Game Of Thrones’ fan base can be divided into two camps: those who have read George R.R. Martin’s books on which the series is based, and those who have not.

The latter camp know that the series ceased to be based on Martin’s work around Season 6, the reason being that the story it was telling shot past the timeline in the books. Naturally, this raised some speculation as to whether Game Of Thrones episodes beyond that point were going to diverge from what Martin had planned for the remaining two books in his series, which is called A Song Of Ice And Fire.

Well, it turns out that Game Of Thrones and Martin’s books are now properly separate entities. In an interview with US Metro, Martin revealed that the body count in the television series is far greater than in his forthcoming books.

“The book series and TV adaptation go their separate ways,” Martin said. “On the screen characters are killed right and left. About twenty of them have died already, which are quite alive to me and will appear in a new book.”

Wait, did we hear that correctly? The writers for Game Of Thrones are more brutal and unforgiving than Martin himself? Who knew?

In that same interview, Martin revealed that he doesn’t watch Game Of Thrones because he’s too busy writing and touring. He also said that he’s not rushing to meet any particular deadline for his new book The Winds Of Winter. That last titbit will be hardly any news to fans of Martin’s books – they’ve been waiting for Winds Of Winter for about six years now.