I just finished Dance with Dragons and yeah, it was pretty disappointing. The pacing was completely shot, with the first half of the book focussing on Stannis who then completely disappears for the remainder of the book. Pretending to kill off the characters is starting to wear thin too; Brienne, Arya, Asha, Tyrion and now (probably) Jon have all had chapters ending with something that should have killed them, only to be carelessly deus ex machina'd back in later on. As gutted as I was to see Robb Stark get it, I was at least thankful that he stayed dead.
Quentyn's storyline was a complete non-sequitur as far as I can see, his meagre contributions to the plot could easily have been dealt with by other characters. Victarion's story could easily have been covered in a single chapter, assuming that his part of the story isn't just going to fizzle out like Quentyn's did.
A lot of the dramatic effect of the earlier books came from events happening off-camera so to speak, like Robb's campaign against the Lannisters. With so many more point of view characters cropping up that effect has been watered down, and we now find ourselves following people we don't really know or care about, mostly as they travel laboriously from one place to another and hatch plans that never come to anything.
