I think Mereen is just used as a catchall term. It's more than thatI don't think the issue is Meereen. Martin claimed that he solved the issue in ADWD by adding Barristan as a POV. I think the problem is he has too many characters and his writing has gotten significantly more ponderous and bogged down by lore building over narrative. He's probably sitting on a massive amount of pages for TWOW without the plot moving towards a climax that sets up the final book. Perfect example: the Arianna sample chapters. Two chapters of her traveling to meet Connington and "Aegon." She finally arrives at the end of the second chapter only to learn she can't meet Aegon because a battle is about to begin. In the first three books travel typically meant one chapter. There's no reason for her to potentially have three chapters before getting to actually talk to the characters she set out to meet. Then when you consider the battle was supposed to be in ADWD...we could be talking about 200 pages of TWOW before this battle happens. That's just insane to me.
There's Davos having to find Rickon, Brienne and Stoneheart/Brotherhood, Stannis being trapped by Ramsay's army, Griff, Jon being dead, reviving and getting to Winterfell however he does and on and on
Then there's Euron
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So yea the nikka put too much on his plate
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George must've been geeked up when he wrote Feast because he just casually introduced enough characters and plot elements for 6 more books and thought nothing of it
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