A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin

The Song of Ice and Fire series is the only time I have ever watched a TV series based on the books without reading the books first.  I love Game of Thrones and couldn't see myself slogging through five 1,000+ page books before I allowed myself to give in and see what the fuss was about.  Surprisingly, none of the books have felt like I was laboring through them-until this one.  Originally George R. R. Martin had intended books 4 and 5 to be one book but when he realized how massive that story had become he decided to split them into two different novels whose story lines ran parallel to each other.  Feast for Crows follows the characters in the South (King's Landing and the war in Westeros and Dorne mainly).  The 5th book follows the northern story line (the wall, beyond-the-wall, and Daenerys across the narrow sea).  Sadly that means that book four is almost completely lacking in some favorite characters (Tyrion, Dany, Jon Snow).

As this book is geographically divided it focuses a lot on the war in Westeros, Brienne's search for Sansa, and Cersei's scheming. While this is not a bad thing, it is not nearly the level of excitement of the previous three novels.  I think it is inevitable that every series has an installment that suffers from middle book syndrome and I think that this book is it for A Song of Ice and Fire.  I repeat, this is not a bad book.  It just gets bogged down a bit because it has to include all the necessary details to move the story along.  Interestingly enough, this book deviated a bit more from what the tv series has shown which is fine.  I'm curious to see how much further they diverge as the series goes on.  Normally I do not read two huge books back to back because it is just mentally draining to read several big books in a row, but since I missed the other half of the characters missing from this installment so much I am going to soldier on with A Dance With Dragons.