It's more that the fourth and fifth book are dull and repetitive. Every Brienne chapter in CROWS is the same. Every Tyrion chapter in DRAGONS is the same. Every time they eat a meal Martin stops the story to give us a detailed recipe. I'm planning to read the final two books if they're ever released, as I'm already well in for a penny, but I genuinely think the show is at the point of doing a better job of telling the story than the books. It boils it down to the interesting bits, still takes the time to let the characters be more than just cardboard cutouts, and when nothing interesting is happening in the books it does a good job of coming up with something in the proper spirit for both plot and character.

So maybe after screen testing they decided a raven looked cooler than a crow, or maybe it would be easier to track the third eye on a larger bird, and instead of calling a raven a crow they just made it a raven so they specifically wouldn't get nitpicked.

NICE TRY SHOWRUNNERS

Faith in its proper form is important to every day life. Every time you step into a crosswalk, you're having faith that the people in the death machines around you will obey the laws and not turn you into paste. Every time you tell your best friend a secret, you're placing faith in him or her to keep it for you. You cannot know that a drunk driver will not come careening through that crosswalk, or that your friend won't decide to betray you, but based on past experience you take that leap. Faith is not based on proof, but it is based on evidence.

Religion has corrupted the word to mean believing something, not just in the absence of both proof and evidence, but often in the face of conflicting and even contradictory evidence. I do not accept that as a valid definition of faith. To me that's just gullibility.