The prologue (to AFFC) has a massive impact on the final chapter of the book. If you read the final chapter and not the prologue you wouldn't have a clue what's going on.

Manderly plays a much bigger role later on.

Some good ideas, but some of your suggestions are impossible: without Craster, what other suitable role is there for The Essential Ian McShane cameo? :-D

Indeed. The 2nd Edition was the size of about three volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica and was so huge you could use to club elephants to death. And the 3rd Edition is twice the size.

On the 'one subplot too many', I think that refers to something that was actually set up a long time ago (in the earlier novels, if somewhat obliquely) and is designed to carry us through to the end of the story, or at least help move that along. Unlike FEAST, where I know a lot of people felt Brienne's story went on…

On a related note, my spoiler-free review of A DANCE WITH DRAGONS (though the insanely spoilerphobic may want to avoid it anyway):

My spoiler-free review of A DANCE WITH DRAGONS (though the insanely spoilerphobic may want to avoid it anyway):

Yes, it's from ADWD. The Dribble of Ink blog posted it a few days ago.

Valyria is the shattered peninsular extending southwards into the Summer Sea east of the Free Cities. The Doom has smashed it into a collection of islands.

Sothoryos is shown on the map in the bottom-right.

Yeah, that's just the Red Waste. Not a great place, but it's just a wasteland and a natural feature that has to be crossed. Nothing particularly evil lives there.

The Doom is the world's answer to Vesuvius destroying Pompeii. Except imagine there were 14 Vesuviuses that all blew up simultaneously and destroyed not just one small city but the entire empire. Not pretty at all.

The map I created uses a layout of Westeros from the Wiki of Ice and Fire, the Free Cities map from A DANCE WITH DRAGONS and the map of Slaver's Bay from the UK edition of A STORM OF SWORDS (ADWD also has a new and updated map of Slaver's Bay, the Wall and Westeros itself). The map of the Free Cities first appeared on…

Other-in-Law's map (the one you imbed above) is very cool. All of those maps were created before the canon layout of the Free Cities was revealed (first on the HBO website, and now in ADWD itself) and mine is the first to incorporate it. Like I said though, once you get east of Slaver's Bay everything else goes out…

No. There are no land connections between the two, and Essos is oriented further south than Westeros and apparently 'slopes' from the NW to the SE, with the Shivering Sea lying between it and the northern icecap, so you can't get over that way either.

And I've got the last part up now as well:

ALIEN is set in 2122. As established below, the movie takes place after 2076 due to the tricentennial reference. In ALIENS, it is established that the movie takes place in '79' due to the date quoted by Ripley at Burke when she finds out that he ordered the colonists to investigate the alien ship. We know Ripley spent…

Thanks for the link :-) Now I just need to finish the last one.

No. We just heard he was, in the exact same conversation where people were talking about a triple-headed dragon hatching in Qarth and being dismissed. Communications are not an exact science in Westeros :-) So he might be dead, or he might not be and someone just wants Cersei to think he is.

Only fighters and corvettes had fuel, and all you had to do to keep them going was to either return to base occasionally or keep a supply frigate or carrier with them, which was pretty straightforward. It wasn't a big deal, especially since once you got frigates around the mid-game people would just switch to using…