Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Having read most of the reviews, I think it's important to consider this novel's place in the series' milieu. The problem most people who didn't enjoy the book seem to bring up is that "not much happens." This is an accurate assessment. Pound for pound, there is not as much going on in the foreground of this book as there has been in the previous novels. However, one has to remember what has passed to this point. Royalty and commoners have been killed by the thousands, and the resulting desolation across Westeros is the focus of this novel. The emptiness of the land is palpable. This is the long autumnal dusk before the impending snows. We must remember that this is a time of sorrow and of opportunism. No great battles should or even could be fought. This is an exhausted people, stuggling now against the real enemy - the comming winter. This is not a novel that bends to the whim of the reader. It is instead one that spends some of the capital that the series has earned to this point, demanding that the reader pay careful attention to the little breadcrumbs that Martin lays along the way. Hints about the location of Tyrion, the plottings of the Dornish throne (including the identity of the betrayer), and the fate of the members of the Brotherhood provide delicious morsels for those willing to invest the time and patience into the book. And more, Martin (I expects) demands the attention of the readers to the rich tapestry of royalty, to their individual interests, and to their plans for the future. Without such understanding, the later activities will seem so much random action, rather than what they are - the inevitable result of careful and considered plotting by the cast of thousands. The novel is not a feast for lovers of high drama and fast paced action. Instead, it is a mournful sigh, taken after untold bloodshed with the knowledge that there is only more bloodshed to come. Its characters are unspeakably sad, nearly void of hope, yet knowing they must rise if they are to survive the coming winter. I will not say it is my favorite of the series. More than once I've remarked that it is, at times, more like reading an encyclopedia than a novel. It was not uncommon to cross-reference some name or description with something somewhere else in the book or even in one of the previous books. My advice to the reader - get used to it. There is so much going on in this book just out of the sight of the characters. The smart reader will realize when Martin is dropping hints that you should give further thought to what is really going on. Anyone can easily devour and enjoy the other books in this series. It will take especially studious readers to appreciate this novel to the same degree. In its place, it is an appropriately somber addition to the world of Westeros and will, I think, when viewed against the series as a whole, be seen for what it is, for what it must be - the dark quiet moment before the the storm.