Game Of Thrones: 10 Ways Season 5 Was Better Than The Books

10. Combining Books 4 & 5

The third book in the series, A Storm of Swords, was released in 2000, and the fourth one didn't come out until 2005. Fans rushed to bookstores to see what would happen to all their favorite characters, especially where Tyrion would end up after murdering Tywin and fleeing King’s Landing. Who would you identify as the three main characters of this story? Probably Tyrion, Dany and Jon Snow, right?

Well guess what? None of them are in the fourth book. What happened was when George R.R. Martin was writing, the book became so massive that he decided to split it in two. Rather than cut the story in the middle and give readers half a book, he decided to divide it up by location, focusing book four on King's Landing, Dorne, and a few other places.

That made sense in theory, but imagine the disappointment when readers cracked into the fourth book only to find out that the three best characters in the series were completely absent, and then the next book didn’t come out until 2011. Dedicated readers who read book three when it was published had to wait over 10 years to find out what happened to Tyrion, Dany and Jon. Ouch.

The fifth season of the show corrected that mistake, combining the storylines of book 4 and 5 into a more satisfying whole.