Joe Abercrombie seems to work the word “gormlessly” into all of his books. I think it’s a running gag at this point - I could swear he writes entire characters just so one can smile gormlessly.

Editors are too afraid to say to GRRM “Hey, this is crap. Trim it down.”

You can read the first three pages and the last three pages of any chapter from any of his books and figure out what happened in between.