Just finished reading Amin's essay on marital infidelity--since I've got a PhD in literature, of course I loved the footnotes. And Amin's Canadian English was impeccable except for the one place where there was a reference to Aegon the Unworthy siring bastards "during his realm," which should have been "during his reign." Seriously, though, I thought the whole discussion of the consequences of infidelity was insightful and provocative. There's just one case of infidelity that has serious implications that wasn't mentioned--and that's Euron's taking of Victarion's wife--I wonder what you think about that one, Amin?

Thank you for the kind comments

The weakest part of my essay is my scant treatment of the Greyjoys and the salt wife system of the Iron Islands. I was hitting the suggested limit in essay length and just threw in that paragraph or so about them. In fact, there is a minor error there as well that crept in somewhere between drafts (it was correct in an earlier draft). I will be updating that section sometimes this month, which will be updated on the ebook on Amazon. I will also post those couple of paragraphs here for free as well.

I enjoyed your essay too. No feathered hats were to be found, but at least we got some good blood orange action! Looking forward to your update(s) too.

Maybe you won't know this anymore than I do, but will the people who already bought the book be able to get the updates onto their kindles without having to buy the book again or something? This situation has never come up with any of my other e-books as far as I know... If so, I suppose it might happen automatically next time I turn on my kindle's wireless, or else I might have to remove it from my kindle then DL it again from my archives...

Or maybe I'm just stuck with having the book as it existed when I paid for it & coming here to read the updates? Wouldn't bother me *that* much (the book was hardly expensive after all) but I can imagine how some people might see it as paying for a finished product but only receiving a draft.

I also loved that blood oranges reference! and overall it was an excellent essay, looking forward to reading the drafts. Also, welcome to the world of commenting Arristan!

So, now I just finished Mimi's essay, which I was really looking forward to, because I'm a Tales of Dunk and Egg fan. I believe that there are many clues in the novellas to future happenings in ASOIAF, if only we knew how to recognize them! I found Mimi's discussion of the parallels between Dunk and Brienne particularly intriguing--I had been aware of the potential connection between them suggested by Dunk's shield having been in Brienne's father's armory, but hadn't seen the additional parallels that Mimi pointed out so well. Also, I thought the discussion of the events at Summerhall and what Daeron's dream might actually be predicting was insightful.
But, Mimi, throw away your thesaurus! When you talk on the podcast you're eloquent and persuasive, but the essay was somewhat stilted and had many overly convoluted sentences--just write how you talk, and it'll come out fine!

i never used a thesaurus. that's just how i write. too many science papers in the academic field makes mimi a lousy non-fiction writer.

Ah don't feel bad Mimi! I loved it! Admittedly, I am Neuroscience major, but still!

Well turns out I was wrong when I said stuff would be added to the ebook, only errors or slight changes can be made. So I can fix the error but when it comes to the deeper treatment of the Greyjoys and Iron Islands Salt Wife system, I think I will leave that to chat about on one of our podcast episodes.