I loved the first 3 books of ASoIaF, and dragged through JSaMN, so I'd recommend the former over the later any time.
Why the qualifier of 3?
I will say that I got about halfway through book 6, and that should tell you I liked the early ones, but grew progressively more irritated by the pace and writing style until I finally just put it down and said "no, never again."
You could do that, but there’s absolutely no sense of closure. I love ASoIaF, but I no longer recommend it to people, because it’s unfinished status is a source of frustration.
Because from book 4 (there's only been 5, tbh) he started going off on tangents and the plot stopped being interesting, for me. So yes, read to the end of Storm of swords, and that's it.
I could swear Dance with Dragons was number 6... must have just felt that way lol. That's exactly what I meant though, tangents and stopped making sense, like he knows how to turn a phrase but the entire arc turns on killing off characters, that's the only thing that seems to keep people hooked. Besides that everything drags and the plot winds all over the place like he doesn't have a clue.
