The first three books were incredible, but not this book; now I am slogging away just to make it to the end of each chapter, let alone the end of the book. This book is a mindless set of tangents, seemingly developed just to make the book twice as long as it should be. In the first three books, every character was critical, every chapter was exciting with a cliff-hanger at the end of it, making me want to read more and more and more. Not so this book. Mr. Martin is obviously being paid by the word, but he has diluted a very fine work with extremely trivial sub-sub-sub-plots within plots within plots. Mr. Martin, you did yourself and your readers a dis-service. I am extremely disappointed in this book, and my advice to people who are trying to get through it is, feel free to skip over any chapters that don't capture your heart and mind. That's what I'm doing.
The first three books were incredible, but not this book; now I am slogging away just to make it to the end of each chapter, let alone the end of the book. This book is a mindless set of tangents, seemingly developed just to make the book twice as long as it should be. In the first three books, every character was critical, every chapter was exciting with a cliff-hanger at the end of it, making me want to read more and more and more. Not so this book. Mr. Martin is obviously being paid by the word, but he has diluted a very fine work with extremely trivial sub-sub-sub-plots within plots within plots. Mr. Martin, you did yourself and your readers a dis-service. I am extremely disappointed in this book, and my advice to people who are trying to get through it is, feel free to skip over any chapters that don't capture your heart and mind. That's what I'm doing.