Martin is a difficult author to read, not because his books are on the long side (though not, perhaps, when the overall genre is taken into account), but because they are dense. They are filled with personalities and things and emotions running at full boil and you, or at least I, want to scream at just about everyone at least once.
On the bright side, it's the good kind of screaming - the "no, you're making a mistake!" or "Stop being so profoundly human so that you don't make these horrible stupid things happen!" There are a fair number of writers who write characters I want to scream at because they are idiots. The beauty of Martin's characters and story is in how realistic it is - not the grittiness, but the drama of human emotion. That's what made this book feel so long and dense but also what made me enjoy the experience so much.
It's also nice to see that Martin's writing, which was quite good to begin with, is getting even better.