Useful Game of Thrones Recaps

I have not read the Game of Thrones books but I've been enjoying the HBO series. I know the books have more but there are a ton of characters for a TV show. I can mostly keep straight who's on screen but I'm not great at keeping track of the names. This is a real problem because pretty much whenever there isn't action, it's a scene where two characters talk about other characters off-screen and I'm probably missing details about half the time.

This week there wasn't a lot of action and I've seen complaints that it was pretty much boring filler, but these two reviews really helped me get more out of it. They contain spoilers through S3E6 "The Climb" and I guess spoilers for the books up through a similar location. One has more book spoilers though they're blacked out on the page and I didn't read any of them. It's interesting to me to see an explanation of some of the changes made for the series (which by all accounts I've seen have been done very well). Both articles are worth reading if you caught up, below are a paragraph from each that really helped me.

io9 writes Is Game of Thrones all about the war between Varys and Littlefinger? "And thus, even over the course of the series, Littlefinger's rise has been dramatic — he betrayed Ned Stark and cemented his ties with the Lannisters. Then he brokered the alliance between the Tyrells and the Lannisters, wedding Joffrey to Margaery, and was given Harrenhal — the castle where Jaime Lannister is currently a 'guest.' And then, for his further services, he was told to marry Lysa Arryn, the breastfeeding maniac who rules over the Eyrie. If he weds Lysa and then still manages to get hold of Sansa Stark, he'll basically have Ned Stark's old position, plus a large chunk of the rest of the country."

Underwire provides a Game of Thrones Recap: There Are No Happy Endings "Arya: We finally learn the mystery destination of Melisandre when the Red Priestess shows up at the camp of the Brothers Without Banners looking for Thoros of Myr, her fellow worshipper of the Lord of Light. She’s shocked to learn that Thoros has resurrected Beric six times—and so is Thoros, really. Turns out he used to be a drunken, womanizing priest of the Red God in name only until Beric was slain, at which point he desperately said the only magic words he knew. But unlike Arya—and every other character that has screamed over the body of the loved one—the Lord of Light answered Thoros, and Beric returned to life. As much as people talk about how the dragons marked Game of Thrones‘ major turning point into fantasy, the Red God is surely one of the most terrifying and real supernatural forces in the series so far. Of course, just because he isn’t a false god doesn’t mean he’s a good one. Case in point: Melisandre hasn’t just come to practice her High Valyrian—she’s also here to collect poor, poor Gendry. Gendry wanted to devote his life to the Brotherhood, but ends up being carted away by Melisandre for a couple sacks of gold because she needs the blood of kings—and he’s the bastard of Robert Baratheon. Before they leave, Arya gets in Melisandre’s face, and the Red Lady, looking right back at her, tells Arya that she sees eyes that Arya will shut forever, and promises they will meet again. In the books: None of this happened in the book, but the way it weaves together several disparate threads is fantastic. When Melisandre went looking for royal blood, she never had to leave Dragonstone—one of Robert’s bastards, Edric Storm, was already there. This is a neat conflation that not only reduces the number of characters the show has to introduce but also brings the two most notable worshippers of R’hllor, Melisandre and Thoros, into the same scene to chat theology in High Valyrian, offering a bit more detail about Thoros than we hear in the book."