I’m getting a little tired of this series now. There’s only so many times I care to read about rape, heraldry, people misliking things and characters who insist on reciting the frankly unimaginative stories of their lineage at the least provocation, regardless of narrative or external relevance. After so many thousands of pages it would be a miracle if Martin’s tale hadn’t lost focus to some extent, but at this point it’s getting so bloated that I’m afraid it won’t be able to drag its overstuffed carcass as far as the purported seventh and final book in this saga.

As is standard with this series, the book opens on some characters the reader either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about (or, if Martin is really on form, both). In this case Martin outdoes himself by including two different sections of new/dull characters vaguely waffling on about some of the innumerable people and places which have already appeared in the series. After roughly 60 pages of this the Ice and Fire saga proper finally continues.

Unfortunately it does so at the series’ usual funereal pace. For many hundreds of pages nothing much happens. The characters presumably feel this dearth of action themselves, since they as usual are reduced to discussing possible future plot developments longingly and at great length. Cersei mainly storms about wishing she could slap whichever human being is nearest to her at any given moment, and her chapters are marred by Martin having to resort to the “and then I realised I was naked” dream trope to clumsily indicate her increasing feelings of vulnerability. Jaime continues to be a self-pitying bore about the hand thing, which has apparently rendered him completely useless as a character or human. Brienne’s insufferably boring questing continues, whilst Martin misses no opportunity to tell us how incredibly unattractive she is and how much everyone wants to rape her. Arya continues to visit random places. Samwell continues to be a coward. Jon Snow continues telling Samwell he isn’t a coward, even though cowardice is in fact Sam’s only characteristic, unless you count being fat. Also, a lot of stuff suddenly happens in Dorne. This new setting means yet another slew of characters thrown into the story, and also for some reason necessitates one of the various knights in whom I am not interested describing continually the immense size of his new girlfriend’s nipples. Not that I object to his personal sexual preferences, but I am at a loss as to why they should be so strongly insisted upon in the text.

As usual, a significant portion of the book consists of character reminiscence rather than the furtherance of the current plot. I don’t object to this in principle, but in practice it results in a lot of turgid sentimental prose of a highly-clichéd nature, in the vein of: “When she had been presented to him, Cersei had almost drowned in the depths of his sad purple eyes. He has been wounded, she recalled thinking, but I will mend his hurt when we are wed.” I suppose this romantic effusion can be forgiven the 10-year-old Cersei, but I am unable to find any justification for Martin’s use of phrasing that could equally grace any Mills and Boon novel, and probably has.

Finally, as always, the last few chapters suddenly throw up various cliff-hangers and plot developments before breaking off abruptly and leaving the reader with too little information to form a solid opinion of the story arc as a whole. Then Martin himself interrupts to assure his loyal readers that the next volume will treat them to another half-dozen descriptions of the same series of events, told from the point of view of every character not included in this text. This endless milking of Martin’s one bid idea is no doubt making him and his publishers plenty of money, but it’s beginning to severely test my patience.