That pretty much describes my wife - fantasy fan, loves the LotR films, HP books and films, and so on, but is unlikely to read Martin's work because of the sheer size - and as I said, she liked the first two eps but her attention was flagging in this one. Both those first two episodes ended with pretty big hooks and she was excited to see the next episode. This time around, not so much of a hook, not so excited to see the next episode.
That's not necessarily the fault of the show creators, of course - they are slaves to what is happening in the books, obviously, and this little stretch was not quite as full on. I don't know, but I kind of feel that to some extent they kind of rushed or glossed over the whole intrigue of who owns the knife and thus who sent the killer. The somewhat rushed introductions of Varys and Littlefinger may have contributed to this.
I always thought that television was the perfect medium to visually adapt these books, as it would allow plenty of room for development and a near-faithful representation of numerous threads of the plot without having to resort to the shortcuts inherent in film. I gues in the end though, ten hours is only roughly six hundred script pages, and script pages are a lot less dense then novel pages, so I may have been a little naive in that thought.
I'm not saying the show isn't enjoyable, though. I'm just the exacting type, is all.
