I’m a massive fan of the show Game of Thrones. Yet despite being a bookworm, I’m not ashamed to say I haven’t read the books. I just don’t have time or the staying-power for 1,770,000 words (and counting). But maybe it’s a good thing I haven’t read them; I’m coming to the series with fresh eyes.

Season 5 finished last night. Summing it up in a single word is easy: bleak. Depressing works quite well, too.

Whereas in previous seasons the characters were able to carve out small green spaces for themselves in a vast desert wilderness — be it the “normal” loving family moments in the Stark household, the nobles all getting behind the true “King in the North”, or the tender love affairs such as Tyrion and Shea’s — this season is just dark, dark, bleak, dark, depressing, gloomy, and dark.

It may be Season 5 of a probable 8, but I feel that only now are we well and truly into Act II: all the characters we’re rooting for (those who still have their heads, that is) are at their lowest ebb, it would appear. And winter is almost come.

More good guys are dead, loss of purpose and morale for others, rape of innocents, child sacrifice, favourite characters going blind or catching incurable diseases, and a general sense that everything is pretty much effed up.

But the most depressing thing about Game of Thrones Season 5 is: I have to wait a whole year for Season 6!!

© 2015 Bryan A. J. Parry

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