The dude just had so many weird takes. Catelyn was bad, Gilly was bad, Jaime lost his accent midway through the series. Barristan and Drogo sounded like doddering old me.

I used to get of stuff off abebooks, but like you said, their shipping has gotten outrageous in the last two years.

For me, I found that because of the wildly inconsistent quality of books it made it difficult to want to continue. You never knew if you were going to get epic world building, low stakes shenanigans, brutal battles, or characters ripped from legends.

On top of that, the second book was so good that the next several just couldn’t match the excitement and tension generated from it.

For Want of a Nail is written as a history book from an alternate history where Burgoyne won at Saratoga. It’s meticulously sourced with hundreds of fake sources created from the world. And an afterword even accuses the author of having a national bias.