If you read them separately, you will have a better sense of the momentum of events in each, and will be less distracted by the more fragmented approach of reading both books at the same time.Įither way, I am sure you will be happy. However, because the events in the books are mostly exclusive, I think there is value to reading them separately. You won't be left in the dark about your (perhaps) favorite characters until plowing thorugh book four.A slightly better sense of what is happening across the whole world, the big picture.In my opinion, the benefits of reading both at the same time would be:
There is the occasional reference to events in Westeros in book five which make you go "Oh, I know why that is!". The stories in each are hardly connected to the other. But according to this section of the Wikipedia article A Song of Ice and Fire, the motivations behind splitting the books geographically were almost purely for publishing purposes. Usually I would make the argument that the author wrote it the way he wrote it for a purpose and that you should read it as intended to gain the most from it. I removed the character names to prevent accidentally revealing any spoilers:Īs others have suggested, you certainly could read them in orders other than the order they were written in. However, I could see it being a pain to sit down and do this yourself, as you have to put your book down at the end of each chapter, consult the list, find the next chapter, etc.Īnyway, Sean's order is listed below by book and chapter number. So far the order has not felt forced at all, and feels very natural.
The Tower of the Hand is doing a re-read of the books right now using this proposed reading order. Sean Collins put together a very nice reading order over here: A proposed A Feast for Crows/A Dance with Dragons merged reading order, with explanation. You can certainly read the chapters chronologically, instead of first reading through all of A Feast For Crows.
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