At the risk of being repetitive here -- as repetitive as Brienne's chapters in A Feast for Crows -- I'll remind my readers of two things. First, I'm going to be revealing spoilers here of things that won't appear on HBO's Game of Thrones until the coming season. Bail out now if you haven't read the books. Secondly, recall that George R.R. Martin set out originally to write a single book, which ultimately grew so large that he split it into the two books that became Feast and Dance.
Not long after the publication of A Dance With Dragons, fans of the series went to work trying to "reintegrate" the last two books. Though the books followed different characters (mostly), they took place over the same time frame. Shuffling the chapters back together would not only produce a more logical narrative, it would come closest to Martin's "original intention," and will ultimately be the approach the television series takes to this chunk of the narrative. At first, there was a fair amount of debate among Martin's most fanatic readers, but soon the internet seemed to reach agreement on a particular reading order, developed by Sean T. Collins.
Collins eschewed a strictly chronological approach, as even within the novels as published, not all the chapters are ordered in that way. He preserved Martin's technique of hopping around between characters, while minimizing (as much as possible) the need to flip back and forth between books. The result: his suggested reading order for a combined A Feast-Dance for-and-with Crows-and-Dragons. This is what I used for my second readthrough of the series. Though I posted separate reviews of the two books, I actually read them as one enormous (even by George R.R. Martin standards) 119 chapter book.
"Feast-Dance" (for want of a better term) is a better whole than the sum of its parts. It dulls the visibility of one major problem in each book -- the lack of beloved characters in one, and the lack of activity near the Iron Throne in the other. It even helps a little bit with the repetition in certain storylines (particularly Brienne's and Tyrion's), as it places each character's chapters further apart. The combined book is admittedly a bit slow to get started, but at least you're getting the whole story. It does read like one tale that should never have been separated -- the only exception being a Samwell chapter from Feast and a Jon chapter from Dance which contain about six pages of repeated material between them (without enough truly justifiable differences from seeing it from two different characters' perspectives).
Indeed, the two books feel like they have a single overall theme that bonds them as one too. But I think that theme exposes why Feast and Dance (individually, or together) aren't as good as the first three books of the series. Feast-Dance is one huge book in which everybody fails at everything. I am, of course, well aware that George R.R. Martin is willing to make bad things happen to good people (or at least, to people we like). But even as Eddard Stark was getting beheaded in A Game of Thrones and the Red Wedding was shocking everyone in A Storm of Swords, some characters were doing well. Arya was surviving against impossible odds. Daenerys was hatching dragons and conquering slavers.
In sharp contrast, look at all the failure in A Feast for Crows and A Dance With Dragons. Aeron Greyjoy's kingsmoot fails to crown the king he'd hoped for. Asha Greyjoy fails to take the throne, and then is captured after failing in battle. Stannis fails to march on Winterfell. Davos fails in his mission for Stannis, first getting captured, then getting redirected to some other goal. Brienne fails to locate Sansa Stark. Arianne Martell fails in her efforts to crown Princess Myrcella as queen. Her brother Quentyn fails in his quest to find and marry Daenerys (which is also a failure for his father Doran, who sent him to do it). Cersei fails at running the kingdom as Queen Regent. Jon Snow fails as Commander of the Night's Watch. Samwell fails to keep Maester Aemon alive on their journey south. Tyrion fails at meeting Daenerys (or doing much of anything on his own volition). Daenerys fails at securing peace in Meereen on her own, while Barristan fails at maintaining what fragile excuse for peace she married into. Failure, failure, failure. Everywhere.
Arya, Sansa, and Bran all spend time in "Jedi training" at their respective "Dagobahs," but each fails in the sense that their progress is so slow that each finishes the book in the same place they started. The only success anywhere in sight is marginal to say the least: Jaime (who only succeeds at conquering castles by backsliding on his moral progress in A Storm of Swords) and Theon (who was beaten so low he had nowhere to go but up). All this punishing failure, with limited narrative progress, makes Feast-Dance the bleakest book(s) of the entire saga. That's saying a lot.
But, as I noted in my separate reviews of the two books, the quality of the writing is top notch -- poetic and evocative, perhaps even more than that of the preceding volumes. As a combined experience, I'd say Feast-Dance nudges the separate books up from two B- singles into a B whole. It's not much, but that's all we'll get until HBO starts finishing Martin's epic tale for him in the coming seasons of Game of Thrones.
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