[quote=mbl]
He's not major (Multiple book) character in the series. There's only a couple major character deaths in ADWD and the most major one didn't necessarily remove said character from the series. I really detested these last two books for how much they slowed the series down. AFFC was utter bullshit; ADWD had some pull, but was still not on the same level as the first three books.
[/quote]

To be fair, AGOT, ACOK and ASOS were written as a trilogy. Clearly, that didn't pan out, as we're sitting here with 5 books out of a planned 7. However, it makes some sense if you consider the first three to be a trilogy reworked into a larger series, they're quite cohesive and fast paced compared to the later books. We can only hope that The Winds of Winter will speed things up.