A Dance with Dragons was markedly better than A Feast For Crows. I felt that Book 4 was all over the place and I was a bit worried about where the series was going after finishing Book 4. There is still a lot of bouncing around in Book 5, but Martin did a good job of keeping his story lines fairly clear. This was something that I found lacking in Book 4. I feel that he is falling into the same trappings that Robert Jordan fell into with his Wheel of Time series. There are too many characters and there's almost too much going on to keep track of, but to me, that spells out a great series and it means that there will be many more books in this series to enjoy.

The plot lines that I am most looking forward to in the next book are: Arya, Tyrion, Cersei, Daenarys, and Jamie and Brienne.

Martin is great at delivering shocking twists in his plot lines, and Book 5 proves to be no exception. Those twists all happened at the end of the book, but I suppose that is the point. I'm definitely more than ready to the next book in the series. I just hope that it won't take him five years to produce it.