The Frakking Others . . . Or, Game of Thrones Reading Update

I've been reading through George R.R. Martin's fantasy epic Game of Thrones.  It's not the first time and once more I'm reaching the part where I just want to put it down.  You know that part, where nothing happens and people whine about how much they'd rather being doing something else, another kid starts crying, or the dwarf dispenses pithy words of wisdom?  Oh, wait.  That's all of it.

**MINOR SPOILERS**

I'm about 250 pages in and so far I have discovered that despite being reared in the far north by a father as cold as ice and hard as iron, the Stark children sure do cry a lot.  In fact, I counted.  In nearly every perspective in which they appear, they try (unsuccessfully) to stifle tears.  They've been teased, bullied and frightened.  One has been shoved from a tower, another has had her wolf executed (by her father, no less), and another had her friend ridden down and hacked apart.  So maybe they have a reason to cry.  But I'm beginning to suspect this is a book less about magic and intrigue and more about how many tears these children can spill.

So, running recap.  Eddard Stark doesn't want to go south, the king does; Caetlyn hates Jon; Jon wants to prove himself; the Others are this series' version of "frak" (the Other frakking take you); and Daenerys got diddled by a horselord.  Did I miss anything?  Oh yeah, assassins are inept, conspiracies are obvious and the Cersei Lannister is a conniving, incestuous bitch. 

Also, in two hundred pages not a lot actually happens.  Each chapter is a major jump in either time or space, with quick stretches of exposition to let the reader know where he is.  World-building on the cheap, as I've come to think of it, lends itself well to the style of jump-cutting we see in movies or television shows (a reason I think it has done so well on HBO). 

I've discovered, as well, that in these first two hundred pages there isn't really a protagonist.  I can see the underpinnings of a conflict, and there are a couple characters I suspect will become protagonists (Eddard Stark was just eliminated as protagonist-worthy, in my mind); but in the tens of thousands of words I've already read, no one stands out.  That lack of conflict is dangerous, because it leads me to suspect that not much is going to happen for another two hundred pages. 

Ultimately, I think this is why I put the book down so often.  It's just interminably boring.  And there are the random POV shifts throughout the book; I'd call them errors but it seems to be used purposefully.  If so, I can't imagine to what end.  Shifting from 3rd to 2nd person mid-narrative is just jarring.  And also unnecessary.  Whenever I note them I wonder if it could have been written differently, and I discover that easy solutions exist.  I suspect either his editor didn't notice, or both were too lazy to care.  Either way, it rips me out of the narrative.  It's distracting; and in a book already teeming with not-much-of-anything-going-on, these distractions make me want to put the book aside.