HBO would never have agreed to a deal without Martin's guarantee that he would reveal unpublished content to them.

And you shall continue that tradition when the next book comes out in 2023.

That all sounds very poetic. Maybe not so poetic but just as real is my parents' musing that it seems kind like a joke how you spend 40 years getting good at something, and then you get old! They don't seem that keen on the idea of being more in pain and tired more often just yet, and they are not emotional…

Kind of late to this, but wanted to comment :) Sanctimonious is the right word for reviewers like this. It's a horrible fictional character on a tv show in a fantasy world, and I'm not allowed to revel in their death? Especially when those same reviewers turn around and - also sanctimoniously - lecture us for…

That's interesting. When I read the book, I still got the sense that they needed to defeat the orcs as !bigger problems! are afoot, and the epic scope the story suddenly attained hinted at what was to come in LOTR. So I didn't feel it was a pointless fight over gold, but certainly not worthy of an entire movie.

Oh for Christ's sake. Whenever something tragic happens on this show, so many of these over-serious reviewers use the opportunity to soberly remind us that the world is a cruel place, nobility can doom you, justice is not to be found in this story…and then when a horrible character DOES die and justice IS served,…

What an incredibly nitpicky and, dare I say it, whiny review. It sounds like the reviewer has been spoiled by the show and forgot that what we witnessed was beyond anything ever before seen on television. I actually didn't think Blackwater was really that epic after the wildfire explosion - the land battle took…

Stannis arriving to save the day would have felt too much like a repeat of Blackwater and taken the emphasis off of the the defenders of Castle Black.

There is a lot of talk among the critics about the pathos of the episode and how it's on one level a metaphor for the shittiness of life (although the latter is, of course, a favourite subject of critics), but nothing about the very last scene, when the ruined landscape turns into a meadow with flowers, sunlight and…

When bad characters die, reviewers can't revel in the 'but this isn't like other shows' stuff. Tywin is dead, he was a bastard, he deserved it. Lol

Ancalagon would be literally off the chart. The only reference to Ancalagon's size is that he was big enough to crush the towers of Thangorodrim when he fell. It may be poetic license by Tolkien, but if taken literally it would mean that he was phenomenally huge. Several artists' renditions of him depict him as…

Martin did say in a recent interview that Smaug may be smaller than Balerion but he would defeat Balerion by outsmarting him. Smaug is of at least human intelligence and Balerion is a beast like any trained animal. Smaug also possesses powers of enchantment and can mess with enemies' heads, like Tolkien's other…

Tywin can't even wipe his own ass…

This. The show has gotten a lot of praise for its 'realistic' portrayal of medieval life, and the realism has also defended it against critics of the moral ambiguity and violence. Yet I don't thin it has handled sex with the same skill. There is the more superficial (but still annoying, and possibly indicative of…

I hope I don't reach the point that some book readers are apparently at now, where they just want Martin to finish the books so that they can see how the whole sorry mess ends. The show is staying just this side of watchable for me because of the morally upright or at least morally complex characters, and Jaime's…