My 5th favorite out of 5.  At least at the end of 4 it really ramped up - especially the Cercei stuff. 

Nothing happened.  Seriously.  A bunch of stuff kind of happened, and then didn't.  A camping excursion up North, its COLD!.  Some sailing aruond, some SHIPS!.  Dany whining again for 10 chapters - to the point that for the 2nd straight book I skipped her stuff and then read it afterwards.  We knew she was going to ride a dragon since the end of the first book.  WOO_HOO it happened! 

I was hoping repeated times for some major action.  When Dany was getting married I was all geared up for something.  And then she is married. Then various semi-major characters were all on their way to 'rescue' her from 10 more chapters of whining...and then didn't get there. 

I was geared up for Jon to lead SOMEBODY to war again.  And then he gets psuedo-killed (BTW Martin has gotten more and more into this - more main characters have been brought back from apparent death than killed in the last three books by a ratio of 5:1 by my unofficial count). 

I am sure people will say that Martin was doing this on purpose, or surprising us with lack of surprises or something crazy.  But what I loved about his books were that they were packed with EVENTS.  Surprises.  Maybe I have read him enough to be unimpressed by the 'surprises' (i.e. usually SOMEONE IS ALIVE AGAIN!!!). 

The epoligue was by far the best chapter.  And it wasn't the 5th best in 3 or 2.  *shrug*  Like MadK it has lost the luster a bit.  It took me weeks to finish the book, I was expecting a day or two. 

That all being said, I am really optimistic about #6...all this setting up HAS to go somewhere! 

Good to read the various thoughts on the questions though...some interesting theories! 

BTW, saw this thread today - so funny.tigerbeatdown.com/2011/08/26/enter-ye-myne-mystic-world-of-gayng-raype-what-the-r-stands-for-in-george-r-r-martin/

rings said:

The always illuminating Sean Collins has a neat deconstruction of Sady's form of criticism on his excellent ASoIaF blog. 

For all the eye-rolling I do when reading Sady's piece, I have to admit I too thought George Martin was a perv when I read Dany & Drogo's first night.

 Hi everyone,

I really liked ADWD. It is not the best, but it set the pieces on the whole board and I 'm really looking out to the development of the history.

Some thoughts that weren't rised yet (or that I didn't notice it).

- I've always thought that Dany had to reunite the Dothraki and use them to swap out the Yunkaii. Now it seems that it will be so, but that's normal: she is the mother of dragons, and her son ("Drogon") is the stallion that rides over the world". I think that dany will discover (from the top of Drogon) that the world is round, and that she can go west (to westeros) by going east ;-) (quaithe rulez). The elegant part is that going to westeros from east and circumnavigating the globe, it will mean that she must pass through the Iron Islands, and I can see that happen with Victarion around...

- The Kettlebacks were creatures of Littlefinger, it will be nice to see how everything plays out for him without anyone in King's Landing. I'm personally an huge fans of lord Baelish, I love how he is one who can value someone because is good at something and not because is noble (like all the lowborn people that he placed as lord of coin). Very "revolutionary french".

- Davos had an interesting conversation about Ned Stark with the lord Rodryck of the sweetsisters. I really do not know why, but I think on Skagos (during the journey in search of Rickon) he will learn some truth about Jon Snow. My gut says it. I just think that is not a coincidence that Martin has him involved, thanks this conversation, with the subplot of Jon's origin.

- What about Jaime and Brienne? She is alive, that means she has agreed to search an kill Jaime. But will she? Any thoughts?

this last point is not relevant with ADWD but.....has anyone noticed that Jon knows that the direwolf of Bran is named Summer, although Jon was already gone when bran named him? I know it could be easily explained (some raven send from winterfell to jon), but it still drives me crazy that this was just left happen without explanation :-P

 I have a question : since throughout the book wildlings and crows have been kinda uniting , will we be able to play wildlings and nights watch agendas together once again? :)

Mortuss said:

Only if you want to get repeatedly stabbed at the end of the game