A Dance with Dragons

I feel a strong sense of achievement at finishing this book which perhaps is not surprising considering it took me 2 full months (and various attempts to read it beforehand).

This is not usual of me so I will put it down to the flow of the book. The first two thirds was painfully slow with a high number of POVs and story lines some of which seemed entirely unnecessary. In fact, one POV is Quentyn of Dorne whom we follow throughout his journey from Dorne to Meereen for many chapters in his quest to marry Daenerys. In the end he gets burned. I can't see why GRRM has thought it's a good idea to introduce, write hundreds of pages about and then kill off a character when they do nothing remarkable to add to the story. There are more rather pointless additions to story line which do nothing for it but to make the sense of achievement upon completion even higher. 

I suppose GRRM's fondness for detail and lists has been oft mentioned so I needn't venture into details on that as well. 

The last third has been significantly less painful to read. I suppose this is because the focus has been on a few central characters and the story gets moving again. 

I'm sadly bought in to the story and will probably continue to read the series but the last two books haven't even been close to being good.