There are lots of intelligent things that could be written about the involved geopolitics of Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, or about how religion is continuously invoked in the books but serves a largely ceremonial and political purpose (more Elizabeth I, less Rumi), but all this will have to wait because GEORGE, WHAT IS UP WITH ALL THE NIPPLES?

A Feast for Crows has to be the most nippletastic book I’ve read since, oh, Candy. It felt like not a page went by that a pair wasn’t being pinched, suckled, eyed, prized, fondled, lopped off (seriously) or otherwise palpated. Boys’ nipples, girls’ nipples, big brown nipples, fulsome nipples, nipples like black diamonds, lactating nipples, male pepperoni-style nipples. All kinds of nipples. It makes me wonder if a retread of Lord of the Rings isn’t in order, with 100% more detail on the hobbit nipples.

More seriously. I do love this series; there’s something beautifully wintry about Martin’s vision and writing in the first few books (start with A Game of Thrones). And his willingness to maim/sideline/ kill off even beloved characters makes the adventures riveting and suspenseful — there are no 11th hour saves, dude will lop off the head (or nipples) of anyone. But I wasn’t feeling this latest installment, which reads in stretches like a forced march. Too many names, too many family trees and “begat”-style histories provided for even minor characters and settings. The characters don’t seem able to stop at an inn without hearing about the 10 owners who had it before. This is where one of Martin’s strengths — his ability to create a fully realized world, layered with history and complexities — became a liability, the story goes flat and discursive under the weight of all this detail. There are also, to use a toy soldier analogy, probably one or two too many armies on the board.

I am — and how’s this for critical discourse? — not sure what to make of all the nipples, except that they are, like the involved histories, something that begins to read like a perfunctory bit of business. I don’t remember so many of them appearing in the first few books, which have minor interludes of sexy and some blunt physical description but nothing, if I’m remembering correctly, that makes the reader feel like she’s standing in the nursing aisle of Babies R Us (get it? Surrounded by nipples? Alternative joke: standing next to Tara Reid on the red carpet).

I should add that there’s a return to form in the last couple hundred pages of the book — everything gets very, very exciting again, enough so that I’ll probably continue the series for a few more books, but with hopes that George pares it down, moves it forward, and keeps at least some of the nipples stowed away.