Game of Thrones was the book first or the show?

The show follows the books relatively well, but leaves out a lot of the backstory of the kingdoms and the history of the mythical world. Martin goes into great depth in his world-building in the novels.

The TV show does a good job of being a TV show, and the books do a relatively good job of being books; although the story became tedious as we got into the fourth and fifth books, I thought. I'm not really that impatient for the sixth book to come out. I got tired of Martin dragging the story out. Maybe in three or four years when he gets around to releasing the next story, I'll be eager to read some more.

Martin really probably should have wrapped it up in five books rather than seven. In the fourth and fifth books, he started throwing in all sorts of new characters because he'd killed so many of his original characters, and then he killed the new characters left and right. At this point, it's kind of silly, imo.

Another problem is that none of Martin's Song of Ice and Fire books stands alone as a complete story. It's all one gigantic serialized story, and you never get a sense of closure at the end of his books. The first and third ones *kind of* felt like they wrapped some stuff up, but not really. Really, he just reached a convenient stopping point.

The books came first.

Having read the books and watched the show, this is one time where I don't find myself favoring one over the other. The show offers a lot more character perspective, and shows scenes from the books in a different light. The books, of course, show more internal dialogue and reflection and provide more of a backstory for the characters. The show has fewer characters, and a bunch of originals, and of course changes a lot of the plot. However the books have so many characters and places and names, and so many of those names are only different by one or two letters, or characters only show up in one paragraph in one chapter then are a major character later down the road or just barely appear at all so sometimes you get thrown off because you can't recall who that person is.

There's pros and cons to both, but if you're wondering which one to start with, I would recommend doing what I did: start with the show, to get all the characters and the basic plot down in your brain, then go and read the books. That may sound a little... redundant I guess, but there are HUGE differences between the two, and they really only have the characters and the MAJOR plot points in common. Watching the show and reading the book are really just two totally different experiences.

Which one is better is a matter of personal taste.

In terms of plot, the first season is virtually identical to the first book. The changes are mostly them cutting out and simplifying some stuff so that they can fit the events of the first book into ten hours of tv. The second season is still very close to the books although with more changes. The third book diverges a bit more. But they all hew fairly closely to the books

A song of ice and fire(the book series, the first was titled "A Game of Thrones") came before the show and in my opinion was better.

The Books, of course. The show is based off the books, NOT the other way around as MOST people who've *only* seen the show think (because they don't do their research).

Book(s), as usual.