From where I am (was) sitting, my partner watched it straight through and I enjoyed sampling. Each scene appeared to be largely identical from a plot-delivery perspective. Just a bunch of people sitting around some table (or other appropriately sff contraption), talking about what characters who aren't present were/are doing, and never showing those characters doing the things. Everyone seemed to be constantly looking for someone else, whether in dreams or futures or what have you, and it felt like the opposite of compelling.

Granted, I'm sure that it's better than seasons 1&2... but those are extremely low bars.

To dig deeper, it sounds like this is a season where people who read and liked the books got to see their favorite characters not making fools of themselves. As this is rare enough in drama these days, I'm loathe to critique the sentiment (looking at you Netflix Witcher).

I guess I just see it differently. I keep on saying that I have to view this as a separate turning of the wheel, where everyone has been sniffing paint.

I don't really feel that anyone encompasses the character they are portraying, maybe if we are really lucky they take the most obvious surface level characteristic and make that the entirety of the character. They are so busy cutting content out to make door stopper books fit in less than 8 hours of TV while cherry-picking the exciting scenes that there is an increasing amount of disconnection and disjointed story telling. Instead of deliberate action the characters are just stumbling around having things happen.

It feels to me like they are adapting from chapter summaries not the books. Which would maybe be acceptable back in the 1990s/2000s but these days we have stellar adaptations like the Expanse to show how it can be done correctly.