[quote name='Anexanhume']I'm not quite sure what you mean. I think Martin is scared of the high fantasy label because it is ridden with tropes and other expected things he doesn't want or feels he needs to conform to. [/quote]
My point is that when you start getting accolades, people start expecting more of you. For the most part, he's avoided a lot of the usual pitfalls, so he gets some credit there.
It's all fine and good until you set up nearly two books full of 1) uninteresting characters and/or 2) made up characters that no one gives a shit about, which he just did. I'm being a bit unfair/hyperbolic here, yeah, but I can't stand the on-the-fly generation.
Did anyone really give a shit about Quentyn?
Does anyone give a shit about the people Tyrion ends up running around with?
Did Dany do a damn thing AT ALL in the fourth or fifth books?
I'm not sure what you mean about Stannis.
In the fifth book, he begins a huge march in the dead of winter, and people are dropping like flies. Pack animals run off and they have to chase them down. People are miserable without food and trodding around in unforgiving wilderness. What should have taken X days (I want to say ten) ends up becoming thirty, and then Martin didn't even finish saying what happened to them.
I.e., a really good allegory for the way the story is going so far - a bunch of details all bungling over each other and halting the whole story because oh look, let's talk about some other family from the far south that barely figure into the story until Martin says so even though they were ignored up until some page.
Dothog I'm ignoring because the mofo likes all that shit with Dorne and the Ironborne and all the other cultures that take up 20% of the novel but add 0% to the story.
Don't make me hash up PM-given details in this discussion, I see you deliberately not bringing them up in here.