While Book 5, Part 1 of The Song of Ice and Fire series continues the stories of characters that readers who have stuck with the series have come to care about, the author seems to have lost his way a bit. New characters? Do we care? We want to again embrace the stories of the characters with whom we are familiar. The world in which they live has been thoroughly and colorfully imagined, described at great length throughout the books. Great length, however, is becoming a handicap. Another part of Book 5 follows this one and a Book 6 is promised. All this verbage could be self-defeating. Martin is a fabulous and engaging writer, no question, but he seemed to care less in Book 4 about the tautness of his tales and has only partially recovered in this book. The task he set himself in creating a complete fantasy world seems to have begun to overwhelm him and his solution of choice has been to produce more words than are really needed. I have also been disappointed with his inclusion of common modern expressions that seem out of place in his world, e.g., "are we there yet?" I noticed this little idiosyncracy in Book 4 as well. Such slips are jarring and out of place in a fantasy epic. I have not finished reading this book and may be rewarded at the end with improvement in the author's style and plot choices, but I'm not holding my breath. Reading the book has become a slog through mud, really quite tiring. I'm hoping for better in the future books.