The books are great and without an ending and the show is now ahead of where the books have stalled. The show (and books) is an amazing mix of political intrigue, fantasy tropes very well done, and superdisgusting human history all rolled into one. No pole barns tho unless you count a guy who lives in a frozen wasteland, takes all of his daughters as wives, and gives all of his sons of said daughter-wives over to a zombie-like death cult of unconscious reanimated corpses.