ASOIAF: What are some plot-holes or flaws in George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire

• Some of the plotting gets a little far-fetched for me.
• Varys and Illyrio's plot—there is just so much that could go wrong with it from the beginning(indeed, it does kind of go wrong.) But it's just so dependant on so many things.
• Littlefinger's plots—that guy is the Mary Sue of evil schemers. Does he ever screw up?
• The story is an inelegant sprawling mess. For the most part I enjoy the sprawl, but the sprawl, which was unintended at the story's conception has had two negative effects:
• It's diluted the urgency of the Others, almost to the point where 'Winter is Coming' has become a joke or an ironic Facebook meme.
• It's created a lot of impatience with the Daenerys storyline—see also Brienne, Tyrion post-ASOS, etc.
• People have done the timeline. Analysis of it shows that GRRM puts some efforts into making travel times realistic and plausible, but when he needs to, he teleports characters:
• Tyrion leaves the Wall roughly at the same time as Catelyn leaves King's Landing. But they meet at the Inn of the Crossroads. There is no way Tyrion could get there that fast. Still this is better done than the show.
• Full moons, half-moons, dark moons, crescent moons. They represent pretty prominent imagery in Martin's fantasy(in all fantasy, actually.) Martin emphasizes the moon…but makes no attempt to match it to the timeline. It seems poetic, symbolic; it adds flavor and timbre to the chapter but that's it. A scene like the one in Fellowship of the Ring where Sam tries to work out how much time they've spent in Lorien is not something that GRRM could write. I do think he's made an effort at it, but I think that he does just enough that the reader doesn't really mind. All these are worldbuilding problems. GRRM's world is wide and detailed--amazingly so. He is an effortless worldbuilder, both here and in his Thousand Worlds sci-fi milieu but it's not deep.
• I will maintain to the day I die , that making Ser Arys a point of view character was a mistake. It added a bit of mystery to Arrianne for ONE chapter. And then Arys died, stupidly. It just seemed kind of mean spirited to me, a joke that isn't funny. That kind of thing is something I expect (and dislike) about the show, but not the books.
• Small details:
• Jeyne Westerlings childbearing hips(in Catelyn's POV) and slim hips(in Jaime's POV) have led to interesting fan theories but have apparently been shot down—it was just a mistake.
• Renly's green eyes in A Game of Thrones, giving way to blue eyes in A Clash of Kings, because, you know, The Seed is Strong.
• Other small details of this ilk.
• The Seed is Strong. Ell Owe Ell. I have the feeling that GRRM is great at history and I enjoy his writing a lot—but a geneticist he is not.
• GRRM doesn't seem to work out magic systems. Magic serves his story, not the other way around. Fine. But it does lead to a lot of questions like: why no more shadow babies after the first two? OK, Stannis' fires burn low, but there's lots of other fires around to light her wick, and apparently Davos' sperm will do so why doesn't Melisandre just get to work making other shadow babies?

Written July 28