Pretty much agree with what everyone else has been saying, the writing took a nose dive since they ran out of books to follow. D.B Weiss and David Benioff are completely incompetent and the only reason they are the shot callers is because of their hollywood connections, completely incompetent. Even in the seasons which were fantastic and mostly followed the books they added needless modern day political commentary and extra sex and altered scenes, so it came as no surprise to me that as they gained increased freedom with the script the show would suffer even more. That being said it's still interesting and I'll finish watching it just to see how they wrap things up or if they can wrap things up completely. I'm dissapointed with Martin's nihilist version of Tolkien's universe in some respects, it's evident in the fact that the giants, the children of the forest, the dragons, everything magical is dying from westeros. So nothing this season has really surprised me, we'll see though!