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Message: <blockquote data-quote="stevelabny" data-source="post: 2745001" data-attributes="member: 9298">I finally finished it after re-reading the first three (originally read in 2003).I havent been to the ASOIAF boards yet, but just read ths thread and now I'm gonna throw my opinions in the ring.Going in, I wasn't as fearful of the split-book as others as I am NOT a fan of Jon Snow at all. (See previous threads about him being 1> stupid 2> evil and 3> the bad guy.)The main thing I love about the series is the multiple POVs that let you actually see things from all angles and was intrigued by what Cersei might bring to the table. My favorite characters in the series are the supporting cast. Sandor, Bronn, Asha, Loras, Littlefinger, Varys.  Arya was the Stark I was drawn to originally, but I look forward even more to Sansa's transformation.Coming out of the book, I'm not thrilled.The book felt like it had way more recapping of the current situation in every chapter than the prior books, especially the first chapter for each, presumably to catch up the people who didn't bother to reread the other books after such a long wait. Also, I thought there were way too many irrelevant history and heraldry lessons. While all of the previous flashbacks with Ned and Rhaegar bear relevance to the current story, I felt like many of this books sidetreks did not.I think the book suffered from being split in half, because the Jaime chapters would wind up to close to either the Cersei or Brienne chapters and all three would wind up repetitive. But I think I know what I missed most from this book. The humor. Another fun part of the series is that GRRM gets that there is more than one kind of humor.  Dolourous Edd, Hodor, Tyrion and Bronn,  Shagga son of Dolf and more all provide different types of comic relief to the story. This book was missing ALL of the comic characters.Now onto slightly more spoilery stuff. [sblock]Book 3 left Sandor and Gregor on the brink of death.They both "die" off-camera in book 4 never being seen again. Even before I read this thread, I was sure Sandor was alive and Franken-Gregor will rise again but it still came across as lame to give both off-camera deaths.Throw in the possibility of Davos being dead, the contiinued lack of information on the fate of Theon (Asha offhandedly says he's dead, but doesn't provide any other information) , and then the brink of death endings for Brienne and Loras and its a bit much.Can we go back to gruesome death scenes?The absence of Sandor was extremely disappointing to me, made worse by the absence of Bronn. The constant teases to both characters without them actually appearing drove me crazy. Especially since I know that they won't be in the next book either.I was hoping that either Varys or Jorah Mormont would show up somewhere in the book also, but no such luck.  Now the pieces are truly scattered all over the board. The revelation that Cersei was completely and utterly clueless was sort of an unexpected non-twist, but it felt like Catelyn and Eddard revisited. I do so prefer a character with brains.Giving the morons too much page time is a real downer.Brienne is a classic example of secondary character who should NOT be a focal point. She quickly proved to be disinteresting. Sticking her with Podrick and having her walk around in circles for a book (didn't Arya already do that?) didn't help matters any.The Dorne chapters were interesting because Dorne has been such an enigma so far, and the Sand Snakes are almost as cool as the Red Vyper, but again, overall, not much happened.  The Iron Isles chapters suffered from shortage of Asha-attention, and not enough forward movement. The Sam chapters were all one long boat-trip. fine, two boat trips.Not much happened overall, which made the passage of time, or lack thereof,  in this book a real problem for me.  Since AFFC and its other half were supposed to cover the "5 year jump" , it really worries me that barely a year passes.  While Arya and Sansa are both learning, I feel they didn't progress nearly as far as I wanted them too. While Cersei got herself into a whole bunch of trouble, I really felt like that should have been part of the "plot" of the book and not the cliffhanger. And the Citadel prologue and epilogue was a totally pointless tease. (Although I missed the Sarella / Alleras thing, and I almost always catch that trick) My hope for the future remains simple. Any ending other than Jon and Dany live happily ever after.  I want to see Stark vs Stark even more than Lannister vs Lannister (but not quite as much as Clegane vs Clegane) [/sblock]</blockquote>

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