Speculative Fiction Reviews: Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin: How do the novel and the TV show stack up?

Robb and Bran Stark discover direwolf pups

Spoiler Alert!! There will be plot details of both the Game of Thrones novel and TV show (season 1) in this post. Do not read further unless you have read the books, seen the first season of the show, or don’t care about spoiling things. All pictures come from the Game of Thrones Wiki.

This is not a typical review, but rather a comparison between the novel version and the TV version of George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones.

My initial experience with the A Song of Ice and Fire series was with the TV show Game of Thrones; I watched the opening scene, which depicts dozens of dismembered corpses, and turned it off. Noooope, I told myself. No way. Way too gruesome for me. Later, despite A Song of Ice and Fire topping all of the bestseller lists and top fantasy lists, I made excuses not to read the series. However, this year a friend convinced me to give the TV show another try, and, like so many others, I got hooked.

I am current with the TV show, but only now have I read the first book. I went into reading Game of Thrones with some trepidation regarding how the violence that I knew was coming would affect me in the written form (much easier to stomach words than images, I found), as well as worries that the book would ruin my perception of how awesome the show is. Either the book would be much better than the show and the show would be devalued in my eyes, or the show would be better than the books and I would be disappointed. Interestingly, neither happened. I found that reading Game of Thrones complemented my experience with the TV show. All of the back history provided in the book makes the show richer, but the TV show holds its own.

What amazed me time and time again while reading the book is just how great a job the HBO show did in capturing the first novel, in terms of casting, acting, sets, writing, etc. All of the best dialogue in the show is straight out of the book. As one of the writers said, why mess with perfection?

King Robert Baratheon visits the Starks of Winterfell

What I liked about the novel:

The names! I’m sure a ton of them will become popular names in the future… oh wait, it’s already started.
The characters: Ned’s stiff sense of honor, Catelyn’s fierce protectiveness of her family, Lysa Arryn’s creepiness (she’s even creepier in the book than in the show, which is saying something!), Bran’s fighting spirit, Arya’s wildness, Sansa’s airheaded delusions of romance, Theon’s arrogance, Jon Snow’s sullenness and honor, Robb’s responsibility, Robert’s debauchery, Cersei’s manipulativeness, Joffrey’s egomaniacal cruelty, Tywin’s legacy-obsessed calculation, Tyrion’s defensive use of humor, Jaime’s self-importance, Varys’s mysteriousness, Petyr Baelish’s deviousness, Viserys’s madness, Daenerys’s haughtiness, Drogo’s ferocity, Ser Jorah Mormont’s angst, and, of course, Hodor’s Hodor-ness…
The emphasis on dream sequences, foreshadowing, and symbolism. For example, early into the novel the Starks find their House sigil, the direwolf, dead in the woods with a stag’s horn lodged in its neck (the stag being the sigil of House Baratheon). This scene directly foreshadows all of the subsequent events of the first novel, and is an omen that only Catelyn has the wisdom to recognize.
The book is more like a medieval fantasy murder-mystery than is the show, which I liked. The main plot of the first novel surrounds the mysterious death of Jon Arryn, Hand of the King to Robert Baratheon. Each character has a piece of knowledge that, added together, paints a picture of conspiracy. Because the reader has access to the point of view of numerous characters (Martin employs third person, limited omniscient narration), the reader is able to put together pieces of the puzzle while most of the characters remain in the dark. This serves to heighten the sense of foreboding.
The descriptiveness of the writing. I never expected the butcher behind the Red Wedding (Martin) to be so poetic or imaginative, but I should have! In particular, I loved reading Martin’s descriptions of settings and attire. I absolutely loved the descriptions of Winterfell, Vaes Dothrak, and especially the Eyrie. I also really enjoyed reading about was the descriptions of the armor of various knights and warriors. The Hound has a hound-head helm that adds to his fearsome appearance, whereas Loras Tyrell, the Knight of Flowers, has an elaborate get-up stylized to look like flowers in bloom. Lovely!

The Hound

Ser Loras Tyrell, the Knight of Flowers
I liked that Joffrey was a little bit more nuanced in the book than he seems in the TV show. He occasionally acts gallant, such as at the feast for the Hand’s Tourney, which makes it more easy to believe that Sansa could be deceived into thinking he isn’t the little shit that he has always been… at least before Joffrey has her father beheaded.
The bonus features: the book includes two maps of the Seven Kingdoms (although they omit areas outside of Westeros that are of interest, such as Pentos and Vaes Dothrak). Also, the book features an appendix that lists all of the noble Houses, along with their histories, sigils, family members, and bannermen. Both of these features can be handy for keeping all the locations, characters, and allegiances straight. Too bad I discovered them only after I was done reading!

Who are all of these guys, anyway??

Things that I disliked about the novel:

It is unrelentingly grim, with little hope on the horizon that things will end more happily in the future (and, as a TV show watcher, I know it will definitely get worse!). It occasionally was depressing to read. It was occasionally difficult to read due to the heinous and gruesome nature of the content. There are murders, rapes, violence against animals, child abuse, and a lot of other awful things that can be triggering for readers. Do NOT read or watch Game of Thrones if these things will be harmful to you, as they are rampant throughout both versions of the story.
Although I like the narration style, there are certain POV characters that I didn’t enjoy reading as much as others, and also times when I was so engrossed in one character’s story that it was hard to let go and read about someone else for awhile. My favorite narrators were Bran (I loved his interactions with Maester Luwin, Rickon, and especially Old Nan!), Ned, Jon Snow, and Tyrion, while my least favorites were Catelyn (although I loved her trip to the Eyrie), Arya, and Dany (mostly because she’s away from the action in Westeros). Sansa initially bored me but toward the end her POV chapters became more interesting.

Bran listening to Old Nan tell stories

Changes the show made to the source material that are positive!

The invention of Ros, a prostitute from Winterfell who ends up working in one of Petyr Baelish’s brothels in King’s Landing. Her presence gave the viewer behind-the-scenes glances into the characters of Tyrion Lannister, Theon Greyjoy, Maester Pycelle (who didn’t love the scene where he limbers himself after she leaves, proving that his infirmity is a façade?), and Petyr Baelish himself. She enables other characters to reveal themselves in moments of vulnerability, although I agree with many fans that the “sexposition” in the show is gratuitous at times.
Aging up the characters. I’m glad that the show chose to portray almost all of the young characters as 3 or more years older, which makes the story more believable (Robb leading a successful army at 15 seems dubious, 18ish makes more sense), as well as more tolerable (Dany getting raped at 13 in the books is worse than 16 in the show). The one character whose age makes more sense in the book is Joffrey—I would expect any petulant boy crowned at age 12 to become a monster.
Changing Cersei’s back story. In the books, Cersei never gave birth to Robert’s trueborn heir—in fact, the one time she did get pregnant by Robert, Jaime helped her abort the child. In the show, Cersei had a stillborn (but trueborn) child by Robert. This child had the Baratheon line’s black hair, which is a piece of evidence for the viewers that Cersei’s other children are bastards. Also, this opens an opportunity for a scene the HBO show included in which Cersei tells Robert she once loved him, before he broke her heart on their wedding night by calling out the name of another woman, Ned Stark’s sister, Lyanna. This makes Cersei more nuanced in the show than she appears in the book, which I think is a positive change.

Queen Regent Cersei Lannister with her son, King Joffrey Baratheon

Things that the show omitted that it shouldn’t have!

In the TV show, the story of how Sandor Clegane (the Hound) becomes burned is told to Sansa by Petyr Baelish. In the book, a drunken Sandor tells Sansa the story and then threatens her life should she ever repeat the tale. The scene in the book is much more dramatic and evocative than the version in the TV show and better sets up their interactions in the future.
The show did a large disservice to the books by neglecting Daenerys’s visit to Vaes Dothrak’s sacred city! After travelling across the Dothraki Sea, or grass plains, there is a gate made of two horses rearing. Beyond this gate are countless statues, each made in a different style and depicting the gods of the cultures that they were stolen from by marauding Dothraki. In the city itself, slaves that the Dothraki capture are forced to erect buildings from their own cultures. The buildings vary from stepped pyramids to castles made of woven grasses. This would have been really cool to see, but I understand why it was omitted (probably budget and time).
In the book, when Ned confronts Cersei about the father of her children, she basically offers him sex in return for his silence. This does not occur in the show. I think this should have been included because it adds another element of ruthlessness to Cersei’s character.
I think the fact that Sansa disobeyed her father’s orders not to bid farewell to the Lannisters, and, in particular, Joffrey, before she and Arya were sent back to Winterfell should not have been omitted from the show. It is only because Sansa had to say goodbye to her beloved, gallant Prince Joffrey that Cersei finds out that Ned plans to send them from the capital… and worse, that Ned has written a letter to Stannis telling him that Joffrey is not Robert’s trueborn heir and that he should claim the throne. Basically, every bad thing that happens to Sansa and Arya, and arguably, to Ned as well, is Sansa’s fault because she disobeyed orders meant to protect her.
Tyrion’s battle scene with the Vale clans is vastly different in the book. In the show, Tyrion gets trampled before the battle against Robb Stark’s bannermen begins, putting him out of commission, whereas in the books he fights surprisingly bravely and manages to fell a few foes. I understand why the show changed the scene to be more humorous, and it doesn’t detract much from his character development, but it does make his later command during the Battle of Blackwater Bay more surprising and seemingly out of character.
The revelation that Daenerys is the true dragon is hinted at strongly in the show early on when she handles the hot dragon eggs and remains unburned while her servant scorches her hands. This is not depicted in the books. At the end of the book, Daenerys reflects that she had suspicions all along that she, and not Viserys, is the dragon, but the clues were not as clear in the book. I think that if I had read the book first without having seen the show, I would have been extremely surprised by the book’s conclusion!

Top WTF moments (in no particular order)