[These notes are very light on spoilers — there's nothing here that would ruin your enjoyment of the novel.]

The long awaited, much anticipated Dance with Dragons has finally arrived, and I finished my re-read of the first four books of the series just in time to dive in. Having now spent the past two and a half weeks reading through it, I have mixed feelings about finishing it.

On the plus side, the early part of the novel advances several plot lines significantly and brings back the great POV characters that were missing from A Feast for Crows, namely Dany, Tyrion, Jon, Arya, and Bran. Bran's adventures advance quickly (with a satisfying twist) but end rather abruptly. Arya's thread is terrific, but there isn't enough of it.

On the down side, Dany sits around and boringly deals with politics for most of the novel (though she does have a couple of great scenes toward the end). Tyrion wanders around a lot, but doesn't really seem to get anywhere, and Jon ends on one of the most contrived cliffhangers I've ever seen.

A few presumed-dead characters turn out to still be alive, which is actually starting to be a problem. Part of what was great about the first three novels in the series were the sometimes unexpected mortal consequences of the plot. Martin has seemingly given up on killing anyone, and he now has too many characters to keep in motion.

A Song of Ice and Fire really needs to start getting into plot-resolution mode. Hopefully the next book won't be half a decade in the making, and hopefully it'll start to bring the many diverse plot threads back together. I'll keep reading this series, but I'm a little bummed out after finishing this chapter.