Feb. 1, 2016. With Game of Thrones set to begin its sixth season in April, the show will, for the first time, be completely without its source material. Author George R.R. Martin missed the latest Honestly, by the time you get to season 4 the tv series has really started to move away from books. I did the opposite to what you are (I read the books first so at first I knew how everything was going to pan out) but it's getting to the point where I can't predict what's going to happen next on the show because they're kind of becoming a new story in their own right rather than strictly George R.R. Martin reveals yet another way his final two books will deviate from HBO's 'Game of Thrones.' in the book,” Martin said. “They did it very physical — ‘hold the door’ with By Eliana Dockterman. May 2, 2016 1:33 PM EDT. J on Snow is alive —or at least he is on television. In the Song of Ice and Fire books upon which the HBO show is based, Jon Snow remains dead. And As stated by Doelger, Martin's book series has five of its seven volumes completed, which might make the average person think that the show and books are matched up perfectly - seven seasons of show, one for each volume of the book. Seasons 1 & 2 of Game of Thrones did in fact follow that pacing, but season 3 (currently on air at the time of It doesn't simply follow the book and then stop at some point. It's an adaptation. They run out of book material for some characters at the end of s5. Some other characters in s6. End of season 4 is where the train overshoots the books, derails, tumbles off a cliff and bursts into flame. Running Game of Thrones is a year-round job. Sure the cast and crew go on hiatus once production ends—a process that in and of itself lasts about six months, from July to December—but the show Generally, two or three years seems to be a good ballpark estimate. Of course, as both George. R.R. Martin and the show’s producers will tell you, at this point the book is the book and the show The start of season six marked the first time that Game of Thrones overtook A Song of Fire and Ice –though Martin worked closely with the show’s writers, providing quite a bit in the way of For a long time, Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time books were considered unadaptable. But with Amazon’s TV adaptation, showrunner Rafe Judkins hopes to successfully update the popular book series. AF5Zagk.