Emilia Clarke stars in “Game of Thrones”

If you’re going to get yourself invested in a multi-installment epic yarn, you’d best be prepared to pay a terrible price: waiting.

It’s been roughly 10 months since last season’s final episode of “Game of Thrones” aired on HBO, with filming for Season 4 starting early in July 2013. Bearing in mind the multiple, far-spanning filming locations, zillions of cast members and dizzying web of storylines, it's nothing short of a miracle that so many elements have come together in less than a year.

Nuts to that, though, it’s about dang time! Fans of the fantasy drama can breathe again at long last, as Season 4 premieres Sunday, April 6, on HBO.

The series is based off George R.R. Martin’s series of epic fantasy novels, “A Song of Ice and Fire,” and showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have helped to adapt it beautifully for the screen. As avid readers of the book series will know, season 3 leaves off partway through the third book, “A Storm of Swords.” The upcoming season will cover the end of book 3, but will also draw from books 4 and 5 -- “A Feast for Crows” and “A Dance With Dragons” -- whose storylines run concurrently alongside one another. Like the previous seasons, this one crams all that action, killing and scheming into 10 hour-long episodes.

To very briefly recap where season 3 left off -- so skip this bit if you haven’t seen it yet -- the Starks, previously one of the most high-ranking families in the Seven Kingdoms (and oh so noble!), have been scattered to the four winds and, in the wake of the worst wedding in history, most of them are either dead or presumed dead. The rotten boy-king Joffrey (Jack Gleeson, “Batman Begins,” 2005) is set to marry Margaery Tyrell (Natalie Dormer, “The Tudors”) in a union of two powerful families previously at odds with one another.

Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, “Oblivion,” 2013) has made it back to King’s Landing, short a hand, while his rock-hard father Tywin (Charles Dance, “Strike Back”) is running the show as the King’s Hand. So the Lannisters are in a pretty solid position of power -- for now. Theon (Alfie Allen, “Atonement,” 2007) has been losing body parts at an alarming rate, but when we last saw his sister she was sailing off against her father’s wishes to rescue her brother from a sadist's flaying knife.

The Wall is facing White Walkers on one side and a Wildling attack on the other, while across the Narrow Sea, Daenerys (Emilia Clarke, “Spike Island,” 2012) is freeing slaves by the thousands and winning them to her cause while her dragons grow from cute little hatchlings to "Jurassic Park" proportions.

As for season 4, there’s a lot that can be expected, and no doubt we’re in for a horrible death or three. If there’s one thing previous seasons have taught us, it’s that no character is too integral to be killed off (fans still cringe when they hear “Red Wedding”). George R. R. Martin has become known for going to extremes when it comes to snuffing out major characters, and not just the bad guys, either. Some of the most noble, moral and just plain likeable characters in the series have been taken from us long before their time.

Rory McCann as seen in “Game of Thrones”

Since season 4 kicks off midway through a book, the action takes off right away. “It’s not building towards one specific climactic event," showrunner Weiss reveals in an HBO promo. "There are more climactic events in season 4 than there have ever been before.” Adds Benioff: “There is tremendous clamor for revenge, especially in the wake of the Red Wedding.”

One said clamorer is a new character to the show, Oberyn Martell (Pedro Pascal, “The Adjustment Bureau,“ 2011), also known as the Red Viper of Dorne and much beloved of fans of the book. Oberyn has a hate on for the Lannisters for their part in his sister’s brutal murder years before, yet he’ll befriend Tyrion in the latter’s time of need and take up his cause in what’s sure to be an epic fight. Oberyn, Peter Dinklage says in the HBO promo, is “the one wild card,” adding yet another level of vengeance to a story already packed with revenge.

Benioff adds that season 4 is the pivotal point in the series, and that it’s from here that everything begins to turn: “It feels like this is the midpoint for us,” he tells “Entertainment Weekly.” "If we’re going to go seven seasons, which is the plan, season 4 is right down the middle, the pivot point.”

Devotees of “A Song of Ice and Fire” will know that the HBO series has begun to veer off from the books’ content, and should expect more of the same for the upcoming season. In a Screenrant.com article, Kofi Outlaw quotes Jerome Flynn (“Soldier Soldier”), who plays lightning-fast swellsword Bronn, revealing in a 2013 New York Comic-Con panel that “fans would be ‘quite surprised’ by how different season 4 of the HBO show was from the books that inspired it.” Outlaw goes on to say that “other actors from the series [claim] that season 4 will have even more death in it” -- and that’s saying something.

In any case, with the show catching up with the as yet unfinished book series, it may be a good thing that the creative team is getting used to taking liberties where the source material is concerned. With the sixth book still in progress and the seventh barely a spot on the far-off horizon, there’s a good chance the show will outpace Martin’s writing process.

Benioff told “Vanity Fair,” however, that he and Weiss have everything under control. Having sat down with Martin last year to get his ideas in hand, the showrunners at least know where he plans to take the series, and from there can lay out a script, even if the books aren’t yet done: “We don’t know if we are going to catch up and where exactly that would be. If you know the ending, then you can lay the groundwork for it. And so we want to know how everything ends. We want to be able to set things up.” So put your minds at ease, as it sounds like, one way or another, we'll have a few seasons of "Game of Thrones" to look forward to yet.

Good things come to those who wait, and all evidence confirms that the upcoming season of "Game of Thrones" promises to be a very good thing indeed. Season 4 of the Emmy-winning fantasy drama premieres Sunday, April 6, on HBO.