I felt the books started off quite well but rapidly ran out of pace - there was just a lack of big picture development. It had a lot of potential. I gave up af

I felt the books started off quite well but rapidly ran out of pace - there was just a lack of big picture development. It had a lot of potential. I gave up after book 5 (I think) but I only really enjoyed books 1 and 2 (and parts of book 3) and couldn't face another few hundred pages of "will anything interesting actually happen any time soon?". The characterisation got dry very rapidly (almost all of the characters are unsympathetic and boring) but that wasn't so much of a problem in the first couple of books because plot and world building drove them much more. By book 3, the world building was pretty much done and the plot seemed to become much more formulaic and the "big picture" development just got frozen it seemed. The series turned into something different which I didn't want to read. I tried watching the TV series but gave up much earlier as I didn't think it translated properly - in TV characterisation is much more important because it's what drives shows so the flaws showed much earlier. It didn't help that the acting was pretty bad too (who knows whether because of actors or script - probably both).