HBO’s most popular show, Game of Thrones, is now almost halfway through its fifth season, and the show is moving at an incredibly fast pace, with more action and plot twists than most of the previous seasons.

Each week, a new episode is aired on HBO at o 8 p.m. CT. There will be 10 episodes in total this season, and this week was the fourth episode, titled “Sons of the Harpy.”

Aside from the tragic “Red Wedding” in Season Three, the fifth season has no shortage of intense action, new characters, scheming, nudity, brutal deaths and surprising plot twists.

The season five premiere on April 12 opened with a flashback scene of Queen Cersei as a young princess, receiving information about her horrific future from a fortune teller.

As the new season progresses further each week, many characters encounter their own interesting turns of events. Fan-favorite Tyrion Lannister found himself kidnapped, and Jon Snow has been promoted to Commander of the Night’s Watch, a small army of criminals who are tasked with defending a massive wall in the north from giants, wildlings or worse.

A few of the new characters include the Sand Snakes, the vengeful daughters of Oberyn Martell, who was slain last season by an eight-foot-tall man called The Mountain. Also, the show has introduced Doran, Oberyn’s older brother.

There has been plenty of action for the other Queen, Daenerys Targaryen, who is currently dealing with a rebellion in the city she has overtaken recently and made into her own fortress. This uprising is affecting every character connected to Daenerys, and there’s been plenty of gore to go around.

Don’t let that turn you away from “Thrones,” as the new season is arguably the best one yet. However, many book readers and fans are angry with the showrunners for changing the storylines in the books for the show.

The showrunners of Game of Thrones, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, have made very careful changes in the storylines of the books and are condensing them for the show in order to fit the most important aspects of the overall plot into a ten hour season.

The show has been gradually drifting away from the books since the third season, and at this point, the show is beginning to quickly outpace the books and will continue to go in somewhat of its own direction.

Certain character storylines have been moved up to occur sooner in the show than in the books, and others’ storylines have been altered to better fit the changing atmosphere of the show.

A prime example would be Jaime Lannister, whose storyline has been changed from besieging the castle of Riverrun in the books, to being sent off to rescue his daughter, pardon me, his “niece,” from Dorne in the show.

Another example would be Sansa, who is overtaking the storyline of a minor character completely, and is being sent off to marry the sadistic Ramsay Bolton in the north, whose father killed her brother and stole their family homeland.

Also, don’t forget about Bran and Hodor, who are only temporarily out of the show because their storyline has completely outpaced the books. Yes, don’t worry, Hodor is still alive.

Although the writers for “Thrones” have made several changes to the overall storyline for the show, the writers have managed to keep the main plot true to the books, and there are several important pieces of backstory that are finally being brought into the show.

4 out of 5 stars.