So, Dany being Azzor Ahai is a red herring?

[total1402]

To take the last point first GRRM has said several times that he doesn't like generic big evil and when challenged about the Others advised everybody (as always) to keep reading.

We know the old gods magic is closely related to the weirwods. The consciousness of the dead greenseers is uploaded into the weirwood net and this is the godhead (paraphrasing hear from the ADWD Bran chapters). If the weirwoods are destroyed we will see the old gods become weaker.

I won't claim that the wights are a separate faction because we simply don't have enough data points. For the same reason I won't say that the two wights went to attack Mormont because they were told to do so. UnBeric and UnCat's motivation is unclear - but at least they get to communicate to us. We know less about the wights - but we've seen three groups act independently of White Walkers, maybe they have standing orders, get direct instructions magically, or have some kind of programming, or maybe some other instinct drives them - revenge for example, maybe the natural tendency is for wights to desire revenge against the people who let them die. To my mind it's unclear.

Given what we've seen of their fighting skill and the poor equipment of the Wildlings what I am sure about though is that if the White Walkers are intent on killing all human life they are doing a pretty awful job of it. It looks more as though they are herding and driving people south with a view to getting rid of them.

At the moment we don't know much about the business of the Others or Azor Ahai. We don't know the whole Azor Ahai story, we don't know the much talked about prophecy - we've only been given a few words of it, we know only a couple of bits about R'hllor. Virtually everything that is said on the forum about these things is an assumption or includes assumptions - isn't it equally nonsensical to believe those assumptions are the truth and that we won't be surprised by how the story develops?

Well it would certainly be a bitter ending, so it would be half way to what he was promised.

He also probably doesn't consider the slavers evil either. Somebody once quoted him as saying that Hitler had his good points and was a more nuanced figure than a big bad. When he says he doesn't do generic evil hes refering to what he sees as a strand in fantasy writing, say, like in the Books of Shannara where evil forces just exist without any other reason for existence. So if he made the Others Snow Elf nazi's then I'd hardly consider them not evil. But by Martins argument he'd be moving away from evil for evils sake.

There are other possible ansawrs. Its more likely the Others are driving the wildlings south to hurl them against their enemies at the wall and the north. Then they can harvest the corpses and the weakened factions easily. Indeed, since they need the nights Watch to be destroyed it makes sense for them to use the Wildlings as unknowing catspaws to achieve this.

Surprise is an over-rated thing. As you say the author hasn't told all the prophecies and with holding info like that isn't really clever; nor is leading the reader astray with red herrings. If you're saying those assumptions are meant to be seen as assumptions, with us holding our breath for the real revelation, then they have no value whatsoever and therefore the writer has merely wasted your time with irrelevent information. Which is one of my issues. It would render apparent foreshadowing in CoK and also foreshadowing the Long Night with the Others pretty pointless. I honestly don't understand the writer scoring points for this when he has a monopoly on information. If it turned out at the 11th hour that the Others are goodies, winter isn't coming, the Long Night isn't going to happen then I'd just feel misled rather than hailing that as a great literary achievement. Its not difficult for a writer to pull the wool over a readers eyes. If anything its quite silly that five out of seven books Martin hasn't established either of his two fantasy arcs which are supposedly the title of the book series; with what does exist being so unreliable that you consider outright discarding it as relevent. It doesn't seem a good thing that you sacrifice that for the sake of a few surprises down the line because the writer has avoided explaining things for five books.

[Lummel]

No, no. All I am saying is the book leads us to make assumptions, but when you pull at it, sometimes there's no support for those assumptions. Personally I recommend being a bit critical and a bit sceptical particularly since we are dealing with unreliable, to greater or lesser extent, narrators who are almost never privileged with the full information and when they are don't share it with us - for example The Ned and Jon's parentage.

You might be entirely right in what you've said, personally I'm just reserving judgement and watching out for how things unfold. :)