It's weird. After seasons (and books) of meandering storytelling, the pacing is accelerating and converging. Strands of stories, like Jorah and Sam, do feel way too rushed. The weird thing is that the closer it moves to its finale, the more conventional it seems to become. Where once anything could happen, now less and less can. This is what I like about TUC, Bakker manages to amplify the ambiguity instead of things getting all onesided and predictable.