Steel_Wind
Legend
Agreed! The Braavosi are especially interesting.
I'm reading through the series for the first-time, so I didn't have to suffer the lengthy wait for A Feast for Crows. As a result, I think I'm enjoying it a bit more than I might otherwise. I can see why long-time readers were a bit disappointed, although the fairly common criticism that almost none of the main characters are present is surprising to me. I think at least half the surviving main characters are present.
One thing I've found off-putting about this one, though, is the deviation from titling the chapters by the character's name, and instead labeling them "The Soiled Knight" and so forth. I don't recall GRRM doing that in any of the previous three.
Jon, Tyrion and Daenerys are widely percevied to be the "major" characters of the series in terms of the overall Metaplot of the novels.
While the presence of many other characters in AFFC was enjoyable and quite cool, their absence from A Feast for Crows was a sore point for the vast majority of fans. Don't get me wrong, it was still a good read -- but I don't think it was up to par with the previous three novels.
While AFFC was released in November 2005, A Storm of Swords, the last novel to feature Jon Dany and Tyrion was released in November 2000.
It is now the first day of Summer, 2011. So yeah, that is a LONG FRIKKIN TIME to wait for the story to resume. When I left Jon Snow on the Wall at the end of A Storm of Swords when I read the book for the first time, 9/11 had not yet happened and Bill Clinton was still President. (Admittedly, Willie's bags were packed and Dubbya was behind the wheel in the U-Haul in the driveway, honking the horn, but still...)
The world has, literally, changed during that time span.
*Sigh* Three weeks from today and the wait finally comes to an end!!