However, it very much seems to be setting the characters up for the future, much as Feast was doing. It's a shame that it's taken eleven years and two books to position everything, but I think Martin had to do a lot of replotting and recalculating, because it seems that the five-year gap he originally planned is now gone. I think this had led to a lot of changes in how things will proceed, and he needed to make sure it all fit together and position the characters properly. This is a problem that Wheel of Time appeared to suffer from as well in its latter years (among other problems).

That said, things do happen, and the second half of the book has more plot developments than the first half. Most of the character threads don't end up going anywhere (positioning for the future only), but Jon and Dany's arcs come to high points and cliffhangers by the end. Unfortunately the plot thread I found myself most interested in, that of Winterfell and Theon and Stannis, ground to a halt and is being left until the next book. I think it would have benefitted from a resolution.

Still, all in all, I think that the next book is poised to have more significant plot developments now that the character arcs are back on the same timeline and positioned for more action. Hopefully soon some of the characters will group up a little more so we don't need quite so many chapters from each one in order to describe events. I think Feast and Dance combined suffered from too-many-story-threads syndrome.

Not to spoil anything, but I'm hoping Jaime and Brienne get grouped together, Tyrion and Barriston become part of the same plot line, Victarion gets in there, and then they join back to Dany's, Theon and Asha get grouped, Melisande gets the axe POV-wise, Sansa manages to get meshed into the Winterfell/Theon/Asha plot, and Dorne and Connington get joined.

At that point you'd have Bran in the north, Jon on the Wall, Winterfell POVs (Theon, Asha, Sansa), Riverland POVs (Jaime, Brienne) that eventually circle back to King's Landing (Cersei), the southern plots together (Dorne, Connington, maybe join Sam into them somehow), and the across-the-sea plots coming together (Tyrion, Barriston, Dany, Victarion). Arya could join just about any of them, and I'd like to see her join Dorne/Connington/Sam to give some main character flair to that story.

From there the three northern plots (Bran, Jon, Winterfell) could mesh together, Riverlands, King's Landing, and the South could mesh together, and Dany would make three major locations for the story, tightening things up again. Then of course all three of those would start to intertwine for the endgame.

Since that sounds like a good idea to me, Martin probably has something completely different in mind. :P