Danaerys and Jorah by willupleasebequiet

Read on if you want spoilers from all 5 books in the Song of Ice and Fire series as they relate to the Game of Thrones show.

Seriously, we’re going to spoil things…

So… I’ll definitely watch all the episodes together to form a better opinion. Overall though, I thought the whole season gave texture to the characters but didn’t really deliver much action. Especially when there was so much action to give. I was sure — suuuure — that the Wildling/Night’s Watch battle would occur in the last episode. But nothing.

And though the Red Wedding was shocking, Robb was so underused in the beginning of the season that there wasn’t much to root for there.

But on the other hand, I thought there were some cool nods to readers along the way and some cool changes to the structure that help the show avoid all the characters and timelines from the books.

Theon’s story for example. I mean, I read book 4 and 5 during this season so that the show wouldn’t spoil anything for me. At first, I couldn’t understand why they’d introduce that storyline but in the finale, I was happy that Roose tied it up plot-wise. It would have been too complicated for the show to explain that whole seige of Winterfell by Ramsay. It also gave Asha (or whatever her name on the show is) a mission to recover Theon — thereby skipping all the plot of the books with the whole Kingsmoot and other castle-taking, et cetera.

While I was happy that the spirit of the show remains largely true to the books and the plot changes mostly serve to move the story along more quickly, I still felt like a lot of this season was just people walking or talking and not seeing a lot of action. In season 2, I was shocked almost every week (at least in the last few episodes) so season 3 felt more expository.

Does that mean Season 4 is just going to be all-out insanity in action? I wish they were airing it this fall.