Yes, Game of Thrones is still vexing me

First off, let me say I'm still loving HBO's Game of Thrones.  It's well produced and executed with fabulous casting and great performances.  But . . .

I'm just not getting the wild divergence from the second book this season.  In A Clash of Kings, Daenerys spends her time in Qarth trying to secure ships to sail back to Westeros.  Xaro Xhoan Daxos spends his time trying to woo Dany to wed him.  He and Pyat Pree do not slaughter the council of 13 and declare Daxos king!  Why bother with that sort of embellishment?  And as I mentioned in a previous post on this, Dany's dragons are not stolen, in fact she take the black one - Drogon with her to the House of the Undying and it is the dragon that saves her in there.  There's enough drama in the original story to translate to television so I'm just not getting it.

Plus the story of Jon Snow beyond the wall.  In the book, he spares Ygritte's life and lets her escape and in turn she helps spare his when he has to confront the wildlings led by Rattleshirt.  But now we've got Ygritte leading Jon into an ambush where he'll be forced to join them or die (I suppose). Then commanded to kill Qhorin Halfhand at their command rather than the book's version where Halfhand tells Jon to do what he must to infiltrate the wildlings and allows Jon to slay him.  The book's version allows Jon more honor and despair.  Why demean his character the way it appears they are going?

I'm not so put off by Arya's interaction with Tywin Lannister.  It humanizes Tywin a bit and the back and forth between them is enjoyable.  This perhaps is a better deviation from the source material and Arya's time in Harrenhall was generally grim and downbeat.

Only two episodes left apparently, so I'll be interested to see how they finish off the season.  There's so much left in the book that hasn't been covered I'm curious how they'll get it all in in just two hours.

Still come highly recommended by me for viewing.  And I plan to get through the fourth book on my vacation later this year.  I wonder if HBO will follow the books to the end (currently at five novels) or just curtail it after another season or two?

Hmmm . . .