Reposado

I love Kay's books, they're such a pleasure to read, but this is one thing that he does tend to do a lot that annoys me.

I think he did less of it in Under Heaven and I enjoyed it the most out of his novels that I've read for this reason. The only thing I didn't like about UH was that the ending felt too abrupt for me. I think it could have benifited from maybe having a POV character that was with the rebellious general so it didn't feel like so much important action happened off screen.

i think that would be my complaint too. i liked the journey but at the end i was all, "that was it?"

Decent. Maybe a 7. Very first episode but at least they cut out arts and bran.

Felt it. Was a huge mistake to order Santa story the way they did. Unsullied should have been introduced and solved in one episode. Barristan into felt like interlude and looked unrealistic

Next Guy Gavriel Kay book is called River of Stars and comes out in April:

http://www.amazon.co...39326491&sr=1-2

awesome. did some poking out. found an interview where kay says it takes place in china, about 350-400 years after Under Heaven, but is unrelated otherwise.

a million out of ten. amazing in every aspect. just well crafted television. may be one of my favorite episodes of anything, ever,

And even if this season was 20 episodes, they still couldn't show 10 scenes with John doing little more than marching through the snow. I can't think of one change that has significantly changed the course of the series. Please enlighten me if I missed it.

well, they changed it to many scenes of jon marching through the snow. in the book, jon and halfhand were being chased by wildlings, coming up with different strategies to elude them. what the show gave us instead was jon wlaking through the snow with ygritte

i think most complaints are not about stuff being changed. its about stuff that doesnt work. and really a lot stuff thats new hasnt come together well. if you really want me to complain about a show ask me about the walking dead, and I've never read the source material there.

I know they can't follow it exactly. I don't even want them too. I was hoping for many new scenes of Robb in the West(though those have been a disappointment) but I do expect scenes that are well thought out and executed.

However, here is what I want to know: All the things they are skipping, it makes me wonder if those elements will not be important in the series, and they know that. For instance: The boys hiding in the Winterfell crypts (and removing the swords), Jon's connection with Ghost, Jaime's redemption, etc.

In other words, are we finding out now that certain things I thought would be important in Books 6/7 are just throw-away details? I mean, I like the show, but compared to the books, it's just "eh" for me. Worth an hour of my time for sure, best show on TV for sure and I hope it's renewed for all 7-8 seasons--but I kinda feel like some things from future books are being spoiled by the way they are playing out the show.

I worry about this too. Especially when whole characters are written out. Guess Shireen never becomes important. Can't wait till uproar when season 6 leaves out Young Griff entirely.

But Jamie's redemption is still happening. It doesn't really start till book 3. Doesn't really start until he loses his hand. I have faith in that one.

I´m pretty sure that Theon reflects about having slept with the Millers wife on several occasions and that the children might be his. I don´t have my book here atm but perhaps someone could find that passage

I know he mentions sleeping with her, that is how he knows the kids are of the right age. But the ages don't work. Book theon is 9 years older than book bran. 13 years older than book rickon. which is biologically possible, but doubt he had started sleeping with married women at the time

They should have added in that the Millers boys could possibly have been Theon's. For me, that's the point Theon really changes in the books.

wait, this was not a point in the books, unless theon fathered them when he was 9 and 11ish

The best of the last few definitely, but mostly because of how spectacular every jamie scene was. jon's plotline is backfiring and really, I don't see how he can like Ygritte the way they have done her character

Sure, I'm a purist. I want to watch an adaptation of the novels I loved, not a bastardized, badly written fanfiction. I don't hate every single change, just the ones they do poorly. It just happens that this episode had a fuckton of those.

agreed. there are good changes and bad changes. the last few weeks have had some mindboggling decisions. what they've done with robb and jon have kinda robbed their characters of what was good about them.

in the book, robb sacrificed his own honor to uphold that of another, after making a mistake in a moment on understandable weakness. now he's betraying his country because he's infatuated with a fieldhand. awesome.

and oh god was that mob scene poorly done. walking dead bad.

Robb's character butchered? check

jon snow's character butchered? check

but umm we got another scene of tywin being oblivious. sooooo, let's just continue making plot decisions based on casting

along with Aryas first "prayer list".

yeah, um, her list was pretty exclusive, than that one guy hits that random woman arya doesnt know and gets himself on the list? not the guy who had yoren killed in front of her. not the guy that killed lommy and laughed. that dude.

and obviously, they do that so that she has a name to tell jaqen.

some good stuff in this episode but a lot of of poor choices.

stannis and renly being in the same spot suddenly with no explanation,

davos needing to smuggle mel into the coast when stannis had clearly landed there in the middle of the day yesterday.

Easily best of the season. for all of the reasons that have been mentioned. The scene which cuts the three tyrion conversations was fantastic.

The one things that show the limitations of the project is that the running jokes are undercut by the fact that they are no longer running. Tyrion telling shagga to cut off pycelles manhood and feed it to the goats isn;t funny if we haven't heard shagga say it more than once. Lommy yielding is only funny if he keeps yielding, even in ridiculous situations.

I liked this week a lot better than last week. People will complain about the unnecessary sex scene but the Dragonstone stuff was handled much better this week, and Theon and Arya both went on nice journeys, establishing the Iron Islands as a setting and a culture, and introducing us to the messiness that will become the riverlands. For now, I think they did a nice job with Gendry, and Lommy, and Hot Pie has been fantastic.

And of course Saan, very well done there

-I know ASOIAF is loosely based on events in European history, but, it's actually a fantasy world. Therefore, as a viewer in the year 2011, the lack of racial diversity on the show could become a bit of a drawback. Are there obvious opportunities for more diversity in upcoming years?

there will be a lot of character's that are from outside Westeros, that could be taken as Middle Eastern, South Asian or Mediterranean. I would hope that they would take advantage and cast them that way.

If they want to avoid showing battle scenes, which is understandable, they missed a golden opportunity to reasonably skip a battle. After all, we only hear about Whispering Wood. I would have been happy, if we had simply heard about Whispering Wood. If maybe 30 seconds were cut from the drinking scene for someone to breathlessly explain to Catelyn when happened, before Jaime is revealed as a captive.

Or the Tywin post-battle scene where he learns that Robb wasn't in command and was riding hard to Riverrun with most of his men.

Yeah, it's about character, but how about they show how great a strategic move Robb made?

pretty disappointed, other than the walder frey scene.

not because they didn't show the battle, but because i don't see how someone who hasn't read would understand what happened with the battles. jaime was captured but how? they could have done better. I've been really happy with most of the episodes, but parts of this one lost me. A better dialogue between Tyrion and the messenger could have done wonders and made this episode the 10 I was expecting.

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hmm, trying out the first avatar