A Game of Thrones thread for BookWankers

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Wanted to start a thread for us book people to chat in light of the 8th season and its turns etc.

So this will effectively be a spoiler thread for anyone who is being a pure book reader and waiting for the books if they ever come.

(Yes yes, I should really use ASOIAF if we’re talking books. Suck it.)

Specifically I was thinking about the divergences with the books and the TV.

Lady Stoneheart: Still seems weird to me they swerved this. At the time some people talked about it being too supernatural but obviously that looks utterly ridic when you look at Season 5 onwards…

Anyway, removing her has mean the TV show has Beric being important including bringing Sandor back and having him fight the wights with his flaming sword.

I feel like Stoneheart is actually much closer to Dany in S8 E5 TBH, she is purely up for revenge and would definitely burn the whole of King’s Landing just to fuck up Cersei. I guess she would go North once the Freys are dealt with but she obviously knows she isn’t really there to be mother to anyone and she always hated Jon.

Bronn: I really felt that Bronn’s story ended when he was given Lollys and lands in Book 3 and that the show only brought him back because he was character TV viewers enjoyed at a lot (I enjoy him too TBF). So I guess do we reckon he is going to be coming back?

The Hound and The Mountain: Cleganebowl has been a thing for so long it was only when I was thinking about the books I realised how unlikely it seems to be at the end of book 5. Or am I being naive? I mean much like Bronn, the fleeting glimpse of Sandor alive with the Brothers felt like a goodbye point for the character, as if to say “Yeah, he’s not dead but he’s limping like fuck and permanently screwed and he won’t be doing any more fighting.” I actually completely missed it was him on my first read.

Meanwhile I also completely missed who Ser Robert Strong was at first. I mean they send a skull down so does he even have a head? I think there was some speculation about that by whichever POV characters meet him. So for me I never really had a meeting of the two pegged. Felt like both died and were brought back to life in very changed and broken forms.

The Others and White Walkers: Another one where I had to check the web to make sure but, yeah, The Night King never exists in the books and I guess there’s a good chance he never will. I’m not even sure the White Walkers have much in the way of analytical thought. Feels more like pure zombie-ness where they have no particular goal.

Makes me wonder if they’ll ever be significant to the endgame.

I haven’t even talked about the stuff the TV completely removed, e.g. Jon Connington and ‘Prince Aegon’. I guess the show is confirming he’s definitely a fake?

Tagging some bookwankers that I know of: @hip_young_gunslinger @kenako @whiterussian @anon75298087 @Rarity @anon18868718 - apols if some of you haven’t read ASOIAF. I guess you can just mute the thread. All of you can if we’re being honest, I don’t care, although you may as well @ some other BWs for the lols before you do, eh?

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image

Yes: Freys.

AMIRITE?!

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I think I agree with all your major points.

I bloody love the FAegon stuff, think it’s such a masterstroke to throw this spanner into the works just when you think the board is all set.

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My reread definitely made me love the FAegon stuff so much more.

I feel like Book Varys could be so interesting if he ever writes the rest of it. His plots are so insane.

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I’m fully on board with the idea that he is a Blackfyre, and that Ilyrio / The Golden Company know this, but that Aegon believes he’s legit, as does Connington. The only issue is Varys, because he gives that whole speech to Kevan when he has no need to.

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Ffs, I’m going to have to do a re-read now, aren’t I

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I keep considering a re-read. I have so many other books to read though, and I read them so slowly these days, that it feels stupid to.

I do have Fire & Blood on the pile though, that would probably scratch the itch and count as something new.

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It was a quicker read than I remembered.

The best thing was doing the All Leather Must Be Boiled Combined Reading Order for AFFC and ADWD. Really improved the flow by breaking up Tyrion and Brienne’s sections more.

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That sounds like a good idea. Probably easier with ebooks.

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might do a re-read if twow ever actually gets announced

been that long i can’t remember anything that happened

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Yeah, would definitely do one then.

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holy fuck man, who made that website? bright red background with black text… my fucking eyes are stinging

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I read all the books, but gave up on the TV series two episodes before the end of season 7 because I had a sudden epiphany that I really don’t care anymore. If another book ever gets written I won’t bother reading it.

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Fucksake, @japes

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I will definitely re-read them again at some point. Think I’m so upset about knowing now that Danaerys is the big bad after all and Jaime fucking everyone off to go die with Cersei that it won’t be for a while. But it’ll be good to read them again knowing that’s how it ends.

Can you get an e-book version of the combined ACOK/ADWD? That’s not black text on a red background? :smiley:

I did hear that GRRM tried to emphasize to showrunners how important it was to have Lady Stoneheart included in the show and was miffed when they ignored his advice, but I wonder whether that’s just fans being salty.

I really hope that there is a northern conspiracy, and that Varys and fAegon are actually Blackfyres.

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There is no combined pdf I know of, I just swapped in my ereader.

That website used to be different I think? Just select all for white on dark blue I guess? : /

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Definitely need a re-read, been like 4 years and I can’t remember much. Do remember they were a surprisingly quick and easy read, though.

Edit: Have since then read A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms which was pretty nice! Very different from and much lighter than the main novels, bit like the Hobbit to the LOTR trilogy.

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Dunk :heart:

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Just read this and think it’s an interesting concept:

[GRRM] represents something that’s become a little uncomfortable to think about. He represents the relation between solo creator and world-annihilating media franchise in a way that makes the latter seem uncharacteristically contingent and fragile. We’ve gotten used to looking at Thrones -level entertainment juggernauts as something like impersonal public trusts, properties that belong to all of us; at the highest levels of pop storytelling, we’re comfortable valorizing figures like Marvel’s Kevin Feige, hypercompetent administrators who oversee empires on our behalf and keep the trains running on time. Individual creators whose work achieves this kind of cultural suffusion tend to be punitively depicted as ridiculous whenever they remind us that, for them, these are stories they made up in their heads, not communal texts of a fandom. Think of George Lucas revising Star Wars 20 years after the fact, or J.K. Rowling issuing revelations about Harry Potter characters that she didn’t include in the novels. Martin’s very inability to complete A Song of Ice and Fire speaks to the perilous and uncertain nature of the creative process, the part beyond an executive’s ability to manage. And the fact that Game of Thrones is pretty bad without his work to guide it is an inconvenient reminder that an administrative, collaborative, process-oriented vision of creative work, for all its successes, has limits.

From this:

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I loved the Dunk and Egg stories when I read them last year.
Have you read The Rogue Prince?
It’s in a short story collection called Rogues (edited by GRRM and another chap) which has a mini-history of the olden days when the Targaryens still ruled about Daemon who was the younger brother of one of benevolent kings. Bit of a dick. Kind of fun and kind of horrible. It’s only about 40 pages or so. Worth reserving a copy at the library if you can

Plus Rogues also has an astoundingly good short story called The Lightning Tree by Patrick Rothfuss. Fucking hell!