Game of Thrones is back on Friday so I figured I'd try get ahead of the curve and write a little post about it today. There will be book spoilers in the article so if you haven't read up to Dance with Dragons and the four chapters of Winds of Winter he's released and you DON'T want it spoilt stop reading now. I'll put a big picture below this paragraph so you have to scroll down to see any spoilers.
This is your last warning. Seriously, if you don't want to know stop scrolling!
Right now we're all on the same page, either with knowledge of everything I'm going to discuss or happy to be updated, lets get to it. For the purposes of the post any time I write Game of Thrones or GoT I'm referring to the show, when refering to the books I will preface it with ASOIAF i.e ASOIAF:GoT.
Maybe I'm too nice, giving you another chance to escape Spoilerville ...
Actually, I had an ulterior motive, dragging out the spoiler warnings (apart from being nice, obviously), I've been trying to keep you intrigued enough to keep reading after you've read what I'm going to write next. I'M NOT EXCITED FOR THE NEW SEASON OF GAME OF THRONES. I used the shouty capitals because currently I feel like I'm drowning in a lake of GoT hype, struggling to be heard. Everybody else it seems, cannot wait for Friday, including my fellow book readers.
When The Winds of Winter is finally released it will be the only ASOIAF book I have bought on release. The first one I got from the discarded books sale at my local library. By that time season two had begun. I read ASOIAF:GOT before I watched any of it. By the time season two had finished I had successfully located and secured books two through to five. I think I paid a fiver total, I have the astonishing gift of finding the exact books I want for stupidly cheap prices. My copy of ASOIAF:ADWD was a particular bargain - hard back with no dust jacket for ten pence. I read them all over the course of three months, then settled down to read them again. By the time I'd got to the end I'd almost forgotten the beginning.
Have I been here before? Also, the spoilers start now ...
I read fast enough that when I saw "The Red Wedding" I wasn't surprised. I knew what was coming. I didn't mind that they killed Robb's pregnant queen even though in the book she's been left behind in Riverrun with her Grandfather-in-Law. When we arrived at Joffery's death and Jaime was already there I was merely annoyed that his and Brienne's story had been rushed so much. What really got my goat is the fact that the person who killed Ygritte was not left ambiguous. In the book Jon always wonders if it was his arrow that killed her. Having it be Ollie (annoying child that he was) just felt cheap.
The balcony had never looked so inviting
I kept watching though. The next season brought it to the end of the available material for many of my favourite characters. I was fairly happy with the shaming of Cersei and where Tyrion had got to. Dany hanging around in Meeren had got boring long ago so her being whipped away by Drogon was quite a relief. And whilst I would've prefered Jaime to be riding the Riverlands with his army, fighting Ser Illyn at night and ignoring Cersei I accepted that to move the story along he had to go to Dorne.
This should be a GIF og Nikolaj Coster-Waldeau but I couldn't find one I could stop drooling over so instead you got a kitten
When we finally got season six I knew I wasn't going to be impressed. Everything up to that point had been so rushed, I never understood why they decided on only doing eight seasons. There is probably enough content in the currently published books that by this season we should just be hitting the second half of ASOIAF:ADWD. I'm not bitter that we are seeing spoilers for the books. Far from it really. For a long time GoT has felt far more based on the books than actually connected. It now seems almost coincidental to that they both have characters with the same names. It's a bit like how I feel about Harry Potter, I love the books but the movies failed to impress me.
I will never understand why they did this.
I am going to watch it though. Like everyone else I will be watching to find out how Jaime is going to kill Cersei, seriously, it has to happen this season. I will be waiting for the Stark-Snow Reunion that will probably not happen until season eight. I only half want to know what will happen to Davos as he is probably my favourite book character and currently in a completely different situation in the book than the show. I have to watch it, because like everything else in life today, it needs to be dissected by people on Social Media - people like me, obviously. It is almost like part of my social circle - that girl that you have to be friends with or else be left out of everything. So yes, I will watch it, but I'm not hyped for it.