At the end of Feast for Crows, Martin wrote that the book had grown so unwieldy that he had had to split it into two, separating the events in Westeros from those occurring at the Wall and across the Narrow Sea. 
 I hadn't realized this until the very end of Feast for Crows, and had rather enjoyed the element of mystery that the lack of coverage of certain plotlines had received. The total disappearance of Tyrion added an element of suspense that I felt his tangential adventurings spoiled. As for Daenerys - who has largely been in a holding pattern since the events of Game of Thrones - I felt that hearing about her story through third hand reports actually made her plotline far more interesting to me than the more explicit coverage she received in Dance with Dragons. 
 This was also the first time that events were duplicated, narrated by two separate characters. The same scene was played out from Jon Snow's POV as one that was given in Samwell Tarley's POV in Feast for Crows. I don't feel that this added very much that couldn't have been conveyed through other means later in Jon Snow's narrative. 
 All this is just to explain my general complaint about the series: that the pace has slowed right down since Game of Thrones. I get that there's a lot of character development going on, but several characters are just having stuff happening to them for the sake of eating up time before they can be put back into play, and I do think that a lot of content could have been effectively cut without the series being much diminished. Certainly, when I think of how tightly Game of Thrones was plotted, it's frustrating to see Daenerys continue to try to rule cities that don't want her around, or to hear every dragging detail of Tyrion's little boat trip. Again, I get that important (and potentially important) stuff happens, but I do feel like it could have been presented in a more concise manner. 
 That's not to say that I'm unhappy with the book at all. Even though it mostly covered my least favourite characters, I was still glued to the page and eager to read through as quickly as possible. Now I'm just sad that I have to wait five years to continue the series!