*hypf*

Something very un-computer-like today. I am an avid reader of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. I read the first three books some years ago and just finished reading them all again as well as A Feast for Crows, now eagerly awaiting A Dance with Dragons.

In the recent months I also did many vectorizations of flag images on Wikimedia Commons and due to that read a bit on heraldry and blazonry. Not much, but enough to guess what a blazon would look like given its description and I even can describe simple blazons myself.

Anyway, I noticed a slight change in GRRM's series with A Feast for Crows. His descriptions of coat of arms of the numerous major, minor and lesser houses of Westeros were pretty simple in the past (i. e. up to A Storm of Swords) with their descriptions seldom more than “charge on a colored field” and usually not using heraldic terms for tinctures and charges. This changed, however, with A Feast for Crows where more complex coat of arms emerged as well as usage of certain heraldic terms, like barry, gyronny, countercharged, etc. I probably should have marked the pages as I noticed the occurances so unfortunately I can't give examples here but I think it might have been better for GRRM to stay with the tone of the previous books here. Not that I mind in particular but most people are not proficient with heraldic language and for them the simpler descriptions would serve better.

Although maybe I am nearly the only one to notice, at least I have been told by others that they didn't notice. But for me it's a slight stylistic break that was unnecessary.