There's some excellent stuff. Daenerys Targaryen rules an occupied city along Slaver's Bay, where her desires to do the right things there, and conflicts with corrupt or grasping local nobility, constantly interfere with her planned return to claim the throne of Westeros. There's a few too many suitors and not enough of her. But the dramatic and exciting resolution is wonderful - surely written for the screen as you'd expect from a screenwriter. It just makes you wonder why we wasted all that time leading up to it with all her endless suitors and all the endless intrigue.
In the North, Stannis Baratheon's forces endure extreme hardships as they march through severe storms to assault the ruins of Winterfell, held by the despicable Boltons and Freys. Both sides face internal dissensions and intrigues. The descriptions of the trials of the starving army at march are great. I'm sorry, I like some darkness, but the prolonged descriptions of even more sadistic cruelty by the Freys and Boltons disgusted me, and are unnecessary. They already broke hospitality and slaughtered their prospective in-laws at a Wedding Feast. Their sigil is a flayed man. We get it, they aren't nice guys - I don't need pages and pages of twisted sex, mental and physical torture to prove that.
Anyway, do we get to a battle? No. All that dramatic buildup, and all we get is a 2nd hand report of the results of the battle, via a letter to Stannis' wife.
Tyrion the Imp is a fascinating character. There are glimpses of his character continuing to develop - will he end the series as a nihilistic cynic or not? But most of the book he moves around aimlessly, almost literally travelling in circles as he is exchanged from one camp to another. There are pages and pages of repetitive descriptions of all of his feasts. A nice contrast from the starvation of others, but it seemed like much was cut and pasted from a chapter 100 pages before. Frankly, the Imp became borderline boring in this one.
At the Wall, Jon Snow deals with the unwanted presence of Stannis, plus preparing the realm's defenses for Winter. He makes many interesting and controversial decisions. And fights the temptation to get involved to assist his family in politics. But it's all prep. Nothing actually happens. When the movie or TV series arrives, no Others will be harmed in the making of the picture. More actually happens at the Wall in the prologue in the very first book, than in this entire book in which Jon Snow is a major character.
Many other characters appear. Too many. The Onion Knight is pretty much a waste of time. Some Dorne characters take up some time, mainly for naught. I like the Sand Snakes, wish we saw more of them.
At the start of the book is a major magical revelation - "there's this magical thing you can do in Westeros". Not an unexpected one, something I always suspected for Arya, but made explicit. Almost nothing happens with it. Arya herself (my favorite character) makes a couple of brief appearances. Unfortunately, what she is up to appears to have almost zero relevance to any of the main plotlines.
As expected, a major character unexpectedly dies. One of the major charms of the series. I literally cried when Ygritte died way back in book two - rare for me to do just reading a book. But this time I found the death unsatisfying, undramatic, and unbelievable.
Oh yeah - there's way too much needless backstory. Every little event, like tying a shoe, brings back tragic memories of some lost battle ages ago. With countless names of dead nobles, better forgotten.
For an even more negative (but clever) review, see this.
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