The Descent of Thrones
I've been obsessed with the show Game of Thrones for a while but I'm not actually sure I like it anymore. I'm not in hate watch territory, I just wish it didn't feel so hollow.
Their world changes when the king arrives and the father accepts a lead position on the king's advisory council. In that moment, the fantasy world that Ned has created is replaced by the harsh reality of Westeros but the neither Ned nor the reader understands that for most of book one.
Book two expands the universe and introduces many new characters. The major point of view tellers changes from Ned and his wife to a member of a rival family, Tyrion Lannister, and the youngest daughter, Arya Stark. Both are underdog characters in a world we've learned is harsh. Few people in this world tell the truth and a major mistake is usually met with death. Might and the willingness to use it rules the land. Justice is given little regard. We learn to savor every small victory.
Book three is the book that gave Game of Thrones its lofty position in the world of fantasy. The point of view still has a main focus on Tyrion and Arya but adds a third voice, Jaime Lannister. Jaime had been a hated character since the beginning, as an oathbreaker and also as a person that maimed one of the Stark children. Once we see the world through Jaime's eyes, we realize the world isn't as clear cut as we imagined. He begins a heroes tale with Brienne of Tarth while in another part of the world the forces supporting the eldest Stark are gaining momentum. Things feel like they are trending back towards a typical fantasy finish until the unthinkable happens.
The Red Wedding. The words became infamous when HBO showed their version in Season 3. Book readers smiled with wry anticipation waiting to see the reaction. You can find videos of the shock all over Youtube.
I know I tossed the book across the room when I read it. That event devastated me so much I didn't start reading again for over a month. Just like actual death, I had to mourn before I could move on and I don't think I've ever had that happen to me in any other book.
The Red Wedding is near the midpoint of Book 3. The backhalf of that book becomes a Lannister book. Jaime is redeemed. Tyrion becomes the revenge we all want even if he isn't doing it for the Starks. Justice of a kind is served even if we are heartbroken. Despite some flaws, George RR Martin wrote a masterpiece in his third book. In many ways I wish he'd stopped writing at that point because there really was no place to go but down. In hindsight I realize that is because many of the best characters/villains were now dead.
Anyone familiar with the story might wonder why I haven't commented on Bran Stark, Daenerys Targaryen or Jon Snow in the first three books. They were all underdogs in their own ways, thrown into circumstances as foreign to them as anyone else in the story. I liked following them at first by Book 3 I cared very little for them. None of these stories interacted with the 'main' plot. I know I personally started skipping Bran and Daenarys chapters as they felt overly long and pointless.
Book 4 took my issues of the third book to a whole new level. The main point of view characters are Cersei Lannister, Jaime Lannister, and Brienne of Tarth. Other stories are mixed in and I struggled to get through what felt like a lot of filler. Thankfully the first season of HBO's adaptation came out and appeared to be doing a fine job adapting the story. I gave up reading the books and decided to let the show tell me the rest of the tale.
I did think about giving it another go when Book 5 came out but when I saw Jon Snow and Daenerys were the main POV characters. I skipped it altogether.
The first four seasons of Game of Thrones on HBO were great. The showrunners had an knack of minimizing the extraneous storylines and focusing the show on the good stuff. They weren't perfect and the budget was an issue but I'd put it up there with anything I've ever seen on TV. The storylines were deep, the actors amazing and sets were beautiful.
Yet there were issues on the horizon.
George RR Martin's first book, A Game of Thrones, was shown in in 2011 with an order of 10 episodes which became the standard for following seasons. The second book, A Clash of Kings, came out a year later in 2012. The third book, A Storm of Swords, needed two seasons, in 2013 and 2014, to tell the tale.
Things started to get weird when George RR Martin wrote the fourth book. He struggled for a while to finish the story and realizing the story had already ballooned past 1000 pages, his publishers suggested making it into two books so they could get something out.
George RR Martin published his fourth book, A Feast for Crows, was published in 2005 and the fifth book, A Dance with Dragons, in 2011.
In theory, books 4 and 5 should have been enough material to last the showrunners three seasons. Instead they stuffed most of it into a fifth season in 2015, and cut out huge storylines in the process. Considering that I stopped reading the series in book 4 it would be hypocritical of me to blame them. On a bad note, by doing this they put themselves in a situation where they might pass the author which is something I doubt they ever considered when they started the project.
George RR Martin hinted on HBOs run up to Season 5 that the sixth book was almost ready and might be out at the same time. He missed that timeline. He then hinted that it would be out in the next year. That didn't happen either. In the run up to Season 6 on HBO, no one on the outside was really sure how much George was helping with the show or writing the books. In hindsight it appears he wasn't doing much with either. As of this writing he still hasn't finished book 6.
The showrunners appeared to be caught off guard. The deep storylines from the first four seasons changed into a hurried mess in the bloated Season 5. Things appeared to get a little on track in Season 6 but we still saw huge plot holes and continuity issues as characters teleported all over the world.
The most upsetting thing to fans was the tight character development was gone leading to a cartoonish new cast. Reasoned villains like Tywin Lannister were replaced by Ramsey Bolton and Euron Greyjoy who gave little insight to help us understand their psychotic natures. Side characters were wooden if ever explained at all.
There were a few exceptions of course. The Karsi storyline from Hardhome is a prime example of what they could do within a single show but this was a rarity. From my vantage point, it seemed to fall to the individual directors to breath life into a story bereft of characterization.
Even characters we had grown to love in season 4 like Jaime, Brienne and Arya felt lost as they wandered without purpose in season 5 and season 6. Some of the blame certainly has to be placed on George RR Martin but the showrunners had shown the ability to make changes in Seasons 1-4 and were showing none of that now. The cast felt like they'd become white walkers themselves, marching towards a goal.
CGI took the lead making the show appear to have more in common with standard TV fare like Walking Dead than anything approaching the great storylines we'd once seen.
I hoped the drop in quality was because HBO had only given the showrunners 8 seasons so they had to rush through season 5 and 6 to position the characters for an epic final two seasons. After all, they'd spoke to George RR Martin and knew how it was supposed to end. After Season 6, the showrunners announced there would be a 15 month break before we got Seasons 7 instead of the normal 12. The episode count was dropped from the normal 10 to 7. Fans anticipated a 7 hour movie.
Instead we got what feels like a betrayal.
I'm not going to go into the details of why I feel this way as the subject is prime for a rant of its own. And I know the word betrayal is probably too strong as the showrunners don't technically owe us anything.
It just feels like they have a lot in common with George RR Martin in the motivation department and perhaps that isn't fair. They didn't sign up to write the show. They signed up to adapt a book.
Right now the showrunners have said the final 6 episodes will air sometime in 2019 and they are going to need to do a lot to finish the series on a positive note. At this point they've written themselves into such a hole, I'm not sure it's possible to do in only six episodes and I find that sad. Game of Thrones started out as a landmark in the industry, forcing many to change the way they looked at the small screen. Game of Thrones is show that proved once and forever that TV had passed movies as the best medium to tell a story. It would be a shame if the showrunners faltered at the finish, forever marring the memory of what started out with such promise.
I must admit that I ended up hate-reading the books. I'd heard for years they were the best fantasy series ever written and when I heard HBO was making a TV series from the source material I decided to take the plunge. I found the books interesting at first but dull in others and they certainly didn't strike me as earth shattering. They started off like many of the books I've read from other authors.
The first book is 73 chapters and 53 of them are told from the point of view of the Stark family. They represent many of of archetypes we see in fantasy heroes. The father, Ned, is the wizened ruler. His wife a faithful spouse. The eldest daughter a sort of immature Disney princess. The youngest daughter, an underdog pushing back against convention. The elder sons are groomed as perfect representations of their father. The youngest son is struggling to come to terms with the life given to him.
The first book is 73 chapters and 53 of them are told from the point of view of the Stark family. They represent many of of archetypes we see in fantasy heroes. The father, Ned, is the wizened ruler. His wife a faithful spouse. The eldest daughter a sort of immature Disney princess. The youngest daughter, an underdog pushing back against convention. The elder sons are groomed as perfect representations of their father. The youngest son is struggling to come to terms with the life given to him.
Their world changes when the king arrives and the father accepts a lead position on the king's advisory council. In that moment, the fantasy world that Ned has created is replaced by the harsh reality of Westeros but the neither Ned nor the reader understands that for most of book one.
Book two expands the universe and introduces many new characters. The major point of view tellers changes from Ned and his wife to a member of a rival family, Tyrion Lannister, and the youngest daughter, Arya Stark. Both are underdog characters in a world we've learned is harsh. Few people in this world tell the truth and a major mistake is usually met with death. Might and the willingness to use it rules the land. Justice is given little regard. We learn to savor every small victory.
Book three is the book that gave Game of Thrones its lofty position in the world of fantasy. The point of view still has a main focus on Tyrion and Arya but adds a third voice, Jaime Lannister. Jaime had been a hated character since the beginning, as an oathbreaker and also as a person that maimed one of the Stark children. Once we see the world through Jaime's eyes, we realize the world isn't as clear cut as we imagined. He begins a heroes tale with Brienne of Tarth while in another part of the world the forces supporting the eldest Stark are gaining momentum. Things feel like they are trending back towards a typical fantasy finish until the unthinkable happens.
The Red Wedding. The words became infamous when HBO showed their version in Season 3. Book readers smiled with wry anticipation waiting to see the reaction. You can find videos of the shock all over Youtube.
I know I tossed the book across the room when I read it. That event devastated me so much I didn't start reading again for over a month. Just like actual death, I had to mourn before I could move on and I don't think I've ever had that happen to me in any other book.
The Red Wedding is near the midpoint of Book 3. The backhalf of that book becomes a Lannister book. Jaime is redeemed. Tyrion becomes the revenge we all want even if he isn't doing it for the Starks. Justice of a kind is served even if we are heartbroken. Despite some flaws, George RR Martin wrote a masterpiece in his third book. In many ways I wish he'd stopped writing at that point because there really was no place to go but down. In hindsight I realize that is because many of the best characters/villains were now dead.
Anyone familiar with the story might wonder why I haven't commented on Bran Stark, Daenerys Targaryen or Jon Snow in the first three books. They were all underdogs in their own ways, thrown into circumstances as foreign to them as anyone else in the story. I liked following them at first by Book 3 I cared very little for them. None of these stories interacted with the 'main' plot. I know I personally started skipping Bran and Daenarys chapters as they felt overly long and pointless.
Book 4 took my issues of the third book to a whole new level. The main point of view characters are Cersei Lannister, Jaime Lannister, and Brienne of Tarth. Other stories are mixed in and I struggled to get through what felt like a lot of filler. Thankfully the first season of HBO's adaptation came out and appeared to be doing a fine job adapting the story. I gave up reading the books and decided to let the show tell me the rest of the tale.
I did think about giving it another go when Book 5 came out but when I saw Jon Snow and Daenerys were the main POV characters. I skipped it altogether.
The first four seasons of Game of Thrones on HBO were great. The showrunners had an knack of minimizing the extraneous storylines and focusing the show on the good stuff. They weren't perfect and the budget was an issue but I'd put it up there with anything I've ever seen on TV. The storylines were deep, the actors amazing and sets were beautiful.
Yet there were issues on the horizon.
| HBO Season | Year Shown | Book | Year Published | Pages | Episodes | Pages per Ep |
| 1 | 2011 | A Game of Thrones | Aug 1996 | 694 | 10 | 69.4 |
| 2 | 2012 | A Clash of Kings | Mar 1999 | 768 | 10 | 76.8 |
| 3 | 2013 | A Storm of Swords | Nov 2000 | 973 | 10 | 48.7 |
| 4 | 2014 | 10 | ||||
| 5 | 2015 | A Feast for Crows | Nov 2005 | 753 | 10 | 179.3 |
| 2015 | A Dance with Dragons | Jul 2011 | 1040 | |||
| 6 | 2016 | 10 | NA | |||
| 7 | 2017 | 7 | NA |
George RR Martin's first book, A Game of Thrones, was shown in in 2011 with an order of 10 episodes which became the standard for following seasons. The second book, A Clash of Kings, came out a year later in 2012. The third book, A Storm of Swords, needed two seasons, in 2013 and 2014, to tell the tale.
Things started to get weird when George RR Martin wrote the fourth book. He struggled for a while to finish the story and realizing the story had already ballooned past 1000 pages, his publishers suggested making it into two books so they could get something out.
George RR Martin published his fourth book, A Feast for Crows, was published in 2005 and the fifth book, A Dance with Dragons, in 2011.
In theory, books 4 and 5 should have been enough material to last the showrunners three seasons. Instead they stuffed most of it into a fifth season in 2015, and cut out huge storylines in the process. Considering that I stopped reading the series in book 4 it would be hypocritical of me to blame them. On a bad note, by doing this they put themselves in a situation where they might pass the author which is something I doubt they ever considered when they started the project.
George RR Martin hinted on HBOs run up to Season 5 that the sixth book was almost ready and might be out at the same time. He missed that timeline. He then hinted that it would be out in the next year. That didn't happen either. In the run up to Season 6 on HBO, no one on the outside was really sure how much George was helping with the show or writing the books. In hindsight it appears he wasn't doing much with either. As of this writing he still hasn't finished book 6.
The showrunners appeared to be caught off guard. The deep storylines from the first four seasons changed into a hurried mess in the bloated Season 5. Things appeared to get a little on track in Season 6 but we still saw huge plot holes and continuity issues as characters teleported all over the world.
The most upsetting thing to fans was the tight character development was gone leading to a cartoonish new cast. Reasoned villains like Tywin Lannister were replaced by Ramsey Bolton and Euron Greyjoy who gave little insight to help us understand their psychotic natures. Side characters were wooden if ever explained at all.
There were a few exceptions of course. The Karsi storyline from Hardhome is a prime example of what they could do within a single show but this was a rarity. From my vantage point, it seemed to fall to the individual directors to breath life into a story bereft of characterization.
Even characters we had grown to love in season 4 like Jaime, Brienne and Arya felt lost as they wandered without purpose in season 5 and season 6. Some of the blame certainly has to be placed on George RR Martin but the showrunners had shown the ability to make changes in Seasons 1-4 and were showing none of that now. The cast felt like they'd become white walkers themselves, marching towards a goal.
CGI took the lead making the show appear to have more in common with standard TV fare like Walking Dead than anything approaching the great storylines we'd once seen.
I hoped the drop in quality was because HBO had only given the showrunners 8 seasons so they had to rush through season 5 and 6 to position the characters for an epic final two seasons. After all, they'd spoke to George RR Martin and knew how it was supposed to end. After Season 6, the showrunners announced there would be a 15 month break before we got Seasons 7 instead of the normal 12. The episode count was dropped from the normal 10 to 7. Fans anticipated a 7 hour movie.
Instead we got what feels like a betrayal.
I'm not going to go into the details of why I feel this way as the subject is prime for a rant of its own. And I know the word betrayal is probably too strong as the showrunners don't technically owe us anything.
It just feels like they have a lot in common with George RR Martin in the motivation department and perhaps that isn't fair. They didn't sign up to write the show. They signed up to adapt a book.
Right now the showrunners have said the final 6 episodes will air sometime in 2019 and they are going to need to do a lot to finish the series on a positive note. At this point they've written themselves into such a hole, I'm not sure it's possible to do in only six episodes and I find that sad. Game of Thrones started out as a landmark in the industry, forcing many to change the way they looked at the small screen. Game of Thrones is show that proved once and forever that TV had passed movies as the best medium to tell a story. It would be a shame if the showrunners faltered at the finish, forever marring the memory of what started out with such promise.
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