Yes, he’s told us repeatedly that “winter is coming” and it’s still coming…I figured that the ultimate point would be that the various people claiming the throne would eventually need to put differences aside to fight the Others, but I’m 1/6th into book four and there’s not even the slightest hint yet that it will ever happen.
At this point we’re not even sure what the Others are. Some sort of vague undead is the best I can come up with.
Do you read the ASOIAF thread on the Something Awful forums (aka “the bad thread”)? If not, that image was created by one of the posters there and I’m pretty sure they have the full-sized image up in one of their recent posts.
I lurk there. It is…an entertaining place. (I’d add an emoticon to temper that sentence, but there is no emoticon to express what one could feel about that thread. It is large; it contains multitudes.) Anyone who hasn’t finished the series should stay the hell away from it, though.
The winter that is coming is spending the next 40 years slowly dying while yearning to finish the best fantasy series ever, but you can’t.
Having a central plot that hasn’t really even gotten started by the fifth book in a (putative) seven book series is a lot like not having a central plot at all.