This is the SoI&F equivalent of the BWB of WoT infamy. While I liked the latter immensely, there were some things I found problematic in it.
- Uneven coverage of different cultures and countries, some of which had all sorts of new details, while others were just a rehash of material already stated in the text.
- Bad illustrations, which clashed with already-formed impressions of the characters’ appearances, to no real purpose.
- Poor narrative framing device. A WoT scholar, writing at some indeterminate point during the events of the novels, who is surprisingly ignorant on current events, considering how much he knows about the organization of the Band of the Red Hand, or the interviews he conducted with Perrin & Faile.

By contrast, this book does basically all that the WoT book did, and in those areas:
- Is fairly evenhanded and consistent in the level of detail given to its areas of discussion, and pretty much covers, in a general way, the entirety of world history relevant to Westeros, and all known countries and cultures, including many not mentioned in the books.
- Far superior illustrations, and few to none of any characters in the current novels (although a picture of a young Tywin Lannister looks eerily like the actor who plays Joffrey on the TV show)
- The narrative framing conceit is of a maester writing a contemporary history/geography work. This also accounts for the inconsistencies in the depth or objectivity of material covered. Events at a greater remove from the central culture in which the writer is immersed, are less thoroughly covered (even the history of the North is not as detailed as of the southern regions, on which a maester would have had access to more sources), and the more remote geographic regions are simply described by repeating accounts from the rare travelers who went that far, such as Lomas Longstrider or Colloquo Votar. Likewise, as the history gets closer to the present, and events in the actual memory of contemporary characters, the history starts to show a definite slant and fawning tone towards, in particular, the actions and policies or Tywin Lannister and Robert Baratheon. But it works, since most readers will already have formed their opinions of those events, and be less interested in reading yet another rehash of them.

There are few maps, and those are highly stylized, as if the sort of thing one might find illustrating a hand-copied manuscript, but since a complete collection of maps has already been published, there is less need for it in this book.

That being said, these are a few things that struck me as odd or interesting:

• The Tullys are apparently descended from Muppets. The three Tullys to hold lordship of Riverrun during the Dance of Dragons are herein named for the first time, as Grover, Kermit & Elmo.

• Martin seems to really like the Blackwoods. They were on the “good” side in just about every conflict, with their arch-rival Brackens almost always being jerks or belligerent hotheads. In almost every comparison or confrontation in the series the Blackwoods come off looking better, in addition to marrying one of the more interesting Stark lords, and Egg from the Dunk & Egg stories. The family is also suggested to have northern origins, having fled a losing conflict in the North to settle in the Riverlands, giving them a few extra cool points above the rest of those southron wimps.

• The Targaryens kind of sucked. Although that was the initial impression one got in reading GoT, from the rather biased perceptions of Aerys & Rhaegar, and Viserys in general, successive revelations seem to balance them out. A more detailed accounting of the histories of their reigns has maybe half a dozen “good” kings, and the rest either incompetent or outright evil. Even most of the good kings, such as Aegon V or Daeron II, had their reigns blighted by rebellions or other crises that resulted directly from their policies.

• Cregan Stark might have been the coolest member of that whole family, which is impressive, considering he didn’t have a pet direwolf, and was never an undefeated warrior king, or credited with building the some of the greatest structures on the continent. As far as Lords of Winterfell who intervened in a civil war, married a Riverlands noble and served as Hand of the King, he blows Ned out of the water. And judging by the point in time when he did all that, he had to have been over 50 when he dueled the Dragonknight, and performed so well that Aemon asserted Cregan was the best swordsman he had ever encountered.

• There is also an explanation for the almost psychotic and relentless nature of the Northern troops as described in "The Princess and the Queen." Apparently that war took place in the autumn, and the Starks skipped the fighting in order to prepare for winter, while the major participants from the North were the town & city dwellers under the Dustins of Barrowtown and the Manderlys of White Harbor, and thus presumably were more superfluous to the business of getting the last harvests in. They were basically looking for a glorious death in battle, as opposed to freezing or starving in the depths of a typical winter, hence their demanding to lead charges, and their persistence in attacking regardless of casualties.

• Rohanne Webber, the quasi-antagonist noblewoman from “The Sworn Sword”, was apparently the grandmother of Tywin Lannister. There is speculation in that story about her possible marriage to a scion of Casterly Rock, which she dismisses, but apparently comes to pass, presumably after Ser Eustace kicks the bucket.

• Egg, or Aegon V, is definitely a case of Martin subverting genre tropes in his reign. In almost any other fantasy series, a guy in his position and with his agenda and background, would have ended up the greatest king of all time, and a spectacular success. That is not what happens. Instead, his own kids screw things up for him with their clichéd defiance of his marital plans for them. BTW, that Targaryen prince whom Olenna Tyrell, the Queen of Thorns, was almost engaged to, was Egg’s youngest (and apparently gay) son.

• Most of the important Houses, even in the South, date from the time of the First Men, such as Houses Tully, Royce and Lannister. The Durrandon Storm Kings and Gardener Kings of the Reach, whose lines were ended by Aegon’s Conquest, also predated the Andals, though all of them intermarried with Andal invaders and converted to the faith of the Seven. Most of the rulers actually brought in Andals to serve them and fight off other Andals bent on conquest. Only in the Riverlands and the Vale of Arryn did the Andals explicitly conquer and establish their rule over the First Men, though a number of First Men rulers & nobles survived as vassals. The impression I got from the novels was that the Andals pretty much wiped out any trace of the First Men’s kingdoms and culture, leaving only the occasional godswood, or odd backwater peasant group.

• Essos is just fucked up. The Dothraki took a giant crap all over most of the civilizations in the central-western part of the continent, there are the Free Cities, most of which have creepy practices like slavery or self-abnegation (which is why Jaquen H’gar is allergic to pronouns) or human sacrifice or murder-cults, the already-seen Ghiscari cities of Slavers’ Bay, and then points farther east, where zebra-riding nomads bind their babies’ skulls to create a race of cone-heads, and there is an island of giant Chinamen.

• Sothorys is basically sub-Saharan Africa, with same kind of problems that Europeans had penetrating that region afflicting the people of Essos and Westeros, leading to the same kind of tales of dreadful curses and monsters.

• The legends of Missandei’s homeland, of a god who protects them from conquerors, actually has some factual basis.

• We still don’t know the sixteen Wonders of the World Tyrion alludes to, as named by Lomas Longstrider. We get a bunch more cited, and can make some educated guesses about the man-made ones, but it’s still not comprehensive.

• Brown Ben Plumm’s family history is can finally be determined from clues in this book. The princess his ancestor wed was Elaena Targaryen, the youngest sister of Baelor the Blessed, who was locked away in the Maiden Vault. Her husband died on their wedding night, and, references Tyrion & Cersei made in aDWD & aFfC, respectively, suggest she gave birth to a son, Viserys, after a suspicious amount of time had passed, leading to the six foot penis reference to which Brown Ben alludes (it would have had to have been long enough to poke out of the grave). Presumably, Aegon IV “the Unworthy” then seized the Plumms’ wealth under the pretext of it being his cousin’s rightful inheritance. Whether he opportunistically took advantage of Elaena’s suspicious paternity claim or was the author of that claim, is not mentioned, but that deprivation would be a good explanation for how a scion of a Westerosi noble family ended up among the mercenary companies of Essos. Elaena is also the ancestor of the bragging undergaoler Rennifer Longwaters, whom Jaime questions in aFfC, through Jon Waters, her bastard son by Alyn “Oakenfist” Velaryon.

• There is a Targaryen family tree in the book (along with Stark & Lannister trees), which, thanks to all the inbreeding actually looks more like knot than a “tree”. It could have been worse, too, if they had included the Velaryons, with whom the Targaryens engaged in a bit of incest, as “The Rogue Prince” shows.

• Casterly Rock is another addition to the often-unique and clever castle designs in Westeros, being a hollowed-out seaside mountain that vaguely resembles a sphinx. So too was the eponymous setting ofThe Rains of Castamere, which was a largely subterranean former mine, with what appeared to be a small castle on the surface.

• Speaking of the Lannisters, there is considerable backstory revealed about Tywin and his immediate family history, and just how his Reyne and Tarbeck foes were involved with the Lannisters (and how “that bitch Ellyn Tarbeck” was at the root of the conflicts, and related to all three families). There are more details and a different perspective given on the relationship between Tywin and Aerys, to what Ser Barristan hints in aDWD, and the already mentioned events of Aerys’ reign put into a chronological context, that gives a much clearer picture of the Mad King. You can see how and where Tywin pretty much was always a dick, but also it is a lot easier to see how Kevan could come to the perception he relates to Tyrion.