I can't believe nobody said anything yet... do people still watch this? Have you seen what the bleeping bleep just happened on the show?

I need the next episode... NOW!

Been watching it, and reading the novels (the first series inspired me to start reading them, and I'm on the 5th now).

There's a lot of cutting corners in the TV version as compared to the novels, but it is still very, very cool. I can't think of any other TV show that has conveyed a dark, earthy fantasy so well.

I suppose, though, the downside to reading the novels is that it spoils the surprises in the TV version. Was it the weird thing with Davos and Melisandre that had you spooked?

To be able to watch this show. T_T

I'd love to watch Game of Thrones, but my uni place doesn't get Sky Atlantic (the TV channel it's on in the UK) so I'm going to have to wait till I get home at the end of next month to watch them

Spooked? Oh, it didn't get me spooked... just extremely... extremely... excited to see next week's episode! The whole promise of the game has been changed with what just happened.

But yeah, that's what I was talking about. I purposely don't read the books. Don't want to know what is coming, and don't want to be disappointed when they cut something. Cutting things is critical when translating a novel to the screen, but you don't want it to be that certain character or passage, you know.

I think the last time I was enjoying a TV show this much was with the first and second season on Lost.

...but that's mainly because I pared my cable waaaaaaaay down and no longer have HBO, etc. Like Season 1, though, I'll likely purchase season 2 on DVD/Blu Ray once released.

Like Ginafae, I've been reading the books and am closing in on the end of A Dance with Dragons... which, honestly, is saying something after having slogged through A Feast for Crows (the only book in the series, thus far, that I found to be a truly arduous, if not outright boring, read)... Anyhoo... agreed all around... Great cable series... great novels ("Feast" notwithstanding)...

I'm looking very forward to Winds of Winter if for no other reason than to find out if everybody dies or not.

Maybe I sounded more negative than I meant to. The translation from book to screen is still fabulous. It's just that there are off-screen omissions and small conflations of several characters into one that are noticeable.

The fact that George R.R. Martin is the guiding hand in the production ensures that it's true in spirit to the novels.

Oh, and if you won't be disappointed with what's coming I assure you...

I agree with you Eol.

I think the later novels are technically flabby. It's still great, but it needed a strong publisher to force Martin into condensing the narrative a little. A lot of authors who become very successful is that they're allowed to do whatever they want, which is not always a good thing.

Yup... I mean, I understand that, unlike the first three novels (which were more or less chronologically linear), "Feast" and "Dance" were supposed to be parallel as far as the timeline goes (with "Feast" focussing more on those characters on the Westerossi side and "Dance" focussing on those "across the Narrow Sea"), but, man oh man, I think I'd have preferred one MASSVIE volume that stayed more true to the way "Game," "Storm,"and "Clash" were put together... I might have cared a little more about the goings on that were described in "Feast" (which largely concerned characters that had really only been alluded to in other volumes) had they been sprinkled with some of the "parallel" chapters in "Dance" that concerned some of the characters we were drawn so close to in those first three. After I managed to get through "Feast" I wasn't even really sure I wanted to read A Dance With Dragons... Glad I picked it up, though... it's made up for the snooze-fest that was the prior volume.

*shrugs* I guess I understand why books four and five were released the way they were but that doesn't mean I have to like it, right?

P.S. Kriea... send me your big toe and I'll send you my copy of Season 1 on blu ray.

Well I'm still Feasting on Dance (sorry couldn't resist), so I can't say yet what I think of it.

The chronological muddle is the worst part of it (Dance takes the reader back to the timeline at the start of Feast). And now that I'm on Dance I want more Arya Stark... :-/

All I have to say about this series is to never get too attached to a character. Martin is absolutely brutal. You guys act like I'm a murdering so an so, but this guy...

I almost put this series down for good partway through Storm of Swords. After a very pivitoal scene, I did physically place the down down on the table, whereupon I paced back and forth through the house wondering aloud at what had just happened. It made me just sick.

I did pick it back up, but I have made it a point since to care less about the characters. I'm not 100% sure that I like where this series is going, but I've read so much of it now that I do want to know the ending.

There's quite a few troubling scenes, but I think I know which one you mean. Anyway, back to reading Dance with Dragons!

I almost got out the kitchen knives Eol, but then I remembered I don't have a blu ray player. Sorry, maybe next time.

This thread didn't do too well considdering it's topic.

I'll apoligise now, I gave in and watched the episodes so far online

I'm enjoying the series again, maybe not quite as good as the first but then I found the first was better viewed in close succession.

To make up for my shameful lack of willpower I offer up this.

A Game of Thrones Opening Theme cover
It is a piano cover to the A Game of Thrones opening theme music. Let's try to get this poor fellow some more views.

I read the first book, Game of thrones, about five years ago and decided on a whim to read the books again about two months before the show was released unknowingly. I am on a Dance with Dragons and the 'arduous' nature with which the books are written are actually what makes it so fascinating for me. It is based on character development and the sometimes ruthless killing of characters is what makes it far different from other fantasy novels I have read before. i.e a young boy is unknowing of a prophecy that will lead him into the darkness of evil, with only a mysterious old wizard and brave warriors to accompany him etc...

As Tolkien fathered a struggle between good and evil fantaasy books I believe George RR Martin may of at least started a whole new form of fantasy writing, where there is no inherently good or evil characters, which I have to say I am very excited for.