Should i read the books?

nix wrote: »

If you have re-watched GoT from season 1 recently, id hold off reading them for a year or two. Reason being, i havent actually read the books myself, back when i first watched the show, i binged like the first two seasons, and then slowly watched season 3 when it was released weekly. As you can imagine, when season 3 ended it was at its best and i was loving the story and i wanted more but didnt want to wait another year for an episode a week.

So i got a lend of the first book off a mate and from the get go, the book is so similar to the show, its like you're reading the script. So i kind of lost interest, and stopped. But if you can get passed the first book or two (not actually sure when the show diverts a lot from what story the show is telling) I'm sure it will be a great read.

I wanted to skip some books but my mate said you kinda need to read it from the start as while the story is similar in the early books, it does describe the look of characters differently and introduces more characters also..

I'm also not gonna bother with them until GRR finishes them as how annoying would it be to read a load of the books and it becomes a case that he never finishes them

Book 1 is pretty much an exact match to season 1. Book 2 is close.

From book 3 onwards the TV show diverges. They basically cut some characters, merge some characters, give some characters storylines to other characters instead etc.

I don't think the books themselves, especially the later ones, would transfer well to TV, unless they planned on having about 15 seasons.

Liam O wrote: »

Books are great. I think the complaints about the quality dropping is that after the 3rd and all the action it slows down a bit. This took me out of it too and I needed to take a little break. On 2nd read Feast may be my favourite. Great world building. So much he doesn't know where to go with it now

I think it's more the poor editing, overly elaborate story arcs and introduction of new characters that make the later books so difficult to get through. It just all points to GRRM getting bored of writing about the same characters, so he just introduces some new ones instead.

The last few books really should have been decimated by a decent editor, with half the stuff left out.

Every time I turned the page and saw it was an Iron Islands chapter I had to force myself to read on. They were complete garbage.

With the state of everything in the books right now it is hard to see how he writes his way to an ending in the 2 books that he has "planned". I think this is part of the problem, he has written himself into a corner and doesn't know how to get out of it. Too much detail, too many characters, very hard to bring it together into some sort of sane ending.