This was by far the longest book thus far. I'm not sure about page count but reading time was way longer on this book than any of the previous books. 
 It was good to see the characters that were lacking in the last book back. I had a bit of a hard time adjusting the the first half of the book in the fact that we were learning things that we were already told in the previous book. I understand why Martin cut the books into two and the concept, but it made it a tad boring. (Though not boring in the sense that I didn't want to read. More boring in the sense that I skimmed through some parts.) 
 I enjoy reading Jon and Dany most so it was nice to see them in the bulk of the book. There are a lof of things that happened or I'm still waiting to happen that I was disappointed in that involves those two. 
 For any conspiracy theorists, did you catch the bit about the Tower of Joy? Makes you wonder about Jon.