Early post--G of T

I have to write early today because Game of Thrones, season 4 starts tonight and I'm a total "Thrones Junkie."

I even watched about 20 minutes of a U-Tube show called 'Screen Junkies' to review the plots (at least some of them) of the first three seasons.

It was my son, Josh, who got me into the books. Ten pages and I was hooked. I've read them all and the TV show is actually, so far, remarkably faithful to the stories. The one piece of advice Josh gave me was this: "don't get too attached to any of the characters...."

George R. R. Martin, the inventor of the series, subtitled "A song of ice and fire", tends to kill off key characters at an alarming rate.

If you're not at all familiar with Game of Thrones, it is a fantasy series set in an imaginary world that, in terms of development, is roughly in what we would call the 'dark ages' of our own history. The 'iron throne' of the 7 Kingdoms is in King's Landing. There is a North and South and then lands across the sea to the east. It is bloody and moody and full of violence from beginning to end. The fifth book came out in 2011 and the sixth is due, Lord help us, soon I hope....I'm like a Thrones addict that needs another hit.

Anyway, it's on HBO tonight and I'll be glued to it with a copy of A Dance with Dragons, book Five, because Martin has a list of characters at the end of the novels so I can remind myself who is who. (The list of characters takes up pages 995-1016, so you can understand how one might get confused from time to time!) Plus, Bern loves the show but never read the books--all of which are about 1000 pages long and I have to be able to give her some clue about what's going on.

My favorite surviving characters are Daenerys Targaryen, 'the mother of dragons', who has three and wants the Throne her father once held before being murdered. Tyrion Lannister, the only 'good' Lannister, a dwarf with a claim to the throne as well, whose awful nephew, Joeffrey, sits on it now. And Arya Stark, an 11 year old who is wandering the Kingdoms with a character called 'the Hound' trying to avenge her father's murder by Joeffrey.

According to the books thus far, those three will still be around at the end of season 4. I sincerely hope and pray so.

Watch it--it will confuse the hell out of you if you've not read the books or seen the first three seasons, but it is gloriously entertaining....