My response to it was pretty much as follows.
Prologe: That was nicely creepy, but really, chasing people then slaughtered by monsters? How very identical to every other epic fantasy prologe ever.
Pg 18: A direwolf? Seriously? Owie.
pg 57: Wow, that was a great image to end a chapter with. I think I trust this Martin guy and am eager to keep reading.
pg 85: Oh, there’s the killing everybody told me I’d like. Yay!
pg 229: This is going nowhere good for the seven kingdoms
pg 423: Tyrion is my favorite. And Daenerys. And Arya. And Jon. I hope Sansa has to marry Joffrey, though. She deserves him.
pg 761: Beautiful. I am so desperately hoping she burns the whole world. Except when I’m reading somebody else’s POV.
pg 807: If Martin dies before finishing the series, I’m going to say mean things about his corpse.
This gave me all the immersive trusting the writer experience I kept hoping for Wise Man’s Fear to knock me over the head and give. Everybody who said I’d love the way Matrin treats his characters, you were so unspeakably right.
Anaea Lay 
I absolutely loved Tyrion in this series. The idea of having an intelligent dwarf in a world where the only men who are considered to be worth anything are those who are excellent in battle is brilliant. Tyrion is a fantastic character throughout all of the books in the series.
I also agree with your last comment. I’m not very optimistic about this series ever actually being finished (lets face it, he didn’t update the page on his website for this series for over 3 years). I think it was in a forum on Amazon, but I said that for the Wheel of Time series (which I also really enjoy and highly suggest if you enjoy fantasy novels) Robert Jordan died and the next book still came out faster than the fifth book in Martin’s series.
If you enjoyed this book, I’m sure you’ll enjoy the rest of the books in the series as well.
I read Wheel of Time up through the eighth book, which was all that had come out at the point, then realized I’d been bored for a while. Never got around to picking up the next book when it came out and am unlikely to go back to the series at this point. This is perhaps not as damning as it might seem, since I did read the whole Sword of Truth Series, which sucked with irredemable suck. And yet, I read it.
Perhaps because I haven’t waited four years for the next book, but I’ve got a lot more patience for Martin than most of his fans seem to. Four years doesn’t seem unreasonable to me for a book that size, and updating websites isn’t really his job. And comparisons to Jordan aren’t fair: Brian Sanderson is frighteningly prolific. He missed his calling by being born after the dime novel era where turning out a book a week would make you a fortune.
I haven’t read any of Jordan’s books (I’ve been warned away), but it sounds like Martin puts a lot more effort into revision and consistency and making sure that modifications in earlier books are reflected when he updates the drafts of later books, which combined with the length of the books makes the time he spends not unreasonable. I do hope he finishes the series without dying first, but at least there are enough drafts done where someone can put something together if he does die.
Oh good, I don’t have to kill you now.
Also, I have the next three books on the shelf downstairs, and Dances with Dragons is in the mail.