I've come to the conclusion that George RR Martin doesn't write books so much as he writes plot buckets. He has a world inhabited by characters whom aren't always interesting but about whom you want to know more and he keeps adding events to the plot bucket until it tips the scale in the neighborhood of 1100 pages. The text he's produced so far could have been recut in a dozen ways to produce something more akin to a story arc and he seems to have compassion for what this does to the reader.

Good Stuff
*He's becoming a better writer. His phrasing his better, his ability to play with words, draw contrasts between characters, have unique voices, and describe things have all gotten better.

Bad Stuff
*Magic is coming back which has turned the plot into a feast of shoulder shrugging. You have no idea when a sudden reversal will happen making it hard for the attentive reader to be satisfied by noticing something that's going to happen.

*World expansion is handled poorly. New characters and places are being added quickly and the reader is given little chance to explore these places mentally before having to call up their scant knowledge of the free cities or the Dornish lands.

Do not read this series if there are any books of literary or personal worth ahead of it and you don't feel you have have the time to blow on 5k pages plus whatever else he shoots out.