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I blurt laughed at that. His delivery was perfect.

Xhondo saw Dany and her dragons while she was in Qarth back in Clash of Kings. He's the one who brought her news of Robert Baratheon's death. The Cinnamon Wind seems to trade all over the world. Correction: That wasn't Xhondo, but it was Quhuru Mo, the captain of the Cinnamon Wind. Evidently the rest of the crew went to see the dragons also.

Not to put words in Shimpy's keyboard, but I don't think she's there yet. Regarding the Dorne plotline: Book 5 & 6 spoiler

AFFC spoiler (though Shimpy accidentally read that section):

Oh, okay. I just found it annoying that we get news that a POV character's death occurred off-screen. We get a full chapter on Red Shirt Arys Oakheart, and Davos gets a quick blurb on p12 of the Style section. Book 5 spoiler:

Repurposed speech that he gives Davos about how the Manderleys were driven from their home and the wolves took them in. The debt that can never be repaid, triumphal declaration of loyalty to the Starks, aaaand scene.

I noticed that too. 1. Glaring plot hole 2. "Oh the pod passed through the ATCU facility on its way to its final meet-up-with-Gideon location" 3. Roz and the rest of the ATCU staff played them. I'm guessing 1, with a side order of 2 being tweeted out from the producers once someone points out the error. Another plot hole they keep repeating: showing that "we're a couple now!" picture of Will and Jemma, even though they didn't hook up until after the battery on her phone was depleted. Unless that's supposed to be a clue that the events on Planet Blue Filter didn't really happen the way she described them in 4722 Hours.

Yes.

Septon Meribald's monologue about broken men is considered by some to be a really good piece of philosophy. Or something. I thought that his speech, and the encounters with the tiny villages of people who lived near Maidenpool but never even ventured a few miles down the road, was an interesting look at how wars affect the smallfolk. Funny thing is, he took multiple chapters in this book to say the same thing that Jorah said back in GoT in one paragraph. "The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends. It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace. They never are." I gotta say, I'm a little surprised you didn't react to some news that Cercei got from Pycelle.

I was thinking that the thing Will was hiding from is the fabled Inhuman, and that Will is just another sacrifice / explorer sent to retrieve it. Any comic aficionados have any ideas about who the Legendary Inhuman is? Apparently one of his/her abilities is an extremely long life if he/she has been on the Blue Filter Planet for millennia..

"Oh, wait, we're all actually in the same plotline". Well done, Show. I love that Coulson keeps Mack's axe on his wall as a souvenir.

I liked that Alayne Stone chapter. I really don't know why, because I'm usually kinda "meh" on Sansa in the books. It was nice to see her figure out that Lyn Corbray was a plant, and that Petyr played the Lords Declarant. I'm also curious about sweetsleep, the drug they start feeding Robin Arryn to moderate his seizures and if it's supposed to have a real-life analog like milk-of-the-poppy = opiates. Also, I loved Alayne's description of Robin as "eight going on three". He really is a petulant brat in the books.

I thought of a better analogy than the Scrappy: Show!Sand Snakes = Nikki and Paolo.

Seems a slight miscalculation that he would think a dude who tried to decapitate an innocent young girl would become popular with the fans. He may have wanted an ensemble darkhorse, but he wound up with a Scrappy.

Arthur Dayne was one of the Kingsguard at the Tower of Joy. Ned killed him with an assist from Howland Reed.

The Sire Line War makes a little more sense now, since it was a big fat lie. They're working together because they've twice seen what happens when a Mikaelson dies and they're fearing for their lives. I hope that their plan to trap the siblings together behind an impenetrable barrier works both ways. Otherwise someone could enter and kill all of them after they've desiccated and can't fight back. I'm getting a real "Akasha and Enkil" vibe from this -- is there an ancient Egyptian tomb somewhere in New Orleans that they can use? I love Claire Holt, love Rebekkah, but boy is she stupid. When is she ever going to learn that 9 times out of 10, witches are setting traps for her? Alos, the Strix plan with her made little sense. They wanted her immobilized body so they could dump it behind the mystical barrier. Well, why kill her witchy self? They had unoccupied body already. Just keep witch!Becky unconscious, toss Vamp!Becky into the prison, THEN kill her witch-self. But no, Aya had to do this elaborate trap just to have a villainous gloating session before daggering her.

Book 5 Spoiler

I thought Rosalind made some good arguments with Daisy. My problem is I've heard them already in the X-Men movies. I hope they don't take her and the ATCU down the William Stryker road -- legitimate concerns about the danger that mutants, err, Inhumans represent to normal people leading towards genociding them. It's been done. Amen on the overdose of lurve plots. Right now the only person not in a relationship is Mack. Maybe if Joey the Metal Bender gets out of the Cocoon they'll pair off so everyone can be in a relationship. Though I think it'd be cool if they did become a couple and turned out to be angst-free -- two people who care about each other and enjoy each other's company without all the drama.

Jaiying's "trap" in her ledger made no sense. It was loaded with terrrigen crystals, which don't do anything to normal humans but transform latent Inhumans into active Inhumans. Her ledger was in Afterlife, which was entirely populated by actual or nascent Inhumans. So her trap would just activate anyone who opened the book. If she'd put powdered diviner metal in it, then it'd be a trap that killed humans and left Inhumans alone, but then Andrew wouldn't have been transformed and why am I trying to figure out the logic of a show that carbon dated sand.... Looks like we're trading Andrew for Lincoln... yay [insert ironic sound of a party horn being blown here] The astronaut patch on his uniform is the upside down version (sort of) of one of the symbols they saw carved in the wall of the castle where the activated the portal to get Simmons back. How this will lead to them actually being able to open a new portal seems a dubious leap in logic. There I go again, applying logic.

I understand what you're saying here, but I think it's just as easy to interpret Kevan's statements differently. I don't think he treated her this way because she's a woman; he treated her this way because she's incompetent. He wanted her to go back to Casterly Rock and leave the governance of the realm (and the rearing of Tommen) to people who wouldn't screw it up. Especially concerning Tommen, he had good evidence to call her a bad mother considering the monster Joffrey turned out to be. Regarding the bolded part, Cercei was wrong. She said that he was just a knight with no power, and he corrected her by pointing out that while he didn't have land of his own, he was a wealthy man with loyal retainers and could hire more if necessary. Cercei asked him to serve as Hand. He gave her a list of terms. She rejected them, so he left. Not for Shimpy's eyes:

I liked the politics of the Kingsmoot a lot. Basically three contenders laying out the choices for the Ironborn: 1. Asha wants peace and some land. She thinks the Northmen will cede them a couple of coastal areas in exchange for peace and an alliance against the Iron Throne. 2. Victarion is basically "stay the course, don't change horse in mid stream, etc." continue Balon's war and conquer all the North 3. Euron is "screw that, let's take the whole continent and I can do it by getting me some dragons! I thought all three positions were untenable. Vic's plan is out because Roose Bolton is on his way home with the northern army, and Ramsey (according to Cercei) is moving on Moat Cailyn, so the Ironborn still in the North are living on borrowed time. Euron's plan is just nuts. Gloriously nuts, but still nuts. Sure, Aegon conquered Westeros with three dragons, but his were adult full grown dragons whereas we the readers know Dany's are still adolescents. Even Asha's plan has holes in it. Maybe, just maybe the North will agree to her terms, for now. But the Ironborn aren't used to Northern winters, so come the next spring, after they've been thoroughly devastated by cold and privation, the Northerns would kick them out. I can see why they voted for Euron, because while everyone is doomed, his plan at least sounds more in keeping with Ironborn culture. Plus he's got that politician / cult leader personality type that can work a group of followers into a frenzy. ETA: Now that Shimpy has met Euron, time for a flashback to the Ghost of High Heart: Allegedly Euron was still at sea when Balon took a dive. Some of the characters suspect he had a hand in it, and they didn't even hear this prophecy. (I definitely buy that theory)

I liked that chapter because I like all the Dorne chapters, but good grief it needed editing. Arys feels guilty for screwing Arianne and breaking his vows. Okay, we get it, 10 pages of inner monologue would have been sufficient, we didn't need 20. (I exaggerate but only a little). Despite that, I love the reveal of Arianne's plans and her motives for those plans. So much better than the "let's kill an innocent girl as REVENGE!!" shit in the show.

Witch story line -- don't care. Davina's acting is really bad throughout. And i noticed Jackson's marble mouth really bad tonight. Is that his natural speaking voice, or is he a British actor affecting a "southern" accent? (It reminded me of an episode of Frasier when Daphne was practicing her American accent, and Frasier asked if her voice coach was a drag queen.) I was really hoping that CrazyPants would reveal her big deep dark secret, and for once Klaus wouldn't go on a rampage. "Huh. So that's how Elijah learned compulsion. Interesting." Maybe he and Elijah were play-acting, but I don't know who could have been their audience. I don't believe for a second that the detective would have been able to get a search warrant, let alone arrest Cami, based on the fact that her DNA or whatever was on the victim. No shit, she left trace evidence on the guy who died in her arms. Waaaay back on TVD, Stephen explained to Caroline, right after she turned, that becoming a vampire exacerbates any existing personality traits. ETA -- What an anticlimactic resolution to the woofs being cursed.

We know little of what happened to Duncan between the events of the novellas and Aegon V's ascension. It's possible he had a brief marriage to one of Brienne's ancestors, or (more likely) just knocked one of them up and the illegitimacy angle was covered up