George RR Martin’s series of novels, A Song of Ice and Fire, have provided the basis for HBO’s Game of Thrones for eight seasons now. Martin created the Game of Thrones universe in his books and paved the way for the global success of the HBO show which is currently airing its final run. As season eight continues on HBO and Sky Atlantic in the UK, fans are wondering just how accurate the TV series compared to Martin’s books.
WARNING: This article contains spoilers from Game of Thrones seasons 1-8.
Game of Thrones seasons one to five was able to draw influence directly from Martin’s novels.
Martin had written five novels in the A Song of Ice and Fire series before the HBO series got underway.
HBO could, therefore, base the first five seasons on the corresponding books.
Seasons six, seven, and eight all still draw heavily from Martin’s work, obviously, but aren’t based directly on Martin's next books The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring.
Express.co.uk spoke exclusively to John Jasmin, editor and founder of globally popular GOT fansite Tower of the Hand, to discuss how faithful the HBO series has been.
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Game of Thrones books: George RR Martin (Image: HBO)
Jasmin said: “The first four seasons of Game of Thrones did an admirable job of following the first three books of the series, hitting almost all of the major plot points that Martin first wrote about.
“The next season took somewhat of an abridged path to the remaining books.
“Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) had to fly a dragon and Jon (Kit Harington) needed to be betrayed by the Night's Watch,
“But where Martin wrote about the pitfalls of leadership that led to those pivotal moments, the show seemed intent on simply getting to the big action scenes as efficiently as
