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Sargai wrote:

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Avelyn wrote:

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Enjoy the first one, since that's really the best one. I mean, I did like the others, as well, but Martin goes off on many tangents and begins introducing so many characters that it's hard to keep up with, at times. IMHO, the fourth one is the weakest, with the first one being the best.

Right now, I'm only about 1/4 of the way through the newest one, Dance with Dragons, which is the fifth. It's pretty good, so far, but I still hold with my initial remarks.

Beyond the whole "losing the story" thing that he will never admit to, Martin's biggest problem has always been bloat. A Game of Thrones is the shortest book of the lot and though bloat is in evidence, there is much less of it than what can be found in the succeeding books. It can damn near be called tightly written. With each release after it, the bloat cranks up a few notches and the books get a little longer. And then you get A Feast for Crows, which had its high points, but cannot be forgiven for so much of the book being devoted to a character running around like a chicken with its head cut off* and ending that long, trudging story arc on a fricking cliffhanger. Certainly the weakest. The best of them? For me, A Storm of Swords. It was filled with bloat, yeah, but the events of the book make up for it. As for A Dance with Dragons... I have passed it at the library several times, but I feel not desire at all to read it. Perhaps because it has been six years since I last read one of the books and just don't give a damn anymore.

* A character running around like a chicken with its head cut off may not be an accurate assessment for some people. I know that those chapters were political in nature and that they were meant to show what the war has done to the Riverlands, how it has affected the poorer folk who live there. That is all fine and good and normally, I would treasure that sort of thing. Had it been written as a novella and published separately, I think the story arc would have worked well and that it would have been more accepted by the fans of the series. Instead, it was inserted into a book that was already being split because of its length and mostly populated by minority favorites. Negative point + negative point + negative point = unfavorable outcome. It is a strong story arc by itself, but put it in the book and it turns weak, feels pointless, because it is not working to advance the plot. It feels like a stalling method, a way to pad the story.