Hello! And welcome to a very, very special edition of the NotACast ... podcast! All about why we think that A DANCE WITH DRAGONS is the better book than A STORM OF SWORDS. And we're joined by A Song of Ice and Fire LUMINARY BookShelfStud AKA Michael! (@BookshelfStud on Twitter!)

Now, if you listen to us regularly, you know that typically, we give you all one chapter per week, but recently we started a patreon campaign which kicks off on April 1st (No foolin'). To give you all a taste of the special episodes you will get if subscribe to our patreon for a mere $5/month or more. 

In this nearly 3 hour long episode, we cover topics like:

- The strengths of ASOS (Stannis, Catelyn, Samwell, Battle of the Wall, Red Wedding, Purple Wedding)

- The weakness of ASOS (Early King's Landing, early Arya/Bran, climaxes not spaced out)

- ADWD's strengths: Quentyn! 

- ADWD as a study of leadership and its failures on the part of Dany and Jon

- Delving deeply into the psychology of the characters

- Getting at the heart of the themes that dominate DANCE and A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE as a whole.

- Weakness of ADWD too! Orientalism, mid-point Jon, Dany, Tyrion chapters, the choppy endings and cliff-hangers

- Finally, we get into the meta side: why we prefer ADWD over ASOS and talk about the fandom in 7 years since ADWD.

It's great fun, and please consider our patreon if you're able to (But if not, no worries, friends. We'll keep doing our chapter by chapters for YOU!)

To quickly recap what our patreon is and the reward tiers, it’s:

$1-4/month: Sparrows: A Thank you from us at the end credits, special episodes

$5-9/month: Poor Fellows: Thanks and show notes, special episodes

$10-19/month: Sworn Swords:Thanks, show notes, special episodes 1 day early release and the option to submit a question for us to answer in our rotating “Question of the week”

$20-29/month: Kingsguard: Thanks, show notes, special episodes 2 day early release and the option to submit a question for us to answer in our rotating “Question of the week”, special episodes

$30 and above/month: Lords Commander: Thanks, special episodes, show notes, 3 day early release and the option to submit a question for us to answer in our rotating “Question of the week”, special episodes

Thanks again to Michael for joining us. Check out the Maester Monthly podcast that he co-hosts along with his excellent dives into fantasy short stories on Fantastic Transmissions!

Our patreon: https://www.patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF 

Our twitter: https://twitter.com/NotACastASOIAF 

Emmett's tumblr: http://poorquentyn.tumblr.com/ 

Emmett's twitter: https://twitter.com/PoorQuentyn 

Jeff's twitter: https://twitter.com/BryndenBFish