For political machinations in a fantasy world, A Song of Fire and Ice is still my go-to series. When he does get into backstories, it's mostly to tell us information about the character, rather than really get in the person's head. One guy from one kingdom does one thing, and another guy from another kingdom counters with a brilliant stroke, but so what? It's hard for me to care when I don't have much of a feel for either kingdom or either guy.
However, for my taste, he's too focused on moving the chess pieces and not enough on giving us a visceral connection to the world and characters.
Bakker clearly had some Big Ideas, and mapped out a complex plot and gave his main players complex motivations, and I applaud him for that. The major problem I had with it is that it simply doesn't feel very organic. While I can appreciate that kind of challenge and did find the world-building somewhat interesting, the storytelling just didn't engage me. Bakker doesn't do much in the way of easing the reader into his world, but throws us into the middle of the political games, leaving us to figure out who's who and what's what. A wandering monk with exceptional powers of psychological manipulation gets involved, and recruits a northern barbarian from a Mongol-like people. A decadent emperor and his ambitious young nephew have their own agendas. "Schools" of magicians aligned with one group or another play their own shadowy games. A religious leader has appeared to organize one group of kingdoms into a Holy War against another country. This is elaborately plotted fantasy in which many factions and individual players are scheming for control of a world with a lot of history. I got about 2/3 of the way through this one and just couldn't sustain interest. Heavy world-building, but didn't engage me
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