I remember having the nagging feeling that GRRM had painted himself into a corner while reading the series. I took to the series knowing nothing about him or the books, and I was blown away when the character I expected to be the main hero of the series was brutally killed off. Then it happened again. And again.

On the other hand, he continued to introduce entirely new, well fleshed out characters and plot lines, even multiple books in. I started to feel like the story was getting away from him somewhere around the third book. He had a lot of great ideas that should probably have become series in their own rights, but which he has been trying to weave together into a coherent narrative.

There’s an old saying along the lines of “fiction is different from history, because fiction has to make sense.” It goes to the point about how, if you show a gun on the table in the first act, it has to be used by the final act.

I still hate Season 8 with the heat of a thousand suns. I cannot think of another franchise whose ending left me feeling not just disappointed but actually resentful. I thought Lost was okay. I thought Avengers reached the “let’s just wrap this up” stage. I always thought Stephen King, at least through mid-career, wrote fantastic books with crap endings even those O still love his work. I don’t think that the GoT team at HBO was set up for success. I do think they crapped all over the franchise - I have not rewatched a single episode since it ended - but it’s obvious that the fault also lies with GRRM for simply not knowing what happens next.