suspect Arya at least will be sold into slavery of some form.

It turns out to be the same Inn visited by Jaime, Brienne and Cleos a couple of chapters earlier. Lem, Archer and Tom were supposed to intercept Jaime and company and steal their horses, but were foiled because Brienne didn't trust the man who is not an innkeeper and chose a different route from the one he advised.

Sure enough, after being fed, the band of outlaws offer Arya a promissory note in exchange for their horses. The note is probably worthless since there is no gold (imagine someone on 21st century Earth falling for that! Err...) but Arya thinks they're going to lose their horses anyway, so she offers them in exchange for Brienne's boat that she's seen outside.

Just then some riders turn up, who turn out to include Harwin, who used to lead her pony around the yard. He recognises her and announces to the room that she is Arya Stark, daughter of the Hand. So perhaps these really are "king's men" still loyal to the ghost of Robert and his hand.