We'll pool our dinner money up here for the bigger boys to take.

Obviously, SPOILERS MAY LIE WITHIN, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK

I finished A Dance With Dragons last night. Took fucking ages, but I really loved every page. I just can't think of any comparable work of world-building in any medium - even the Lord of the Rings, for all its appendices, doesn't feel like a real world in the same way that Westeros/Essos does. In terms of characters, there's barely a strand in it that I didn't look forward to (Bran was obviously quite dull, if intriguing, and I'm not actually as enamored with Jon Snow as a lot of people are). My only issue was his Goosebumps-style chapter endings which promised near certain death to a character ("He sank beneath the waves, and felt the water fill his lungs") then would reappear in the next chapter all fine and dandy.

Also, I think I want to write a big essay on 'The People's History of Westeros', and talk about why we never see action from the point of view of the "smallfolk".

Please talk about rumours, fan theories, and all that stuff here, I'm going to be lost in the Wikis for a while.