Warning! Some mild “game of thrones” spoilers follow. I will refer to book chapters told from the point of view of characters that have not yet appeared in the HBO series. read carefully.
Until now, the HBO series “Game of Thrones” has mostly stuck to the words that George R. r. martin wrote in the “song of ice and fire” books. fans who have read the books giddily follow while their non-reading friends are shocked by the twists.
You are reading: How far into the books is game of thrones
but last sunday was different. the show’s producers went off script and shot some amazing sequences (at least to readers) that didn’t happen in the book and may or may not have some notable implications for book readers.
The decision to deviate from the source material makes sense given how much HBO producers have left.
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Seasons 1 and 2 mainly covered the first two books, “Game of Thrones” and “Clash of Kings”. the third and fourth seasons track (approximately) with the third book, “a storm of swords”. The show has also taken material from the next two books, “A Feast for Crows” and “A Dance with Dragons.” those books will also (supposedly) comprise the fifth season of the show. the sixth season will presumably be based on the sixth book, which is not yet written. that’s a topic for another day.
so how much source material does hbo have left to use? martin writes his chapters in point of view format (each chapter is seen through the eyes of a single character), so I counted how many chapters each character has in each of the books (not including the unique prologue or epilogue chapters ). In the table, I’ve grouped all the chapters that take place in Dorne and among the miscellaneous Greyjoys into two individual groups to mitigate potential spoilers for those who didn’t heed our warning. but there are still spoilers in the chart.
Next, I went through the books to find out how many of the chapters have already taken place in the show. hbo is currently in the middle of several chapters, so I have listed only the ones that have been completed.
This required some judgment, so I stayed conservative. for example, last week’s episode “oathkeeper” contained the final scene of the ninth chapter of jaime lannister’s “a storm of swords”. but a lot of material from that chapter hasn’t been on the show yet, so I reasoned he’s only completed eight. maybe tonight the show will present material from its first episode of “a feast for crows”, but who knows?
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so here are estimates of the show’s progress from someone who is a huge fan and has read the books three times:
Notice a couple of things: Theon and Bran’s stories are already drawing from material in “A Dance With Dragons.” HBO just mixed in some non-book material in Bran’s storyline — the capture at Craster’s! — so the show seems to be buying time, attempting to spread three chapters left in the series over sixteen more episodes.
also, are you ready for more jon snow (kit harington)? his story has most of the material left, and he’s apparently taking a detour north of the next wall episode that wasn’t in the book. winter is coming and some snow awaits us.
let’s just say we’ll probably see tons of kit harington moving forward, if only because no one has much left to do in book three. Tyrion, Samwell, and Sansa have two chapters left; arya, jaime and davos have one. so expect more non-book diversions, and maybe some material from the next two books.
correction (May 4, 13:42): An earlier version of this post included a table with the wrong number of chapters in george r. r. Martin’s “A Feast for Crows” and “A Dance with Dragons” narrated from the perspective of Greyjoy’s characters. each has five (not including theon greyjoy chapters). the table has been updated.
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