Taking a bit of a break to finally put down some thought's after finishing George RR Martin's "A Dance with Dragons".   What follows will be copious spoilers and a discussion of the book so read no further if you don't want to hear mention of what went on.

Spoiler Alert.... you have been warned...

Overall I enjoyed the book but it lacked something for me and convinced me even further that the author has lost the thread of the whole thing.  I think technical aspects of his writing are top notch and the whole thing came off as an incredibly polished use of language, but overall the story lacked the animus of the other books.  Perhaps this can be attributed to a normal second act lull but it's hard to feel that is an adequate summary.  I didn't feel there was much the way of character development, aside from Theon anyway and I struggled with that not being very interesting.

Having had far too many years since seeing Jon, Tyrion or Danny I thought their story was wholly inadequate and rather flaccid.  Danny sitting around lamenting the difficulties of leadership and her aloneness, Tyrion lamenting his lot in life and being enamored with his own cleverness, Jon alone with is burden of duty and not being understood by others.  I feel like we've done all that and in some cases I thought we were past that, at least I know my interest was, so it was hard to feel there wasn't a retrograde of the character arcs here and made the book feel a bit meandering.

That said I'd rather meander with these characters than most others, but still the overall lack of momentum increased the feeling that started to creep in ...