Agree. But. See below. I'm pretty sure he's admitted to this. -- I like the complexity of GoT, it's fun. I like the Easter eggs most of all -- much like rationalist fiction, it's "solvable." We have a lot of fun over at r/asoiaf doing predictions. Frankly, I'm mostly interested in reading book 6 and 7 to see which stuff we got right. I also hate the complexity. It feels at times shoehorned, but then so does learning about history. Martin is a student of history. Pretty much every little incident in GoT is modeled on event that happened to Eleanor of Aquitaine or Hannibal or some interesting fucker. This is neat. Martin's commitment to realism is bound to hurt his narrative. Realism dictates that he make us love a castmember and then tear their character to shreds while killing them off. It makes the novels unique, not excellent. I can name any number of fantasy series I enjoy reading more, and that's not just because of my opinion of Martin's often-trite prose, but I really, truly don't know how Game of Thrones is going to end -- and that's pretty unheard of. -- The show is completely hit or miss. Some actors are incredible -- Tywin, Arya -- some are lackluster. The showrunners have made a lot of questionable decisions, but they've also improved on a few things. This season's episodes have been great, decent and okay in that order so far, but certainly all worth watching for the spectacle.In addition, due to the narrative structure of GoT, each main-line voice that is killed off must be replaced by new characters, or face a dwindling cast of main-thread characters and PoV. GRRM has obviously chosen against the latter. In fact, the main-thread characters have increased. On top of that, GRRM has at times introduced characters whose narratives only appear once in the story or very sporadically. This last bit causes me to again care less about individual characters because I no longer know who's important or who is coming back. Each new main-line character must cultivate a relationship with the reader; the reader must find either the story, PoV, or the narrator appealing, or else why bother reading that section? When this relationship is hastily cultivated, not cultivated (by only having one instance of it), or not thoroughly cultivated, the reader will lose interest. I feel that GRRM fails to realize this in later books as he begins introducing a great number of new main-line characters who I felt (as a reader) I had no or little established reason to care about.
I think GRRM got overswept with his Grand Brilliant Idea and began throwing in more extraneous detail and story than was necessary.