I think he probably did give them enough reference material, they’d just need more seasons to finish it and that wasn’t in the cards. I’m not saying that to defend him, it just logistically makes sense. They’d pay him whatever he wanted so it’s not like they couldn’t have had him step in more directly on the final seasons if they were having trouble.

Although I liked it more than I didn’t, I don’t personally think the Song of Ice and Fire series is as good as people make it out to be. It is good, but probably not to the level people hold it. As a TV series it was probably the most ambitious in trying to recreate a book series of that scope though when it comes to plot and character dynamics. They cut things but still did alright. The main thing he did was make a super dark Tolkien universe where everybody dies with plot complexity found in other genres.

At least they didn’t pull a Walking Dead where it never ends and you stop caring and everyone’s just wandering around in circles and you really just don’t care anymore.