Game of Thrones (season 5) (episodes 9 and 10). Nutter is the only returning director with the rest being first-time "Game of Thrones" directors. This season features more original material than previous seasons. The deviations from Martin's novels are in part attributable to the way the television series has covered most of the novel series' published material and in part to the directors' opinions of the actors' abilities. For example, Sansa Stark arrives at Winterfell to marry Ramsay Bolton in "High Sparrow," a plotline that had been given to a minor character in the novels. In an interview, show writer David Benioff explains that Sophie
A Game of Thrones imagery." Phyllis Eisenstein of the "Chicago Sun-Times" wrote that, although the book uses many generic fantasy tropes, Martin's approach is "so refreshingly human and intimate that it transcends them." She described it as "an absorbing combination of the mythic, the sweepingly historical, and the intensely personal." John Prior, writing in the "San Diego Union-Tribune", called Martin's writing "strong and imaginative, with plenty of Byzantine intrigue and dynastic struggle", and compared it to Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" books, "though much darker, with no comedy or romance to relieve the nastiness." A Game of Thrones A Game of Thrones is the