User blog comment:TwilightReaderFan/Season 5 Finale/@comment-15030876-20151001074303/@comment-5014364-20151001122808

Season 1 had a good balance of condensing plot elements from the novels.

Also many characters weren't POV narrators so in the novels we never saw what the Tyrells were thinking (only through the eyes of other characters)

No, the TV series drastically condensed the fourth and fifth novels and suffered terribly for it in Season 5 - as basically all major critics now say.

Basically, you really need to keep in mind that George R.R. Martin initially intended for the series to be a trilogy, but it grew too long.

Everything in the first three novels was intended to be one "book", which is why the narrative reaches a massive climax in the third published novel - it was intended to be the climax of "Act 1 of 3".

Frankly, I think it would have been better to make up sub-names for each arc, i.e. name the first name "A Song of Ice and Fire: War of the Five Kings Book 1 of 3, A Game of Thrones".

Book 3 was so long that the TV series adapted it across two seasons, Season 3 and Season 4.

So a major complaint among a lot of the casual readers is....they thought the fourth novel would continue with the massive plot developments from the third novel. When really, the third novel had so many "big moments" (i.e. the Red Wedding, the Purple Wedding, etc.) because it was the climax of "Act 1 of 3".

So book four was frequently accused of being too "slow" - even though it was the beginning of "part 2 of 3" of the overall story, and inherently the pacing was going to be different.

Moreover, one of Martin's points is that war has consequence: a lot of the fourth novel is dealing with the fact that no one really "wins" the war, even the winners have to deal with the fact that the realm is bankrupt from the war, and they burned out all of their food-producing regions, even as winter is fast approaching. So it's less about armies moving around and more about society falling apart.

Another major point is that by the fourth novel, Martin started branching out the story into other character groups.

You see it isn't a battle between "good and evil", "Starks vs Lannisters". There are, well, SEVEN Kingdoms, and it's a multi-sided war.

So a major point of contention among some readers is that starting with the fourth novel, the POV narration branches out. The first novels focused on the Starks and Lannisters, and while they're still covered, the later novels branch out to show "this is what the Greyjoys are doing", "this is what the Martells are doing", etc. etc.

To the point that there really isn't one "main character" in the overall novel series.

It IS NOT that "Martin needed an editor" -- he was trying to be realistic and avoid major tropes....er, Martin has repeatedly said he wrote the books out of frustration at how previous work was limited by having to worry about if it was adaptable for live-action. So he sort of half-intentionally made them unfilmable.

You see TV needs to be structured around a core set of main characters who influence the entire plot (think Star Wars). The problem is that real life wars aren't like that (Hundred Years War, World War II, etc.) -- so he intentionally had the narrative sprawl out beyond the core characters.

I mean you see this even in book/Season 1: you think Ned Stark is THE Main Character, only to then have the narrative sprawl out away from him to focus on other characters.

In all fairness, ANY TV show would have to cut a lot of this later material out because it's too diffuse.

But Season 5 ran into a lot of criticism for trying to "streamline" the narrative to the point that major character groups barely appear or don't appear at all (the Greyjoys, the Tullys and Freys (remember them?), gutting the interesting Martell storyline to the point that it was awful). One of their most criticized choices was to condense Sansa Stark with the Bolton storyline: Sansa never even meets the Boltons in the novels.

Sort of like Jaime in Season 2, Sansa sort of takes a back burner in book four - though her storyline is moving forward. Meanwhile, Sansa's childhood friend Jeyne Poole winds up being married and raped by Ramsay Bolton.

The TV writers felt that to make the show more "cohesive" they had to include Sansa in Season 5 more. Their actual argument was "no one will remember the minor character Jeyne Poole across multiple seasons, it's easier to combine her with major character Sansa to streamline the narrative"....which makes about as much sense as streamlining ARYA Stark with the Bolton storyline.

But that's really a Season 5 issue.

Here and there the TV show also made various odd adaptation choices -- it's not just a condensed version of the novels, they've been criticized for at times missing narrative points on certain characters.

If I had to give a ranking by season, in decreasing order of quality:


 * Season 1
 * Season 3
 * Season 4
 * Season 2
 * Season 5

The show rarely "improved" on the novels overall. Yes they did a better job of showing the secondary characters such as the Tyrells. But other changes they made to the novels didn't always work out well.