The Song of Ice and Fire book series has been nothing short of the most successful modern fantasy series of all time. Even more so, it integrates a lot more reality into the fantasy setting than most fantasy series do. There are bastard characters everywhere, rape, murder, the honourable loosing out because of their honour, slavery, incest, fratricide and so much more that is absent from the usual fantasy setting like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter (Except maybe the last two books).
When I heard the books were being made into a TV series, I wasn't sure if I should have been happy or not. Many a time I have seen a favourite book get turned into a movie or TV show and for the creators to move away from the original plot and characters rather quickly. Or only keep the most vague of similarity.
Game of Thrones does not do that. It shies away from nothing. There are scenes not from the book, as well as characters, but this is simply what happens when a book is translated into a TV series, especially one of this magnitude. But fear not, all the major characters are still there. All of them. Every one of the ever so many. Especially Tyrion Lannister, who is portrayed by Peter Dinklage. He is easily the high light of the series, second to everything else. And like the book series, it is just as disturbing, shocking and sometimes even downright brutal as the source.
Unfortunately, the TV series follows almost exactly like the book series. So many characters that you grow attached to will die, and usually in very annoying and terrible means. And like many things that are adapted from books faithfully, it suffers, for the fans, from being nothing new. While it is great to finally see how badass Khal Drogo really is, especially when he rips a man's tongue out through his slit throat, there are many scenes that would be a lot more suspenseful if a reader of the series didn't already know what was going to happen.
Luckily, this is fixed by everything else about the show being utterly great. The architecture of Westeros is still medieval looking, but it also has its own unique style. The actors, most of whom have either never done anything beyond a couple of one-off episodes for TV shows (Or never even been in anything other than a couple of TV ads, such as the woman that portrays Daenerys) and yet their acting is beyond what most Golden Globe awards actors can even hope to accomplish.
In summery, buy this. Do it. Now. Buy a hundred copies. It is all kinds of worth it.