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  == Reception ==
  Though ''A Feast for  Crows'' was the first novel in the sequence to debut at number one on ''The New York Times'' Best Seller list, it received more negative reviews in comparison with the previous novels in the series.  Martin's decision to halve the plot in terms of character and location was highly controversial; many critics felt that this novel consisted of characters that people were less interested in.  ''Publishers Weekly'' said, "Long-awaited doesn't begin to describe this fourth installment in bestseller Martin's staggeringly epic Song of Ice and Fire. .... This is not Act I Scene 4 but Act II Scene 1, laying groundwork more than advancing the plot, and it sorely misses its other half. The slim pickings here are tasty, but in no way satisfying." Salon.com's Andrew Leonard said in 2011, "I don't care how good a writer you are: If you subtract your three strongest characters from your tale, you severely undermine the basis for why readers fell under your spell in the first place. It didn't work. But there was also a sense in ''A Feast of Crows'' that Martin had lost his way. The characters whose stories he did tell wandered back and forth across a landscape devastated by war and oncoming winter, but didn't seem to be headed anywhere in particular." Remy Verhoeve of ''The Huffington Post'' noted in their 2011 ''A Dance with Dragons'' review that the fifth volume had to "repair some of the damage done by ''A Feast for Crows'', which frankly felt as if it was written by a ghost writer at times." Both books had "the same structural problems", being "sprawling and incoherent", and in her opinion ''Feast'' has the less interesting characters. ''The Atlantic'' Rachael Brown said in their ''A Dance With Dragons'' review that ''Feast'' was "bleak and plodding" and "sorely missed" Daenerys Targaryen, Tyrion Lannister, and Jon Snow.