After reading A Game of Thrones, I suspected that I would be a bit let down with the second book. What I found with the book was that it tended to be bleak and dreary to the point that at times I wondered when I was ever going to get end the least bit happy and I felt that the book seemed to plod on for pages on end, with the book never seeming to end (felt like I was going through torture myself at times), especially since the first book seemed to be full of action and plot twists coming left and centre.
Being it the case, since I have gotten this far in the series, I am definitely in it for the long haul and will find out who gets to claim the throne, if there is anybody left in the end.