Showrunners Say Game Of Thrones Season 6 Won't Spoil The Books

03/23/2016 06:03 pm EDT

Fans of Game of Thrones and the George R.R. Martin novels the series is based on need not fear spoilers going into Season 6. The showrunners say the two stories are different enough that they won't step on each other's toes.

"People are talking about whether the books are going to be spoiled – and it's really not true," David Benioff told EW. "So much of what we're doing diverges from the books at this point. And while there are certain key elements that will be the same, we're not going to talk so much about that – and I don't think George is either. People are going to be very surprised when they read the books after the show. They're quite divergent in so many respects for the remainder of the show."

"What makes the books so great is that George doesn't make meticulous blueprints for every beat of this story and then fill in the blanks dutifully going from A to B to C, fleshing out an outline," D.B. Weiss added. "At a certain point, we realized we were going to outpace the books and we kind of chose to see it as a great thing on both sides – there's this amazing world George has created and now there are two different versions, and there's no reason we can see why you can't be thrilled and surprised and dismayed by both of these different versions of this world."

Game of Thrones Season 6 premiers on HBO on April 24. Martin's next novel, The Winds of Winter will be released, uh…eventually?

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