The Nature of Things

George R.R. Martin's fans have been waiting impatiently since 2011 for the next entry in his fantastically successful Song of Ice and Fire saga. Of course, long-time Martin fans have grown accustomed to waiting. Maybe it is those newcomers among us (like me) who only discovered him after the start of the HBO series Game of Thrones who really haven't absorbed the lessons of the last seventeen years. As all true fans know, Song of Ice and Fire was conceived as a seven book saga. The first entry in the series, which was entitled Game of Thrones , was published in 1996. It took only two years for the next book, A Clash of Kings , to gestate. And then two more years for A Storm of Swords to reach the salivating fandom. But then things slowed down. The books got longer and (if possible) even more complicated and it took five years before A Feast for Crows saw the light of day.  But that was as nothing compared to the SIX YEARS that it took to produce A Dance with Dragons which ...

I've mentioned here before that I am a Game of Thrones fan, both of George R.R. Martin's books A Song of Ice and Fire series and of the HBO series . When a book, especially long and extremely complicated books like Martin's, get adapted for the screen, there are bound to be changes. Plot lines are compressed and combined. Disparate characters are combined, their names sometimes changed. Some things get left out. Some things get added. Although the first season of Game of Thrones on television adhered pretty closely to the storyline presented in the first book, this second season has been another matter. While the action on the screen has stayed fairly true to the spirit of book two, A Clash of Kings , important changes have been made that will only be evident to readers of the book. Some of them are disconcerting at least to some readers. Me, for example. The scriptwriters have changed the stories of Arya, Jon, Robb, and Daenerys (not to mention Bran and Theon) in subt...