Agreed. His editor seems like a fan girl to me; she did well with the previous books but this one should have sent some red flags to any editor. Personally I really like the book, it's very good IMO, but could have been much better. Martin has described his personal editing process as cutting fat but leaving the muscle, for instance.
http://grrm.livejournal.com/217066.html
But I'd argue some of the muscle needed to be cut, and an editor is typically the one to do it. The main offender is Dany; I'm pretty much fine with all the other POVs overall. Dany simply has too many chapters. Much of them consist of repetitive events like Lorraq asking Dany to open the gladiator pits, and a cumbersome city legislative process. The editing goal should have been to get Dany to the pit in fewer chapters; that fixes much of the problem. The faster she leaves the faster Barriston takes over; he had some of the absolute best chapters in the book, and has two amazing chapters in TWOW that should be in ADWD. Just eliminating five Dany chapters could have made room for two Barriston chapters, two Victarion, and one more Tyrion chapter - all of which relate to the battle.
Of course an even deeper editing process could cut/consolidate some Jon and Tyrion chapters too, creating more room for the Mereen battle and getting closer to the Winterfell battle. I don't think the Winterfell battle could be added back without greatly increasing the size of the book (winter slows everything down) but adding Theon's TWOW chapters would get us closer to it.
I really want to read them but I've been too lazy to track down the other things they appear in.
