The Game of Thrones season 6 premiere date draws nigh. The next season of the biggest show in the world comes back to HBO on April 24, and the trailer for it is the most viewed in the show’s history. But for book readers… it’s just not that exciting, is it? The next season is going to be rife with spoilers for Winds of Winter, but somehow, the magic isn’t there when the books don’t come first. At least not for this reader and watcher.

Game Of Thrones Season 6: Spoilers Unbound

At this point, you probably know why a lot of people aren’t as excited for Game of Thrones season 6: The new season is going to pass the A Song of Ice and Fire books on which the show has always been based. They’re going to spoil events that won’t happen until The Winds of Winter, the ever-forthcoming next book in the series. Instead of being a visual retelling of a familiar story, it will become well and truly independent for the first time, and us readers will be truly in the dark about the future (beyond what our intuition and reason tell us).

And for some, that’s reason enough not to watch Game of Thrones season 6 , which premieres on April 24. Sure, many people—the vast majority, to be sure—watch it because they love the show’s characters and want to find out what happens next. I love some of the show’s characters too. But I don’t want to find out what happens next—not from the show, anyway.

For a real hardcore dyed in the wool A Song of Ice and Fire reader, the joy of Game of Thrones the show was never finding out what happened next. Up until now, we’ve always known what would happen next. Goody for us—not saying we’re special, it’s just the way it is. The pleasure of Game of Thrones, like the pleasure of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter before it, was in seeing how the events and characters we had always imagined would play out on screen. It’s suspense of an entirely different nature.

That’s gone. Now, the book reader can’t get excited about what the show watchers are about to learn, or yearn for the new places we’re about to see, because the book reader no longer knows such things. It’s all new. And that would be fine, but a lot of us like the books better… or we don’t like the way the story is told in Game of Thrones. Especially when it does new stuff. Not that it matters to the show’s popularity, but Game of Thrones season 5 alienated many longtime book readers and fans. It’s too different; it tells an entirely different story than the books do.

I didn’t sign up for Game of Thrones to see a different storyline than the books. I came to see the books on-screen. And now that the show tells its own story and the other books aren’t out yet, I don’t really give a damn. Maybe I’ll watch Game of Thrones season 6, but man, I’m not excited for it.