The show has indeed advanced beyond the books. There's a quote somewhere from one of the showrunners that he was surprised when GRRM explained Hodor's fate to him.

Anyway, I'm more entranced by the Arya Stark thread. The books treated her stay in Bravos quite differently than the shows. In the books, she develops warg-like powers as we've seen in her brother. In the show she seems to instead develop Jedi fighting-with-my-eyes-closed powers. Or something like that. Again, the show is way ahead of the books on this.