Knights of the Dinner Table
In "Shadis" #2 (March/April 1990), Jolly Blackburn began to run a comic that
he had written called "Knights of the Dinner Table", which depicted the humorous interactions of a gaming group. When Blackburn published that first "Knights" strip, he thought that he was just filling a blank page but when he tried to replace it with more professional strips beginning with "Shadis" #6, there was an outcry; because of that outcry "Knights" soon returned. Blackburn also published "Knights of the Dinner Table" as a comic book, the first three issues of which appeared from his company Alderac Entertainment Games over the next year (1994-1995). As a result of diverging interests with his partners, Blackburn left Alderac in 1995, with "Shadis" #21 (December 1995) being his final issue; he kept the rights to "Knights of the Dinner Table". Blackburn formed a new company called KODT Enteractive Facktory, which was to publish the "Knights of the Dinner Table" comic monthly. While he was working on getting that new company together, Blackburn received a call from the editor of TSR's "Dragon" magazine, asking if the "Knights of the Dinner Table" strip was now available; although Blackburn originally planned to continue the strip in "Shadis", he accepted the offer and "Knights of the Dinner Table" thus began appearing beginning in "Dragon" #226 (February, 1996). While working on "Knights of the Dinner Table" #4 (1996), Blackburn concluded that he really did not want to go it alone, and David Kenzer and the staff of Kenzer & Company wanted to get Blackburn to join their company. In November 1996 when David Kenzer and others were visiting Blackburn over the course of a local con, and Blackburn decided that Kenzer had the sort of business sense and integrity that he was looking for in a partner. Starting with issue #5 (February 1997) "Knights of the Dinner Table" was the work of the "KoTD Development Team" which consisted of Jolly Blackburn, David Kenzer, Brian Jelke and Steve Johansson.
A Feast for Crows
Martin noted that "A Feast for Crows" would focus on "Westeros, King's Landing, the riverlands, Dorne, and the Iron Islands," and that the next novel, "A Dance with Dragons", would cover "events in the east and north." Martin also added that the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series would now likely total seven novels. "A Feast for Crows" was published months later on October 17, 2005, over five years after the previous volume in the series, "A Storm of Swords". The parallel novel "A Dance with Dragons" was released on July 12, 2011.Though "A Feast for Crows" was the first novel in the sequence to debut at number one on "The New York Times" Best Seller list, it received more negative reviews in comparison with the previous novels in the series. Martin's decision to halve the plot in terms of character and location was highly controversial; many critics felt that this novel consisted of characters that people were less interested in. "Publishers Weekly" said, "Long-awaited doesn't begin to describe this fourth installment in bestseller Martin's staggeringly epic Song of Ice and Fire. [...]. This is not Act I Scene 4 but Act II Scene 1, laying groundwork more than advancing the plot, and it sorely misses its other half. The slim pickings here are tasty, but in no way satisfying." Salon.com's Andrew Leonard said in 2011, "I don't care how good a writer you are: If you subtract your three strongest characters from your tale, you severely undermine the basis for why readers fell under your spell in the first place. It didn't work. But there was also a sense in "A Feast of Crows" that Martin had lost his way. The characters whose stories he did tell wandered back and forth across a landscape devastated by war and oncoming winter, but didn't seem to be headed anywhere in particular." Remy Verhoeve of "The Huffington Post" noted in their 2011 "A Dance with Dragons" review that the fifth volume had to "repair some of the damage done by "A Feast for Crows", which frankly felt as if it was written by a ghost writer at times." Both books had "the same structural problems", being "sprawling and incoherent", and in her opinion "Feast" has the less interesting characters. "The Atlantic" Rachael Brown said in their "A Dance With Dragons" review that "Feast" was "bleak and plodding" and "sorely missed" Daenerys Targaryen, Tyrion Lannister, and Jon Snow.