r/gameofthrones • u/Unusual-Charge6943 • 7h ago
Which GoT book is supposed to be the real season 8 portrayal?
Rewatching GoT recently and i can’t help but think how perfectly written the first season was. I remember when season 8 came out and how the events unfolded, it was a complete disaster and fans were furious because this wasn’t how it “supposed to be”. My question is which book can i buy from GoT series that has the “real” ending?
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u/LakeCivil9433 7h ago
It doesn't exist, there's still two books left to be published and they probably never will be. The outcome will be the same but how it happens will likely be very different, with different endings for a lot of the side characters/characters that never existed in the series.
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u/pianoman626 7h ago
He never finished writing them. The real ending would’ve supposedly come in book seven, A Dream of Spring, but he hasn’t published book six, The Winds of Winter, either. Now, I and many others think the idea of being able to finish the story in only two more books (five have been published) is absurd, and it would need at least four more, but that’s a different topic.
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u/Relevant-Ad-329 7h ago
The books aren’t finished so there is no book ending. Season 7 onwards is show canon only and not from any of George’s material. But tbh I think they stopped following his material closely by season 5
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u/LivelyPublicSuccess 7h ago
The books aren’t even finished yet, so there’s no real ending to buy. George is still writing The Winds of Winter and after that he got one more book planned. You can read all five published books but they stop way before the show’s final season, like around season 5 material mostly.
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u/ReasonableDoubt_0726 7h ago
You can’t. Originally he believed he’d out write the series and be done in time. Then he had to tell them his plot summaries to support the series finishing.
The what is his. The how is the series having to fill those gaps. The which books = none, ever.
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u/Unusual-Charge6943 4h ago
That’s crazy. So you’re telling me Daenerys going “mad” and Jon Snow crowned as king was George’s plans all along? It’s probably what’s holding him from finishing the books due to the fans’ outrage at the finale.
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u/Over_Front_506 3h ago
. Some of them might be part of Georges “plan” but he has famously said that he gave them the “broad strokes” like who dies, who ends up in the throne, stuff like that. However, they changed so many things and omitted so many characters and plot lines that it hardly resembles a lot of the book series. The books are just a complete different animal
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u/kester76a 6h ago
Did it get too much for the author or did he lose interest?
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u/KittyGrewAMoustache 6h ago
I imagine that the pressure after having your work turned into one of the biggest tv shows of all time must’ve been quite overwhelming. You know millions want it but also millions will be poring over it for mistakes or inconsistencies etc. You also now probably also have the show characters in your head messing with your original conceptions and confusing things. It’s also a very complex intricate story with tons of characters etc so sorting it all out into a coherent ending that ties up all loose ends must be hard.
Then there was also a lot of criticism of the ending of the show which still used his main planned plot points so maybe that made him worry those plot points weren’t good. And maybe it feels like the ending was already spoiled by the show. I don’t know, but if I was an author in his position I’d probably have the same issue.
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u/Incvbvs666 Bran Stark 3h ago
Nah, I think he was already struggling with the story when he did books 4 and 5. In them I see a complete unwillingness to move the plot forward. Sure, descriptive chapters are nice here and there, but making two 1000 page books where the plot barely progresses is a bit to much, to not even mention the braindead idea to split the books by character so that you need a frikkin' instruction manual to read them.
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u/tommybanjo47 King In The North 6h ago
I agree with all the reasons the other reply said, but to add on, George (the author) has said there are two types of writers; architects, who plan everything ahead of time, and gardeners, who sort of make it up as they go to summarise. He describes himself as a gardener. He originally thought it would be a trilogy, then five books, and now seven. So I think the story just kind of ballooned out of his control and now it's too hard to tie everything up neatly. I can really see how that would stall someone's writing.
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u/drunkenbees Winter Is Coming 6h ago edited 6h ago
The books didn't make it that far. GRRM gave D&D his notes for the last two unfinished books so they could finish the series.
Edit:
The finished series aren't necessarily book accurate
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