As much as people seem to hate this book, for some inexplicable reason, I seem to love this one. Why? I don't know myself. True, the Cersei chapters were just . . . I don't know, not to my taste. I feel as if she was too overprotective of her children and couldn't see past their wrongs. The way you her her tell it, Joffrey is a saint -- which he is not. The other problem that I had was Brienne's mindless wandering through Westeros. I like her as a character, but . . . meh, walking around with a fruitless goal in mind is tiring to plough through. I really have no problem with this book aside from these, though I half expected somebody slaughtering all the Freys with all that talk of people losing respect for them.

Anyway, my personal favorites were the Arya chapters, Jaime's, and Samwell's. They seem to . . . flow for me, very well in fact -- especially Arya. Whenever I see her name, I go: "oh God, yes! It's Arya again!" and basically fangirl. I also love the chapters that were concerned about the ironborn, though that just may be my love for anything Greyjoy getting in the way. I particularly like the touch about how the ironborn were all baptized: by being drowned then revived again by some crude form of CPR. While it is sort of insane, crazy, and psychotic, I like it . . . it somehow captures the essence of the ironborn in a way that I never knew I wanted to be captured.

Just so you know I totally respect Martin's decision of cutting the story into two books. It is already thick without the Dany, Jon, or Tyrion chapters. Putting them in would somehow ruin the flow that it has for me. So, that's that. Now I'm off to read the final book.