Winter may be coming, but the new season of HBO’s Game of Thrones has a distinct air of rejuvenation, of spring. Well, O.K., it’s not like Game of Thrones was ever in a real creative rut, it’s just that, if I’m honest, my enjoyment of the show had started to wane sometime last season. See, I’m one of those maddening “I read the books” people, and as the series inevitably had to start seriously jiggering with George R.R. Martin’s massive tomes, omitting characters and inventing new plot strands that are a better fit for television, I grew frustrated. Sure, I was partly annoyed that I didn’t know every beat of the story (any book fan knows how fun it’s been to self-satisfiedly lord our knowledge over the neophytes), but it also seemed like the show was spinning its well-built wheels, unsure how fast and how far it wanted to steer away from the books to truly become its own thing.

But now, in the first four episodes of the fifth season, it’s clear that the show has made its decision, and is asserting itself fully as its own entity, keeping Martin’s intricate framework intact, of course, but now unafraid to tell new stories. For a while I thought that I might not watch this season, because I didn’t want anything that might be in the upcoming (right, George?) sixth book spoiled for me on the show. I also just didn’t trust television, even creatively assured television like Game of Thrones, to tell as complex and layered original stories as the books. Well, I’m glad the demands of my job (such heavy demands!) ultimately required me to watch the new season, because I suddenly don’t really care if I’m going to get spoiled. (And, really, likely wouldn’t even know for sure that I was getting spoiled until the next book comes out, which at this rate won’t be until I’m old and senile anyway.) It’s actually rather exciting not knowing where the story might be heading, to watch the show almost as someone who’s never read the books has watched the last four seasons. Bring on the new stuff, I say, as long as it’s this good.

This really is such a rich, satisfying, fantastically put together series, isn’t it? Reveling in a luxe budget, the series is meticulously designed and executed, paying more than worthy homage to Martin’s prodigious world-building, while adding flair and texture all its own. While the size of the cast has ballooned, very few, if any, weak links have been allowed into the fold. And two relatively unknown elements, kid actors at the show’s center whom producers bet big on when they were cast five years ago, have panned out beautifully. Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner, who play tragedy-touched sisters Arya and Sansa Stark, have matured splendidly in their roles, giving subtle, crafty performances to match the seasoned grown-ups in their midst. Turner especially gets a chance to shine this season, as the show invents a new plotline for Sansa that makes her an active player in the titular scramble for power. Sansa’s new groove is the best example yet of the show thoughtfully altering the physics of Martin’s world.

Watching these first four episodes, I found myself marveling at how many compelling, detailed, powerful female characters there are on this series, despite being set in a world that marginalizes women even more than our own. The show finds some cunning in Lena Headey’s Cersei that the books don’t, squaring her off against Natalie Dormer’s delightfully conniving Margaery in ways that are tense and funny and almost soapy, without ever quite getting there. There’s Brienne, played by the terrific Gwendoline Christie, a would-be knight on a dogged mission to honor a pledge to a dead woman. Though her conviction is monolithic, Brienne is no single-note character. As written, and as played by Christie, she is yet another tortured soul caught up in this epic turmoil—she clings to her mission as the only constant in a world gone to hell.