Gotta disagree with you here. GRRM is a fantastic writer, and his world follows it's own internal logic ruthlessly and without cheap gotcha moments that feel unearned. Almost all of the great scenes and dialog in season 1-4 are taken verbatim from the books.
"none of it makes sense when you think about it. For all the theories and book backstories, not even sure it is supposed to. "
I wholeheartedly disagree with this. George wrote the books with purpose - that's why he's taking so freaking long to finish them. I could expound on the brilliant references, foreshadowing, and set up in the books but I'd be here til next Thursday.
How many times did we see Brienne, one handed Jaime (who has been shown to be pretty useless with his left hand), Pod, Sam (fking SAM, the most useless fighter in Westeros), Dany and Jon outnumbered, getting mauled, certain to die, then the camera cuts away. Next shot and they are 1 vs 1ing a couple of wights without a scratch on them... Lame. Fakeout after fakeout - by the 10th time the tension had been sucked out of the episode for me.
I enjoy ASOIAF because it is not your typical big budget brainless slop that relies on cheap tricks and well worn tropes. Unfortunately there has been a noticeable shift towards this type of stuff in the later seasons of the show. You can't watch the first few seasons and tell me this is the same quality of writing - it's not even close. I don't even really blame the show runners - even though I think they are pretty hacky - because they didn't sign up to finish this story, just to adapt it. They were left holding the can, and I think they've done a poor job of it.
I'm sure there are some great moments to come - George told them the framework of the ending, so it's sure to have some clever and epic moments. But so far they have failed to stick the landing from a story perspective. Not mad, just disappointed.
The music is absolutely fantastic and some of the visuals were stunning. But that's not the reason I became interested in the book/show. I think they abandoned that in favor of spectacle and "yas kween" moments on Twitter, which is fine for some (it would seem most?) people. Doesn't do it for me.
I'll admit I am a bit jaded. Been waiting years for that damn book, and to watch the ending get butchered (again, just my opinion) doesn't help with that! I've done my best to mentally separate the show from the books, but it's not 100% possible.