Set several hundred years before the events depicted in GRRM's "A Song of Ice and Fire" (and the HBO program "Game of Thrones") HotD provides some of the preceding history for Westeros and the eternally warring or power-jockeying major houses that exist there.

I think anyone who liked the first 4-5 seasons of GoT (don't get me started on how they later ruined it) will really enjoy HotD for its good writing and acting as well as the dragons. They clearly didn't spend as much time using real-life locations as the producers of GoT did, but no real complaints there since we're mainly dealing with 3 houses and not the continent spanning scope of the previous series yet.

I was glad they introduced the dragons right away and that they don't rely too much on them as GoT did toward the end of that series. There are dragons, one family made up of 2 houses controls them. No suspense and this series doesn't push the CGI super hard like the end of GoT did.

As far as the story/plot, it hews pretty closely to the source material. More so than GoT did, anyway. That said, there are several time jumps, one of them pretty major and that was initially jarring. Due to the nature of the three families/houses involved (Targaryan, Valerian and Hightower), and their very similar if not exactly the same given names, it can get confusing keeping track of who's who, especially once the third generation of characters is born and grows up. There are two Aegons (in addition to the Aegon of lore) for one thing, which can be especially confusing and a lot of the names sound a lot alike.

They also could have been a little more creative with the opening sequence and theme song, which sounds like a slightly different key version of GoT's, but I have to admit it does bring back good memories of when that series premiered and it's a pretty good song. Regarding the lead in sequence, it's not as wide ranging or informative as GoT's was, but it looks very well conceived and executed.

So far there aren't any plot holes or major loose ends and the story is progressing linearly (along with the time jumps) toward the conclusion of Season One. With just two episodes remaining, I'm hoping they don't try to cram too much of the story into this season and let it unfold smoothly and spaced out in the next (if it's renewed and I think it has been).

If you're looking for some fun, intriguing, sometimes brutal fantasy television with Shakespearean machinations, I highly recommend House of the Dragon. It's definitely more on par with my tastes than the other currently running fantasy series based (very loosely) on JRR Tolkien's writing on Amazon. That one I'd recommend for kids and teens; this one is geared toward adults.

8/10 and please keep up the good work (cough, cough final seasons of GoT).