Another thing I found interesting were some of the structural similarities to the War of Five Kings, where the King's widow ignores his rightful heir in favor of pushing the crown for her son, and the one member of his Small Council who objects is murdered. Then, the sides are pretty much the same as in the Wo5K. Rhaenyra basically has the good guy regions (North, Vale, Rivers [which, as in tWo5K, get stomped flat by armies traversing them] & the eastern islands) and Aegon the bad (Reach, Western hills, Kingslanders, Iron Islands & Stormlands[who only supported Stannis for like, half a book before jumping on the Tyrell-Lannister train again] ). I was a bit thrown by the lack of Dornish involvement until I remembered that Dorne was still a foreign country in this one. I wonder if Martin is trying to say something about cultural issues dividing the Houses, as if this is some long-standing beef between western Westeros and the north and eastern parts of the country, which simply find various excuses to express themselves on differing issues. The story suggests as much, without giving any hint as to the source, as Aegon's faction goes over lists of who took what side at a conference almost 30 years before in order to figure out where the various Houses will come down. Or maybe Martin doesn't have a lot of new ideas, and can't conceive of a whole and fit man serving as the Master of Whispers.

Another thing that annoyed me was that of the three references made that I recall in the main sequence novels to the Dance with Dragons, only one made it into the story. Those were: Rhaenyra being fed to a dragon, a knight trying to slay a dragon using a shield as a mirror (IIRC, there was not even an point in the story where you could say that it COULD have happened - the dragon Tyrion claims was involved in that incident doesn't get into many fights), and twin knights of the Kingsguard killing one another in battle. The twins are mentioned and cited as adhering to different sides, but I don't recall any mention of their fates.