Isn't expecting depth of character in a young teenage girl a little like me expecting my wife to come home from work highly aroused with a case of beer and tickets to the NBA finals? She's a young girl in a primitive society who strode into a giant fire and came out with fucking dragons. That seems like it would draw people to your cause. I mean, if I walk in to a burning building and come out with a pair of dinosaurs, even in our jaded modern world, I guarantee I can do better than Joseph Smith ever even dreamed.

Then I hope she won't get much screen 4th season onwards. At the end of the day her plot is the weakest of the current series.

Just finished Dance with Dragons. It's not over till the ball-less men laugh.

Ughhhh, lots of my recent bar conversations have been about the TV show, but I've only seen the first season. I've almost completed Feast, and it's really hard for me to not ruin the story for the TV show-only fans.

@HeWhoIsInThe Water, is DWD a little...faster than Feast is? Reading this one has given me headaches at times.

I'd say it's similarly paced, and both books feel somewhat... padded. It has good parts for sure, but there's no doubt the series took a turn for the worse after book 3. I can understand the reasons for splitting up the characters as he did, but in hindsight it seems to me like it was definitely a mistake. It hurts the flow of the story a lot, and it sometimes feels like he added some filler chapters just to make a decent-sized book despite having less characters.

I would agree with that. Once you get to the end of DWD, it all comes together quite a bit easier. I actually really enjoyed Feast; it was my second favorite book second to Storm just because all of the cultures were intriguing to me. The first two were boring for me, except for the Battle of the Blackwater. Back to what HellBlazer was saying, it was a big mistake. Westeros lacks a timeline that a series like Star Wars does, because things are never put in terms of dates or months, as compared to BBY and ABY. It really doesn't matter too much until you have these simultaneous plot lines, which serves to make them poor complements to one another.

I found DWD went faster than Feast.

We're really veering into spoiler territory here,

Btw, everyone, this is the thread about the TV show. I'm a huge book purist and I'll be the first to say "come on, read the books, you peasants!", but still, have some respect for the non-readers and tag the book stuff, especially later books.

Whoa guys. This thread is about the TV show. Use spoiler tags if you mention anything at all about future plot points from the books.

As far as the show goes, I have some friends who watch the show exclusively and won't touch the books and I'm always interested to listen to their theories on what might happen and what understanding they have of the storyline just from watching the show. I personally thought the third season was a bit better done than the second (rushed in some places), but I'm not sure someone who watches the show exclusively would agree. The story gets so spread out that the producers and writers are going to have a great challenge in keeping it both fairly loyal to the source material (which it has been in pragmatic terms) and making watchable TV that is going to keep earning them deals for future seasons. I'd be interesting in seeing how the series would work with ~7 90 minute episodes instead of 10 60 minute episodes. I doubt this is attractive to HBO from a financial perspective, since they can keep people subscribed for longer with 10 episode seasons, but it might help the show be a little more watchable if it's only jumping across continents every 15 minutes instead of every 10.

Agreed Sourlows, the season was put together noticeably more smoothly than the second, which is why I think I'd still call it better than the second, although the second likely had more going on. Not much really happened in S3 when you think about it, with everyone either continuing to walk in a direction, or sitting around in reasonable safety in the same place they were at the end of last season. There was enough, but not the same volume of interesting events as previous seasons.

Oh, too bad. I'm just a TV show watcher and not reader of the books and I def. hunger for Daenery wrecking havoc on all and anything.
Just watched S03E04 a few days ago (in germany were only at E05 atm) and it was quite great to see Daenerys raising her army!

I learned one thing from GoT, Jon Snow knows nothing.