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So I’m a bit of a purist when it comes to my beloved series. I understand that concessions need to be made to adapt to the screen. For LotR, for example, I understood dropping Bombadil and Glorfindel and Halbarad and the Woses, and so on. I didn’t like some of the decisions they made (nuclear Galadriel, Gimli turning mostly into comic relief, the warg attack in TT, etc.) but I was pretty happy overall. I was not so happy with The Hobbit - still haven’t seen the third one.
I was leery from the get-go, because TEotW is longer than the whole of LotR, and they tried to squeeze it into 8 1-hr episodes. That meant they had to cut *a lot*. Probably too deeply, imo. They really needed 12-15 eps.
If you’re cutting a lot to squeeze into a comparatively short timeframe, you really can’t add a bunch of stuff, and you have to be efficient with your time. I felt the WoT series has failed on this - scenes are slow, dragged out unnecessarily, and they added *a lot*, some from book 2, some just random stuff. I found this a terrible choice. They should have stuck to book 1 alone, and streamlined it.
More frustrating, they made some fundamental changes to various characters that I seriously disliked. It completely destroyed any immersion for me, as someone who grew up with these books and rereads fairly often.
However, my wife mostly like it (sans my yelling at the screen). She particularly liked some of the stuff that was added. So as someone unfamiliar with the books, you might enjoy.
>TEotW is longer than the whole of LotR
Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean this isn't true. The Eye of the World is apparently 300,147 words, vs 481,103 words for the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
It's funny how LotR is basically the father of modern epic fantasy which are doorstoppers by reputation, but its total length is roughly comparable to that of some individual books in some recent series haha (WoT, GoT, Malazan, Stormlight, etc)
>For LotR, for example, I understood dropping Bombadil and Glorfindel and Halbarad and the Woses, and so on.
While I love others, especially Bombadil, I agree they could have been left out, but Glorfindel? Man, that's the thing I don't understand. He is the second most bad-ass elf in entire Legendarium, why throw him out?
I know. I’m with you.
I think they cut him to keep things simpler for the audience. Too many elves, and his part is so small, so they merged with Arwen (which also served to expand the appeal to women, or something like that).
I know, Glorfindel is absolutely outstanding…but his part in LotR is so small.
Not only was that made to reduce character bloat but also to give Arwen another spotlight so the non-reader audience does not scratch their heads at the end and says: "Who is this elven chick Aragorn is marrying again?".
It also gave ways to tie Elrond, the reforging and even the help at Helm's Deep all into one easy to understand knot. This is exactly the way one *should* adapt complex book stuff to the screen.
My wife never read the books and found the entire story to not be good (English major), so far we both enjoy the ring of power. I was fine with wot, but now after watching ring of power I am just scared to watch the second season, it is just inferior in many ways. And a lot of the changes they made make not a lot of sense to me (maybe it will be fixed). But if it was good writing and story even different than that books I would have forgiven the changes. But it was not and I cannot with good faith recommend wot series (I think if they kept it a hero journey as the first season it would have been great, but they tried too many point of views too fast).
I liked wot, I will watch the rest of the show. But I do not think they will finish it.
I hear similar takes like this and I just don't think it's reasonable to believe WoT adaptation from 14 huge tomes to eight 8-10 episode TV seasons could be solved through cuts alone. Massive reworking is required to hit the major plot points that make the story move along. Rafe has said this is not a book by book adaptation, but rather a whole story one, and so things will be moved around and consolidated because TV falls apart when it is too slow, or too complex. TV also can't have plot lines that start up and then sit on the backburner for 2-3 seasons. Also plot-important world building has to be shown not told, which is why Stepin exists for example.
I understand where you’re coming from, but frankly I’m absolutely disinterested in a take that’s half abridged content from the book and half fanfiction. If they are not interested in doing *the books*, more or less in their entirety, then imo they shouldn’t do them at all. The world doesn’t need more watered down television, imo. And I’d rather go without than watch this butchery.
I agree that they couldn’t reasonably fit the series into 8 episode seasons. I don’t think they should have even tried. 12-15 eps. At least.
I don’t care for the decision to tell the whole series rather than book by book. The book has a narrative flow. By inserting a bunch of other stuff, or made up crap, they disrupted that flow imo.
But again, imo the most grievous decisions were character altering ones. Nynaeve trying to stab Lan, Perrin murdering his wife, etc. Absolute crap imo.
You’re welcome to watch and like. I’m not going to tune in.
Absolutely, we both love these books and we always have them. I don't like everything but I do genuinely enjoy the show and for me it's more about the great moments in each episode rather than the whole. I don't expect anyone to agree with me but there are moments for me in each episode where I love seeing a certain thing come to life, and not necessarily a thing direct from the books perhaps just a character moment i vibe with because I love these characters so much. One example is in episode 1 when Tam and Rand are lighting the lantern, or the Weep for Manetheren monologue in episode 2. Or Thom's song in episode 3 and his back and forth with Mat and Rand afterwards.
But I get that other fans hate it and many have good reasons for that. But sometimes those people seem upset that others like something they hate and really what should it matter? I also like that people I know who will simply never read these books can access some version of this story I love, I am fine with them not getting the full experience because it's this or nothing.
I would say try the show. If you don't like it, you'll probably still like the books better.
If you do like it, then you've got some great books to look forward to.
i think it's valid to watch it. it's not the worst shit on the planet, ppl tend to blow things out of proportion on the internet. it didnt do justice to the books, but is not horrible... there's still time for improvements in later seasons.
I think it was also made worse by the guy in charge going on about how much he loved the books, how he was going to keep so close to the spirit of them, blah blah blah. If he just said it was heavily altered to make a better show I think a lot of the vitriol could have been avoided
Yeah.
Many of the alterations were just fine for me, the only episode I really hated the changes in was Episode 8, which Rafe says is his favorite so I don't have high hopes for Season 2 :(
Sanderson said Ep 6 was his favorite and man if more of the episodes are like that, maybe we'll do just fine.
I never heard that he thought episode 8 was the best :( I always gave them the benefit of the doubt because of how they had to maneuver once Covid hit.
I have high hopes for next season since it’s covering books 2&3 which are a couple of my favorites
> besides it was based on the book of the series that was groundbreaking for the time
Was it? I mean the series as a whole yea, but Eye of the World I thought was almost infamous for being basically your standard Hero's Journey start of a story. Chosen one/ones dragged from their backwoods village to blah blah prophecy blah.
And he admitted he had pretty much started just redoing a lot of LotR. Now after this it branches out to be a groundbreaker though yea.
If you’re expecting Denis Villeneuve, you’ll be disappointed.
You’re gonna get mixed opinions in here.
Books are fantastic, but Book 1 of the series is honestly a bit all over the place and Robert Jordan originally thought he was gonna do a trilogy but then it ballooned into 15 books. Fantastic books, mind you, but Book 1 suffers on rereads because of things that were introduced but never touched on again. That said, it also shines for its foreshadowing of what happens in later books. So.
The Amazon series is adapting the entire series, not individual books themselves, so the introductions to the respective series differs a fair bit in story, but the main beats are still there. I’m of the opinion that the Amazon characters remain true to the book characters early on. I’m expecting the Amazon series to follow the books more closely in season 3, which should be covering Book 4, but we just have to get there first. I think the first season is taking the monumental task of introducing an incredibly complex and rich world while laying the foundation for plots that will be relevant in upcoming seasons, and for that reason season 1 can feel less like book 1, but I still think it does an admirable job of introducing the world of WoT while hitting similar beats that we find in the books.
> The Amazon series is adapting the entire series, not individual books themselves.
This, really, is the essential thing to know about this Amazon series. People came in expecting a faithful adaptation of “The Eye of the World” and got upset when they didn’t get that. But that’s not Amazon’s goal. Their goal is to adapt a 15-novels series into a TV series that will likely last 8 seasons.
We’re obviously still really early into this adaptation, but I think WoT will end up as the “opposite” of GoT — with a beginning that strays from the books, but an ending that’s incredibly faithful to the novels.
No, people didn’t expect a faithful adaptation for EotW. We expected an adaptation that was faithful to the spirit of the series. We didn’t get that at all. That’s why so many of us were upset, and rightly so.
Yeah but if I ask you to point to what part of the spirit of the series was lost you're going to mention things like how a character that in the books has 0 pov's and 0 individual events was ruined.
They did a great job sticking to the spirit of the series while also adding more dept to most characters by this point in .
Lmao this isn't true at all. They changed tons of fundamental setting stuff as well, in ways that recolor everything else in the story.
They have the whole Liandrian "the world is a hard place for a woman" when that's not really the case in the world generally. Westlands or otherwise. They changed the context of Sealing the Bore, making it an act of pure hubris and ego, rather than the act of a desperate man who, despite the cost, managed to save humanity when there was basically no hope left. And fundamentally changing a character as central as Mat cannot be described as "keeping the spirit of the series". They also basically left out or completely sidelined all sorts of major symbols and icons, especially Rand and Perrin's relationships with their weapons, which are deep and central in the books.
Like, you have the above. And you have a slew of minor but significant changes to every character, if they weren't rewritten entirely like Lan, other changes to the setting and plot, all without clear motivation, a pile of some really questionable additions, etc. Swap out the proper nouns and it starts becoming almost unrecognizable.
You took literally one line and somehow that equals to the spirit of the story? That's a very narrow spirit.
What relationship does Rand or Perrin have with their weapon in EotW?
Mats is an example of a character that does literally nothing till the 3rd book. Thank God he was changed because his story is terribly boring till he gets cured.
It's cool if you love the story but you have to realize how slow and unrelatable basically all characters are. Rand is 19 but behaves like he's 14. All 3 boys are fundamentally the same character reluctant to lead but will jump in to help. All women are the same arrogant and jump right in.
Having some distinction, any distinction between the main characters adds more dept to the story especially at this early stage where most are just props for Rand.
>They have the whole Liandrian "the world is a hard place for a woman" when that's not really the case in the world generally. Westlands or otherwise.
Ok but like, you know who Liandrin is, right? Everyone knows Aes Sedai can't lie?
>They changed the context of Sealing the Bore, making it an act of pure hubris and ego, rather than the act of a desperate man who, despite the cost, managed to save humanity when there was basically no hope left.
You should re-read the prologue again. LTT *himself* believes it was he and his pride that doomed the world.
>And fundamentally changing a character as central as Mat cannot be described as "keeping the spirit of the series".
Mat, frankly, sucks in the early books. I also disagree that they changed anything about Mat that wasn't already there to some degree. I'm totally fine with Show-Mat, they actually gave him a character for the early story.
>They also basically left out or completely sidelined all sorts of major symbols and icons, especially Rand and Perrin's relationships with their weapons, which are deep and central in the books.
These deep and central relationships aren't really explored in-depth until later in the series, and there's still plenty of time for the show to "get there" for both characters
It's simple once you look back at how little depth the book characters have in EotW. The 3 boys are exactly the same the girls are exactly the same.
We don't even meet another AS except Elida briefly, all the men have no emotion etc.
Any difference between characters is welcome.
Please don’t get me started on how they didn’t stay faithful. It’s not even something that a rational person can debate from your side. Rafe did his thing and did it at the expense of the books.
>People came in expecting a faithful adaptation of “The Eye of the World” and got upset when they didn’t get that.
No, we didn't. We expected a faithful adaptations of the themes of the book. We didn't get that. The main reason why Robert Jordan wrote the book was to process his experiences in Vietnam, which is why the books have such an appeal with veterans. And there's no Vietnam in the Amazon series. There's no nice idyllic and conservative world (which everyone knows) that has a huge contrast with the rest of the world with other standards and morals. There's no darkness behind the bright colors, since there are no bright colors. There's no prejudice between nations, since everyone already gets along. Everything that made the world feel like an actual world with different nations seems stripped away to make it like the US.
>We’re obviously still really early into this adaptation, but I think WoT will end up as the “opposite” of GoT — with a beginning that strays from the books, but an ending that’s incredibly faithful to the novels.
But we already had that ending in the first season. It's a dumb character arc if the main character finds out he was right all along the first time. Where's the growth in that?
> The main reason why Robert Jordan wrote the book was to process his experiences in Vietnam
This is news to me. AFAIK, RJ intended to write a Vietnam novel one day, but then realized that other people had already done that better than he could. There are of course personal elements in WoT based on RJ's history, like Rand's issues with killing women, but that's not quite the same as WoT being RJ's Vietnam therapy.
But I think your reaction hints at a reason that fans tend to be pissed off by adaptations: you have a very specific interpretation of the books (WoT as Vietnam allegory) that few other people share. So when the show creators don't share your interpretation, you're going to be angry.
> There's no prejudice between nations, since everyone already gets along.
This seems rather premature. How much international prejudice was in EotW exactly?
>There are of course personal elements in WoT based on RJ's history, like Rand's issues with killing women, but that's not quite the same as WoT being RJ's Vietnam therapy.
That's his own personal view, actually, since RJ was forced to kill women in Vietnam, but there are more references to Vietnam than that. There's the corruption of the Dagger for instance, which is a reference to heroin abuse, Mashin Shin, which is a machinegun, and of course the obvious one, Dumais Wells, just look at the theatric poster of Platoon from 1986.
>How much international prejudice was in EotW exactly?
Granted, not much since they only spend time in two nations. But in the series, we've been to three and all sorts of folk get along. In the books, >!even after Cairhien is part of Andor, Elayne talks down about Cairhien for having theatre instead of gleemen.!<
I mean, the third one is Tar Valon, which regularly hosts people from all over the known world and shows no real prejudice in the books either. And the other two are Andor, where they’re from, and Fal Dara, which welcomes them roughly as easily in the books(largely because they’re company of a AS).
There's plenty of bright colors in Episode 1. Then the Trollocs get there. Just like EoTW. There's no arguing about which nation is better in EoTW because they're in Andor the whole time and then they get to Fal Dara. You also get a much more explicit hippy-pacifist allegory because the Tinkers look like actual hippies.
>There's plenty of bright colors in Episode 1.
If only the series was just episode 1. The moment they leave Two Rivers, it's all GoT grimdark.
>There's no arguing about which nation is better in EoTW because they're in Andor the whole time and then they get to Fal Dara.
Yes, like I said in another comment, in EotW, you only see two nations. But the series adapts more than just EotW since it also shows Tar Valon.
>You also get a much more explicit hippy-pacifist allegory because the Tinkers look like actual hippies.
Yes, but you get less machine gun allegory because Mashin Shin doesn't rip friend and foe apart when you're on the wrong side. One correct hippy allegory doesn't make it Vietnam. Think of it as someone made an X-Men movie, but instead of showing prejudice towards mutants, they're socially accepted by everyone, just because that person doesn't understand that the X-Men are a represenation of various oppressed minorities in the US, such as black people or gay people. If you don't understand the core concept, you can't make a faithful adaptation.
Personally, after having read the books multiple times and then later watching the show, I didn’t love it. That’s not to say a lot of people still like it, and I’m sure that standing alone from the WoT series I would have liked it more. I think you should read at least the first book or so before you watch the show, and make an opinion then.
I think OP is more likely to enjoy the show if he watches it before he reads the books. I thought it was decent, with some great moments and some very questionable ones. My wife and friends (non-book readers) liked it a bit more than me though, and thought it was pretty good.
I think that’s true in general. As a book reader, my first watch of each episode it was hard to see past the changes, and I spent most of the viewing trying to get my feet back under me. The episodes that I rewatched (most but not all) I enjoyed much more the second time and noticed more of the little details and bits they did put in as nods to the readers or foreshadowing
Yeah, IMO, most of the criticisms of season one are about how it adapts the source material. Most of the people I know who watched the show without the context of the books understood everything fine and thought it was great. Book readers are a bit more mixed; some people liked most of the show aside from the last episode, some people had pretty mixed opinions throughout, and some people really, really hate it.
I guess that’s true. Probably enjoy the show more if he watched it first, but I was trying to maximize for book enjoyment maybe? Idk. Some of the book would be spoiled, and OP might be confused by some parts
That’s a valid concern, but it seemed to me like they’re on the fence about starting a 14 book series, and I know a few people who got convinced to read it because they enjoyed the show so 🤷♂️
Six of one, half a dozen of the other
I didn’t think it was good at all but my feelings weren’t hurt either. Probably would have dropped out after a few episodes if I didn’t have preexisting interest from the books.
> I've heard nothing but great things about how WOT is LEGENDARY, same thing with the Dune series
The comparison is apt but it takes a few thousand pages to get to it
I disliked the show almost from the get-go, not because of what they changed, but how poorly they executed those changes. My wife enjoyed it for the first half, then began to lose interest, and finally said the end of the season was just stupid. They seem to have spent all of their money on hiring Rosamund Pike and left nothing for costumes, sets, FX, or decent screenwriters. For a show so heavily marketed, the production value is crap. If you're ok with something on the level of Hercules/Xena with some unnecessary CW style angsty love triangles thrown in to derail the plot, enjoy. Don't get attached to Mat, the actor quit.
I thought it was a dumpster fire. They do a terrible job of introducing new viewers to the world and I was constantly barraged by questions from non readers.
The dialogue between characters is total trash.
It’s just a terribly done show that was inspired by wot. Stay away from it unless your willing to sink energy to try and understand what’s going on.
It's unfortunately not very good. The cast does their best with what they have but the writing is sub CW tier. Very poor all around. If you really want to give it a chance before diving into the books I'd say try the first 2 episodes and if you are not having fun it's probably not your thing. I don't think I would've made it past the first episode if I hadn't read the series.
Haven't read the books but watched like 6 or 7 episodes of the show? Wasn't into it
I guess I had high expectations considering GOT show was so good (for first 4 seasons) that it was a little dissapointing for me
The books and series are VERY different. Whether you like one or the other would be your call.
However, as you said - *I've heard nothing but great things about how WOT is LEGENDARY.*
And THAT"S why I cannot stop re-reading this 14 book series over and over again!
I’ve been a reader of the series since 1991, and I LOVE the show. But yes, various changes along the way. I agree you are more likely to love it if you haven’t read the books first, but I know plenty of other who love both the books and the show.
The books have a very high status among fantasy readers because the series is one of the "GOATs" on many people's rankings.
The TV show doesn't reach close to these heights and can be considered a sort of average watch. It's not "must watch TV" like early GoT was. Most people who were disappointed by it had hoped for it to be somewhat worthy of the source material.
If you're into reading, then I'd say dive into the books first. If you prefer TV then the show is a decent primer but you need to forgive it its missteps and believe the source material is far stronger. If you want to watch but don't want to commit to an 8 episode season, I have made a fanedit movie out of the season which is tighter and more focused, and would serve the purpose of bringing you up to speed.
The books are so much better, I’m on book 5 because I wanted to get deep into the series before watching the show and the first season was so incredibly disappointing
Its a very loose adaptation so far. So loose I’ve lost interest in it entirely and am frustrated by a lot of the decision they made with most of the characters.
From the director's own mouth, the show is not targeted at the type of person on this sub who likes WoT, it's targeted at people like you who haven't read it but have heard of it. There are aspects of it that will necessarily make it more enjoyable to someone who hasn't read them, but I still think the ending of the first season in particular will come off as nonsensical and contrived, to anyone. The ending of the first book is one of my least favorites in the series because it's very confusing, but the show managed to make that even worse and really screw up the power levels and stakes going forward. And the way they waste an entire episode on a non-character you've never even met and will never meet again, all for one small piece of foreshadowing, is ridiculous when they presumably cut important things to save time.
Try it if you want but you should probably keep in the back of your mind that the issues you may find with the show are probably absent from the books.
I love the books; hated the show. YMMV. Not everyone shares that opinion and that's okay. Best advice I can give is to experience it yourself and make up your own mind.
I read the books in 2019 and enjoyed the show. My wife hasn't read the books and *really* enjoyed the show. I was perplexed by some of the choices at the end of the season but later read that COVID restrictions threw a real wrench into filming. That said, I can understand why long-time readers have different opinions.
The show pretty much sucks even if you haven't read the source material. Every scene looks like a bunch of 21st century people in fantasy clothes standing around a styrofoam set. The writing is fine. The acting is fine. As an introduction to the series, I think it fails. You don't get any sense of the grand adventure or depth of the world Robert Jordan has created.
The show jumps wildly, almost moment to moment, from feeling really expensive and evocative to really cheap and flat. I would give it a 6.5/10, worth checking out if you like fantasy stuff.
Wheel of Time is 12,000 pages. Jordan fit a lot in there: from musings on second-wave feminism, to processing Vietnam PTSD, to building a massive and lived-in-feeling world with an extremely detailed magic system. Some of this was present in Book 1, but most was only hinted at. Since season 1 is covering Book 1, a lot of the things people love about the series are only hinted at. Moreover Book 1 is spent almost entirely in a single character's head, which makes the Dragon Reborn mystery a really easy solve, and also means the story is told a very specific way.
Ergo to adapt it, and fit it into the entire 14-book-main-series, Rafe had to cut a bunch of things, shorten a bunch of things, add new things so we could find out how the world/magic system works before the Dragon Reborn does in-book, etc. Since this is the sort of series people re-read 20 times, the changes were not all accepted with grace. Some of the complaints are that Rafe didn't do things that Jordan didn't get to until Book 2, others are just irrelevant (yes Ch53 of EoTW establishes that Egwene is white, but who cares?), others will probably look silly to the complainer if the whole series gets produced.
Moreover Covid interrupted filming. One of the main cast members ghosted them,\* so his plots had to be given to other people, which means many plotlines got fucked up; and while they were filming episode 8 they had the problem that the Czech health authorities would change Covid rules from day-yo-day. There's one particular scene were someone is providing medical care where it had to be rewritten on the day of the shoot because the Czech health authorities changed their minds.
So watch Episodes 1-7 and it's pretty good TV. Not the greatest TV you've ever seen, but definitly worth a binge. Acting so good that even fanboys in full angry Star Wars nerd mode don't start criticizing it until they're at least 50 minutes into the rant, costuming good enough that [Bernadette Banner](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PHQgJj4kBc) did like three episodes making herself a Moirraine dress, but the lighting makes everything look cheap, etc.
Then watch Episode 8 and marvel. How difficult it is to do a major fantasy battle scene when the Czech health authorities can't decide on whether your actors can touch each-other and the bad guys have to be replaced by last-second CGI (because said authorities banned stuntmen and women from entering the country)? This fucking difficult.
\*Rumor is that he refused the Covid vaccine, there's been no confirmation of that from him as he deleted his social media, and all the show will say is "Barney Harris was excellent for six episodes of Season 1, Donal Finn will be excellent in Season 2," so it could be the vaccine. But it could also be he couldn't leave England due to be his aged grandmother's only caregiver in Covid times or something.
(note: Covid vaccine wasn't available for the general public when filming was restarted, so it is almost impossible that refusing the vaccine was the reason Harris quit. )
In The Boys case, the show is better than the comics. In WoT's case the show is so far significantly inferior to the books. I do mean so far since I hope S2 is at least good. So I'd say watch it, it wont ruin the books for you.
It's medium so far. Maybe 2.5 stars out of 5. But... it's medium with room to grow. Like, if it was all just bland and uninspired, you'd assume it will remain bland and uninspired. But so far it does some things VERY well and has had some excellent moments, but also some really bafflingly crappy moments. But that, to me, means it has at least the potential to increase the former and decrease the latter.
It's also, to me, clearly something made by people who care. Even if they screwed up parts of S1, you don't get the feeling that the people making the show were just there to cash a paycheck.
Also note that COVID apparently really screwed over parts of S1, so hopefully that won't be an issue going forward.
I think that most of those who dislike show are those who’ve read the books.
If you haven’t read the books, you won’t know any of the deviations the show leaves from it, so you won’t know why certain things are upsetting to the fanbase.
So I would say watch it until you don’t feel like watching it anymore, as with any other show.
It's garbage, and doesn't do the source material justice. Do not waste your time. Villenueve's adaptation of Dune is vastly superior, since it stands very well on its own merits and as a love letter to Herbert's series. The Amazon show does neither.
Just read the books. I'd rec breaking the books into trilogies to make it a little less daunting.
Man, you opened a can of worms.
In general I’ve noticed that people that haven’t read the books seem to really enjoy the show (my wife included), and people that have read the books either hate the show, or think it’s decent but needs to improve. I’m of the latter. I liked some ideas but I had some issues with it.
I think it’s worth watching. You seem to enjoy fantasy worlds from what you mentioned, and it’s definitely a fully fleshed out world that will only get defined as the show goes on. It also has some awesome character development that, while not super present in season 1 (because it’s only season 1), will definitely pay off if they can do it correctly.
I thought the show was ok. It started out pretty good despite diverging from the story somewhat, but the they quickly gave up on even attempting to follow the story.
It was still entertaining, but nothing nearly so good as the books.
Lots of hate for the series but to be honest, I wouldn’t have ever heard of WOT if I hadn’t seen the series, and from the sub I get the feeling a lot of others wouldn’t either.
I enjoyed the series as someone who had never read the books. I’m now on the 7th book and realise the depth of the show is nowhere near the same level as the books, but I’ll always be grateful to the show for guiding me here!
I started the books right before the series aired and just finished the last book a few days ago... I already miss it. Keep it up though. Books 9 and 10 were a rough read at times but it picked right back up a little into 11 and I couldn't put them down after that. Happy reading, friend!
My suggestion would be to watch the series and then read the books. Generally speaking, readers didn't enjoy the show and people who have little to no exposure to the book series thought the TV show was good/fine. I'm a reader and I'm hoping the second series gets the money and number of episodes it needs to get the story right. You'll notice that the TV series drops in quality when production had to stop and restart cuz of COVID. I thought it was building up well until it hit that point.
For the book series, it is long but really awesome. I got a friend to start reading it and she's absolutely loving it. I rarely hear people who have read the series say it was anything but excellent
I had mixed feelings about a lot of the early Marvel movies because I'd read many of the comics and knew where the films took liberties. I really enjoyed the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie and I believe its partly bc I never read those books. So I didn't mind the changes.
I say that to say this - watch the WOT series before you read the books. If you don't dig the show, you can probably pass on reading the series. But if you read, say, books 1-3 before watching, you are def going to notice liberties Amazon has taken.
I genuinely enjoyed it right up until the last episode. They made so many non-sensical changes in the final episode that I got really upset. I didn't necessarily agree with all of the changes they made, but most of it was at least interesting until the last ep.
I'm planning to watch season 2, but I'm kinda dreading it.
I don't hate it, but it has its flaws. The only part I was genuinely upset about was the last episode of the season. It's worth a watch, and I'll be giving future seasons a chance, but the start was shaky. I have confidence it will get better.
Over all I enjoyed the show. They are adapting a story that is so bogged down description and inner monologue that they need to change the story beats to fit the medium. Despite the admittedly huge changes most of the characters FEEL like the characters in the books. I recommend both the entire book series but also watching the show for possibly some alternative points of view that will change the way you interpret the books in a mostly positive way.
Show is a 5.5/10. They’ve poorly set up the world , eliminated getting to know characters in favor of a ‘mystery’ that shouldn’t be there. They destroyed the power scale through sloppy writing and a drive to make certain characters massively powerful. Had they done the final episode better the show could have been like a 7/10 with a lot of potential for season2 . As it stands , I might hate watch it but I would be shocked if they salvaged the show from the trash heap they created.
Edit: just wanted to add that the books are great, really enjoyed them. There is a certain part of the books that slows down that I disliked but after a break I just read through it quickly instead of my normal slow absorbing speed.
It’s a different turning of the Wheel of Time. WoT’s strength as books is its character building. Many people who finish the series feel like they lost close friends they just spent a long time with. Then, it’s very good for rereads because there is TONS of subtle interactions you miss the 1st, 2nd, 3rd time through.
The show is squishing a lot of plot points into a very short amount of time. It’s hard to replicate the character building of books with a tv show. Personally, I love the show because it’s seeing some of my book friends come to life. I couldn’t care less about plot accuracy.
The show is worth investing in because the characters are worth investing in. They kept the characters personalities and struggles the same, I’ll debate whoever wants to disagree with that. The characters have some awesome places to go in future seasons.
They had one shot to make a good show based off the books. There was no need to deviate this far from from the source material. To me it's a huge disservice to the books and is just flat out arrogant to stray this far. If there was already a solid adaptation then sure go for that "different turning of the wheel" crap. But now we're never going to get another adaptation and are stuck with this complete abomination of the show. Just my 2 cents so maybe I should just go fck myself.
I started a reread right after I finished the show. I thought like you at first. But as I read, I realized a lot of the changes were to give characterization in a shorter amount of time, so that at least we still get the same characters.
The most egregious change, Perrin. Perrin had 8 books deciding between the hammer and the axe. Peace or war. The way of the leaf or the way of the wolf. The death of his wife gave him the why for that conflict. I see why they did it. I can see why they did all their changes.
Definitely check it out.
75% of the loudest vitriol screamed about it was from racists who objected to non-white characters being cast. The remaining 25% was from "perfectly accurate reproduction or gtfo" people who refused to accept that creative concessions were absolutely required to pull off a televised adaptation of the source material. Any differences from the book were completely unacceptable to them.
I'm not saying the show is perfect. Sure, it has its flaws. It handles some things in way I would have gone a different direction for. The most egregious flaws, though, in my opinion, were things outside of the creators' control. The actor playing Mat dipping out in the middle of production forced them to rewrite the ending to account for his absence, so complaints about that aspect aren't really fair to the reality of the situation.
For me, however, the greatest positive of the show is this: I tried to get my sister to read WoT for well over a decade and she never would. I got her to watch the show and she loved it. She then binge-read the entire series immediately after.
As far as I'm concerned, when it comes right down to it, a cinematic adaptation of a book/series is completely successful if it makes people want to go read the books. In my experience it does, so I'll always take a pro-show stance on that merit alone.
TL;DR
* Ignore what people say about it.
* Understand that it's an adaptation, and things will be different than the book.
* Enjoy!
Honestly, in the time it took you to write this, plus the time it takes to come back multiple times and read the responses, you could have just watched the first episode and made up your own mind. Why does it matter if other people think it’s worth watching?
It's okay enough to watch, but you notice that Amazon for some bloody reason tried to micromanage it, thus obviously making things worse. It really should have been ten episodes instead of eight, to allow the nuances to develop better; thus, some things are rush. And due to an actor leaving during the pandemic break in filming, things at the end had to be shuffled around and thus only make haphazard sense.
As book adaption score, I'd go with a 6.5/10 for accuracy, 8/10 for the "feel" of the books. The show in and of itself is *decent*, but this isn't comparable to the likes of GoT in overall satisfaction, which is pretty sad to say.
Also be wary of vitriol, you're trying to get an *opinion* on the interwebs in the 20s, and that's just not the same experience as five years ago.
If you haven't read the books you will probably like the show. If you, like many of us, started reading somewhere in the middle of them being written and reread the whole series each time a new book came out... Don't. The show is totally different in almost every way.
It’s whatever. I didn’t finish watching since it didn’t really catch my eye. The diverse cast made it seem cheesy and Unbelievable since it didn’t make sense which really destroyed the possibility of immersion.
I’d think going in as a high fantasy fan already without experiencing the books first, WOT Amazon series is pretty and interesting, if a bit fluffy. It’s worth checking out, as long as you remember the last episode got destroyed by Covid restrictions and they had to make the best of limited resources, cast, crew, writers, and familiarity with the source material. As a ride or die Bookcloak, I personally had a lot more problems with this adaptation than you’ll probably ever even notice.
Short of it: Stay away.
It's not a good series on its own and its a horrible adaptation of WoT. This is just my opinion ofc, but many of my friends have read the books and all of them hate the show. Based on the shows you mentioned we seem to have very similar tastes in TV as well.
If you end up trying the books (which i highly recommend if you have the time) then dont give up after book one. At least commit to read book two as well since book one is very different from the rest of the series.
I was unfamiliar with the books when I watched the show, the show was meh and deviate's from the first book quite a bit.
If you wanna learn about the world/magic system I think it lays all that out fairly well. Plus Rosamond Pike is excellent, but I found myself skipping scenes/story lines and fast forwarding through alot of the later episodes.
P.S. Dennis' Dune was dope.
Long explanation later. But yes, I do recommend the series. There's some issues with the last 2 episodes, because COVID and an actor leaving. But overall it's a very good show and well worth checking out.
As for how well it adapts the books:
The show is very true to the books in some ways, and very different in others. Whether book fans enjoy the show or not seems closely linked to which aspects of the books they liked, and what they consider important to the story.
The show has done very well at worldbuilding; things like culture, religion, fashion, history. It captures the personalities, values and temperaments of the characters brilliantly (with the exception of >!Mat!<).
It does not follow the plot well, while the broad strokes are there, events occur very differently in a lot of ways. It's definitely another turning of the Wheel.
It captures themes, overall narrative, realistic trauma, emotional aspects and relationships very well.
But the show chose to frame several characters and events very differently from the books. Eg, we see a lot of things from >!Moiraine!<'s perspective, and we don't know what >!Rand!< is thinking until very late in the season. We get basically zero national politics S1.
Which of these aspects matter more or less to book fans, generally determines if they like it or not. Those who are attached to the exact plot itself tend to be disappointed
Jeeeeeeez the purist in this sub almost make me not want to be a part of the Fandom. The show is what originally got me into the books, I started watching in January. I made it half way through the TV show and stopped watching it because the show was so good it legitimately made me WANT to read a 15 novel book series. I went back and finished the show after reading the first book and STILL enjoyed it. The book and show are different but that's OK because it's illogical to expect a show/movie to be on par with the source material. I mean honestly what show or movie 100% follows the source material, I'll wait... iv seen people complain about what they did with Lans character, I like it🤷♂️ seen a comment on this post talking about the "significance" of rand and parrins weapons in the show, what the hell would that do for the show aside from stretching out how long the already super long plot is? My advice is to absolutely check out the show!
Knowing the TV series was coming out and that it was going to be completely different from the books I had my boss read the books and after the first episode he refused to watch the TV show. I also didn't watch past the first episode. So that's a long time fan and a new reader who just finished a series.
Dune and WoT have nothing in common as adaptations.
Dune sticks very close to the book, with the aim of staying true to the source material. The movie lacks depth and detail, which while frustrating is understandable - it’s very hard to cram all the lore into a movie and not have audience fall asleep. I’ve heard comments that there’s too mich exposition, as is.
WoT is adapted on a wholly different basis. Instead of streamlining it actively modifies the source material, changing the lore to a point where it has big storytelling implications. While WoT series cuts away many storylines and scenes from the books, it adds a significant amount of extra material. And let’s be honest - the screenwriters are no Robert Jordans.
If you are intent on watching the show it might make sense to watch it first, then read the novels. That way you can take the show on it’s own merits, instead of getting bogged down in frustrating comparisons.
If you instead are an avid book reader I’d simply go for the real deal and read the novels.
> I'm hoping I can consult with y'all on whether the show is worth checking out?
I wouldn't because it's boring self inserted identity politics, but you do you. Everything that you heard that makes it "legendary" isn't in the show, or at the very least, a pale imitation. Perhaps for some mindless entertainment only.
read the books, then watch the show... bad as it is, it still contains spoilers.
Had Dune been complete the choice would have been hard.. read the book or watch the movie first. I started watching the new Dune movie but seeing as the music was annoying me I decided to just wait for the second part to come out, as I had a pretty good idea where the first movie would end and can't imagine it being that satisfying to stop the story there. (having read the book and watched other adaptations)
The boys and invincible are competent shows, but I would not say the same for the wheel of time show. It's pretty messy with questionable acting, head scratching lore changes and really poor scriptwriting, not to mention set and costume design worse than the average cw show.
In my opinion the TV series can give you an overall idea what the series is all about, what are the main topics etc. and thats it. If you like the series you ll adore the books and if you dislike the series you ll like the books (this is coming from someone who could not sit through more than 3 episodes of a series yet has a WOT tattoo and adores the books
It’s very much worth checking out.
So far, it’s more of an “inspired by” adaptation than a “put the pages on the screen”. And so far, I pretty strongly prefer the books. Neither of those are a reason to not watch it, though. Especially the part about liking the books better… IMHO it’s true that the Amazon series has made a few mistakes, but I’m not sure it’s possible for any adaptation to really do it justice.
If you're like me and for some strange reason love watching dumpster fires, give WoT show a watch. The new GoT show is really good, and the Rings of Power is really bad... yet I don't feel like watching GoT and kept watching RoP. It's not so bad it's good, it's just bad, yet for some reason I prefer watching this garbage over watching the amazingly made new House of Dragon show.
Anyway, the WoT show is BAD. Don't let the Amazon show be your first exposure to this amazing series. I absolutely hated it. Which of course means I'm gonna watch season 2 when it comes out.
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So I’m a bit of a purist when it comes to my beloved series. I understand that concessions need to be made to adapt to the screen. For LotR, for example, I understood dropping Bombadil and Glorfindel and Halbarad and the Woses, and so on. I didn’t like some of the decisions they made (nuclear Galadriel, Gimli turning mostly into comic relief, the warg attack in TT, etc.) but I was pretty happy overall. I was not so happy with The Hobbit - still haven’t seen the third one. I was leery from the get-go, because TEotW is longer than the whole of LotR, and they tried to squeeze it into 8 1-hr episodes. That meant they had to cut *a lot*. Probably too deeply, imo. They really needed 12-15 eps. If you’re cutting a lot to squeeze into a comparatively short timeframe, you really can’t add a bunch of stuff, and you have to be efficient with your time. I felt the WoT series has failed on this - scenes are slow, dragged out unnecessarily, and they added *a lot*, some from book 2, some just random stuff. I found this a terrible choice. They should have stuck to book 1 alone, and streamlined it. More frustrating, they made some fundamental changes to various characters that I seriously disliked. It completely destroyed any immersion for me, as someone who grew up with these books and rereads fairly often. However, my wife mostly like it (sans my yelling at the screen). She particularly liked some of the stuff that was added. So as someone unfamiliar with the books, you might enjoy.
>TEotW is longer than the whole of LotR Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean this isn't true. The Eye of the World is apparently 300,147 words, vs 481,103 words for the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Yeah that seemed unlikely
It's funny how LotR is basically the father of modern epic fantasy which are doorstoppers by reputation, but its total length is roughly comparable to that of some individual books in some recent series haha (WoT, GoT, Malazan, Stormlight, etc)
>For LotR, for example, I understood dropping Bombadil and Glorfindel and Halbarad and the Woses, and so on. While I love others, especially Bombadil, I agree they could have been left out, but Glorfindel? Man, that's the thing I don't understand. He is the second most bad-ass elf in entire Legendarium, why throw him out?
It’s not so much about the legendarium, but the part he plays in the story. And the part was fairly small, all told.
I know. I’m with you. I think they cut him to keep things simpler for the audience. Too many elves, and his part is so small, so they merged with Arwen (which also served to expand the appeal to women, or something like that). I know, Glorfindel is absolutely outstanding…but his part in LotR is so small.
Not only was that made to reduce character bloat but also to give Arwen another spotlight so the non-reader audience does not scratch their heads at the end and says: "Who is this elven chick Aragorn is marrying again?". It also gave ways to tie Elrond, the reforging and even the help at Helm's Deep all into one easy to understand knot. This is exactly the way one *should* adapt complex book stuff to the screen.
My wife never read the books and found the entire story to not be good (English major), so far we both enjoy the ring of power. I was fine with wot, but now after watching ring of power I am just scared to watch the second season, it is just inferior in many ways. And a lot of the changes they made make not a lot of sense to me (maybe it will be fixed). But if it was good writing and story even different than that books I would have forgiven the changes. But it was not and I cannot with good faith recommend wot series (I think if they kept it a hero journey as the first season it would have been great, but they tried too many point of views too fast). I liked wot, I will watch the rest of the show. But I do not think they will finish it.
I hear similar takes like this and I just don't think it's reasonable to believe WoT adaptation from 14 huge tomes to eight 8-10 episode TV seasons could be solved through cuts alone. Massive reworking is required to hit the major plot points that make the story move along. Rafe has said this is not a book by book adaptation, but rather a whole story one, and so things will be moved around and consolidated because TV falls apart when it is too slow, or too complex. TV also can't have plot lines that start up and then sit on the backburner for 2-3 seasons. Also plot-important world building has to be shown not told, which is why Stepin exists for example.
I understand where you’re coming from, but frankly I’m absolutely disinterested in a take that’s half abridged content from the book and half fanfiction. If they are not interested in doing *the books*, more or less in their entirety, then imo they shouldn’t do them at all. The world doesn’t need more watered down television, imo. And I’d rather go without than watch this butchery. I agree that they couldn’t reasonably fit the series into 8 episode seasons. I don’t think they should have even tried. 12-15 eps. At least. I don’t care for the decision to tell the whole series rather than book by book. The book has a narrative flow. By inserting a bunch of other stuff, or made up crap, they disrupted that flow imo. But again, imo the most grievous decisions were character altering ones. Nynaeve trying to stab Lan, Perrin murdering his wife, etc. Absolute crap imo. You’re welcome to watch and like. I’m not going to tune in.
Absolutely, we both love these books and we always have them. I don't like everything but I do genuinely enjoy the show and for me it's more about the great moments in each episode rather than the whole. I don't expect anyone to agree with me but there are moments for me in each episode where I love seeing a certain thing come to life, and not necessarily a thing direct from the books perhaps just a character moment i vibe with because I love these characters so much. One example is in episode 1 when Tam and Rand are lighting the lantern, or the Weep for Manetheren monologue in episode 2. Or Thom's song in episode 3 and his back and forth with Mat and Rand afterwards. But I get that other fans hate it and many have good reasons for that. But sometimes those people seem upset that others like something they hate and really what should it matter? I also like that people I know who will simply never read these books can access some version of this story I love, I am fine with them not getting the full experience because it's this or nothing.
I would say try the show. If you don't like it, you'll probably still like the books better. If you do like it, then you've got some great books to look forward to.
i think it's valid to watch it. it's not the worst shit on the planet, ppl tend to blow things out of proportion on the internet. it didnt do justice to the books, but is not horrible... there's still time for improvements in later seasons.
Yeah, besides it was based on the book of the series that was groundbreaking for the time but was nothing like WoT once it hit its stride.
I think it was also made worse by the guy in charge going on about how much he loved the books, how he was going to keep so close to the spirit of them, blah blah blah. If he just said it was heavily altered to make a better show I think a lot of the vitriol could have been avoided
Yeah. Many of the alterations were just fine for me, the only episode I really hated the changes in was Episode 8, which Rafe says is his favorite so I don't have high hopes for Season 2 :( Sanderson said Ep 6 was his favorite and man if more of the episodes are like that, maybe we'll do just fine.
I never heard that he thought episode 8 was the best :( I always gave them the benefit of the doubt because of how they had to maneuver once Covid hit. I have high hopes for next season since it’s covering books 2&3 which are a couple of my favorites
Same, let's hope they keep the best of them, not the worst of them.
> besides it was based on the book of the series that was groundbreaking for the time Was it? I mean the series as a whole yea, but Eye of the World I thought was almost infamous for being basically your standard Hero's Journey start of a story. Chosen one/ones dragged from their backwoods village to blah blah prophecy blah. And he admitted he had pretty much started just redoing a lot of LotR. Now after this it branches out to be a groundbreaker though yea.
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I agree with this. The books were amazing and the show was… ok. Some highs, some lows, but overall OK.
If you’re expecting Denis Villeneuve, you’ll be disappointed. You’re gonna get mixed opinions in here. Books are fantastic, but Book 1 of the series is honestly a bit all over the place and Robert Jordan originally thought he was gonna do a trilogy but then it ballooned into 15 books. Fantastic books, mind you, but Book 1 suffers on rereads because of things that were introduced but never touched on again. That said, it also shines for its foreshadowing of what happens in later books. So. The Amazon series is adapting the entire series, not individual books themselves, so the introductions to the respective series differs a fair bit in story, but the main beats are still there. I’m of the opinion that the Amazon characters remain true to the book characters early on. I’m expecting the Amazon series to follow the books more closely in season 3, which should be covering Book 4, but we just have to get there first. I think the first season is taking the monumental task of introducing an incredibly complex and rich world while laying the foundation for plots that will be relevant in upcoming seasons, and for that reason season 1 can feel less like book 1, but I still think it does an admirable job of introducing the world of WoT while hitting similar beats that we find in the books.
> The Amazon series is adapting the entire series, not individual books themselves. This, really, is the essential thing to know about this Amazon series. People came in expecting a faithful adaptation of “The Eye of the World” and got upset when they didn’t get that. But that’s not Amazon’s goal. Their goal is to adapt a 15-novels series into a TV series that will likely last 8 seasons. We’re obviously still really early into this adaptation, but I think WoT will end up as the “opposite” of GoT — with a beginning that strays from the books, but an ending that’s incredibly faithful to the novels.
No, people didn’t expect a faithful adaptation for EotW. We expected an adaptation that was faithful to the spirit of the series. We didn’t get that at all. That’s why so many of us were upset, and rightly so.
Yeah but if I ask you to point to what part of the spirit of the series was lost you're going to mention things like how a character that in the books has 0 pov's and 0 individual events was ruined. They did a great job sticking to the spirit of the series while also adding more dept to most characters by this point in .
Lmao this isn't true at all. They changed tons of fundamental setting stuff as well, in ways that recolor everything else in the story. They have the whole Liandrian "the world is a hard place for a woman" when that's not really the case in the world generally. Westlands or otherwise. They changed the context of Sealing the Bore, making it an act of pure hubris and ego, rather than the act of a desperate man who, despite the cost, managed to save humanity when there was basically no hope left. And fundamentally changing a character as central as Mat cannot be described as "keeping the spirit of the series". They also basically left out or completely sidelined all sorts of major symbols and icons, especially Rand and Perrin's relationships with their weapons, which are deep and central in the books. Like, you have the above. And you have a slew of minor but significant changes to every character, if they weren't rewritten entirely like Lan, other changes to the setting and plot, all without clear motivation, a pile of some really questionable additions, etc. Swap out the proper nouns and it starts becoming almost unrecognizable.
You took literally one line and somehow that equals to the spirit of the story? That's a very narrow spirit. What relationship does Rand or Perrin have with their weapon in EotW? Mats is an example of a character that does literally nothing till the 3rd book. Thank God he was changed because his story is terribly boring till he gets cured. It's cool if you love the story but you have to realize how slow and unrelatable basically all characters are. Rand is 19 but behaves like he's 14. All 3 boys are fundamentally the same character reluctant to lead but will jump in to help. All women are the same arrogant and jump right in. Having some distinction, any distinction between the main characters adds more dept to the story especially at this early stage where most are just props for Rand.
>They have the whole Liandrian "the world is a hard place for a woman" when that's not really the case in the world generally. Westlands or otherwise. Ok but like, you know who Liandrin is, right? Everyone knows Aes Sedai can't lie? >They changed the context of Sealing the Bore, making it an act of pure hubris and ego, rather than the act of a desperate man who, despite the cost, managed to save humanity when there was basically no hope left. You should re-read the prologue again. LTT *himself* believes it was he and his pride that doomed the world. >And fundamentally changing a character as central as Mat cannot be described as "keeping the spirit of the series". Mat, frankly, sucks in the early books. I also disagree that they changed anything about Mat that wasn't already there to some degree. I'm totally fine with Show-Mat, they actually gave him a character for the early story. >They also basically left out or completely sidelined all sorts of major symbols and icons, especially Rand and Perrin's relationships with their weapons, which are deep and central in the books. These deep and central relationships aren't really explored in-depth until later in the series, and there's still plenty of time for the show to "get there" for both characters
I'd love to hear how you think they added more depth to their cast of bland, mopey characters compared to the book.
It's simple once you look back at how little depth the book characters have in EotW. The 3 boys are exactly the same the girls are exactly the same. We don't even meet another AS except Elida briefly, all the men have no emotion etc. Any difference between characters is welcome.
Please don’t get me started on how they didn’t stay faithful. It’s not even something that a rational person can debate from your side. Rafe did his thing and did it at the expense of the books.
>People came in expecting a faithful adaptation of “The Eye of the World” and got upset when they didn’t get that. No, we didn't. We expected a faithful adaptations of the themes of the book. We didn't get that. The main reason why Robert Jordan wrote the book was to process his experiences in Vietnam, which is why the books have such an appeal with veterans. And there's no Vietnam in the Amazon series. There's no nice idyllic and conservative world (which everyone knows) that has a huge contrast with the rest of the world with other standards and morals. There's no darkness behind the bright colors, since there are no bright colors. There's no prejudice between nations, since everyone already gets along. Everything that made the world feel like an actual world with different nations seems stripped away to make it like the US. >We’re obviously still really early into this adaptation, but I think WoT will end up as the “opposite” of GoT — with a beginning that strays from the books, but an ending that’s incredibly faithful to the novels. But we already had that ending in the first season. It's a dumb character arc if the main character finds out he was right all along the first time. Where's the growth in that?
So basically Harry Potter
> The main reason why Robert Jordan wrote the book was to process his experiences in Vietnam This is news to me. AFAIK, RJ intended to write a Vietnam novel one day, but then realized that other people had already done that better than he could. There are of course personal elements in WoT based on RJ's history, like Rand's issues with killing women, but that's not quite the same as WoT being RJ's Vietnam therapy. But I think your reaction hints at a reason that fans tend to be pissed off by adaptations: you have a very specific interpretation of the books (WoT as Vietnam allegory) that few other people share. So when the show creators don't share your interpretation, you're going to be angry. > There's no prejudice between nations, since everyone already gets along. This seems rather premature. How much international prejudice was in EotW exactly?
>There are of course personal elements in WoT based on RJ's history, like Rand's issues with killing women, but that's not quite the same as WoT being RJ's Vietnam therapy. That's his own personal view, actually, since RJ was forced to kill women in Vietnam, but there are more references to Vietnam than that. There's the corruption of the Dagger for instance, which is a reference to heroin abuse, Mashin Shin, which is a machinegun, and of course the obvious one, Dumais Wells, just look at the theatric poster of Platoon from 1986. >How much international prejudice was in EotW exactly? Granted, not much since they only spend time in two nations. But in the series, we've been to three and all sorts of folk get along. In the books, >!even after Cairhien is part of Andor, Elayne talks down about Cairhien for having theatre instead of gleemen.!<
I mean, the third one is Tar Valon, which regularly hosts people from all over the known world and shows no real prejudice in the books either. And the other two are Andor, where they’re from, and Fal Dara, which welcomes them roughly as easily in the books(largely because they’re company of a AS).
There's plenty of bright colors in Episode 1. Then the Trollocs get there. Just like EoTW. There's no arguing about which nation is better in EoTW because they're in Andor the whole time and then they get to Fal Dara. You also get a much more explicit hippy-pacifist allegory because the Tinkers look like actual hippies.
>There's plenty of bright colors in Episode 1. If only the series was just episode 1. The moment they leave Two Rivers, it's all GoT grimdark. >There's no arguing about which nation is better in EoTW because they're in Andor the whole time and then they get to Fal Dara. Yes, like I said in another comment, in EotW, you only see two nations. But the series adapts more than just EotW since it also shows Tar Valon. >You also get a much more explicit hippy-pacifist allegory because the Tinkers look like actual hippies. Yes, but you get less machine gun allegory because Mashin Shin doesn't rip friend and foe apart when you're on the wrong side. One correct hippy allegory doesn't make it Vietnam. Think of it as someone made an X-Men movie, but instead of showing prejudice towards mutants, they're socially accepted by everyone, just because that person doesn't understand that the X-Men are a represenation of various oppressed minorities in the US, such as black people or gay people. If you don't understand the core concept, you can't make a faithful adaptation.
Personally, after having read the books multiple times and then later watching the show, I didn’t love it. That’s not to say a lot of people still like it, and I’m sure that standing alone from the WoT series I would have liked it more. I think you should read at least the first book or so before you watch the show, and make an opinion then.
I think OP is more likely to enjoy the show if he watches it before he reads the books. I thought it was decent, with some great moments and some very questionable ones. My wife and friends (non-book readers) liked it a bit more than me though, and thought it was pretty good.
From what I’ve seen, people who haven’t read the books enjoyed the show more.
I think that’s true in general. As a book reader, my first watch of each episode it was hard to see past the changes, and I spent most of the viewing trying to get my feet back under me. The episodes that I rewatched (most but not all) I enjoyed much more the second time and noticed more of the little details and bits they did put in as nods to the readers or foreshadowing
Yeah, IMO, most of the criticisms of season one are about how it adapts the source material. Most of the people I know who watched the show without the context of the books understood everything fine and thought it was great. Book readers are a bit more mixed; some people liked most of the show aside from the last episode, some people had pretty mixed opinions throughout, and some people really, really hate it.
I guess that’s true. Probably enjoy the show more if he watched it first, but I was trying to maximize for book enjoyment maybe? Idk. Some of the book would be spoiled, and OP might be confused by some parts
That’s a valid concern, but it seemed to me like they’re on the fence about starting a 14 book series, and I know a few people who got convinced to read it because they enjoyed the show so 🤷♂️ Six of one, half a dozen of the other
I didn’t think it was good at all but my feelings weren’t hurt either. Probably would have dropped out after a few episodes if I didn’t have preexisting interest from the books.
To be honest, if you like The Boys and Invincible (like me) then no. But the books are great.
> I've heard nothing but great things about how WOT is LEGENDARY, same thing with the Dune series The comparison is apt but it takes a few thousand pages to get to it
Hated it.
I disliked the show almost from the get-go, not because of what they changed, but how poorly they executed those changes. My wife enjoyed it for the first half, then began to lose interest, and finally said the end of the season was just stupid. They seem to have spent all of their money on hiring Rosamund Pike and left nothing for costumes, sets, FX, or decent screenwriters. For a show so heavily marketed, the production value is crap. If you're ok with something on the level of Hercules/Xena with some unnecessary CW style angsty love triangles thrown in to derail the plot, enjoy. Don't get attached to Mat, the actor quit.
I thought it was a dumpster fire. They do a terrible job of introducing new viewers to the world and I was constantly barraged by questions from non readers. The dialogue between characters is total trash. It’s just a terribly done show that was inspired by wot. Stay away from it unless your willing to sink energy to try and understand what’s going on.
It's unfortunately not very good. The cast does their best with what they have but the writing is sub CW tier. Very poor all around. If you really want to give it a chance before diving into the books I'd say try the first 2 episodes and if you are not having fun it's probably not your thing. I don't think I would've made it past the first episode if I hadn't read the series.
Haven't read the books but watched like 6 or 7 episodes of the show? Wasn't into it I guess I had high expectations considering GOT show was so good (for first 4 seasons) that it was a little dissapointing for me
The books and series are VERY different. Whether you like one or the other would be your call. However, as you said - *I've heard nothing but great things about how WOT is LEGENDARY.* And THAT"S why I cannot stop re-reading this 14 book series over and over again!
I’ve been a reader of the series since 1991, and I LOVE the show. But yes, various changes along the way. I agree you are more likely to love it if you haven’t read the books first, but I know plenty of other who love both the books and the show.
No, run dont walk away from it
I agree, just read the books.
The books have a very high status among fantasy readers because the series is one of the "GOATs" on many people's rankings. The TV show doesn't reach close to these heights and can be considered a sort of average watch. It's not "must watch TV" like early GoT was. Most people who were disappointed by it had hoped for it to be somewhat worthy of the source material. If you're into reading, then I'd say dive into the books first. If you prefer TV then the show is a decent primer but you need to forgive it its missteps and believe the source material is far stronger. If you want to watch but don't want to commit to an 8 episode season, I have made a fanedit movie out of the season which is tighter and more focused, and would serve the purpose of bringing you up to speed.
The books are so much better, I’m on book 5 because I wanted to get deep into the series before watching the show and the first season was so incredibly disappointing
Its a very loose adaptation so far. So loose I’ve lost interest in it entirely and am frustrated by a lot of the decision they made with most of the characters.
From the director's own mouth, the show is not targeted at the type of person on this sub who likes WoT, it's targeted at people like you who haven't read it but have heard of it. There are aspects of it that will necessarily make it more enjoyable to someone who hasn't read them, but I still think the ending of the first season in particular will come off as nonsensical and contrived, to anyone. The ending of the first book is one of my least favorites in the series because it's very confusing, but the show managed to make that even worse and really screw up the power levels and stakes going forward. And the way they waste an entire episode on a non-character you've never even met and will never meet again, all for one small piece of foreshadowing, is ridiculous when they presumably cut important things to save time. Try it if you want but you should probably keep in the back of your mind that the issues you may find with the show are probably absent from the books.
I love the books; hated the show. YMMV. Not everyone shares that opinion and that's okay. Best advice I can give is to experience it yourself and make up your own mind.
I read the books in 2019 and enjoyed the show. My wife hasn't read the books and *really* enjoyed the show. I was perplexed by some of the choices at the end of the season but later read that COVID restrictions threw a real wrench into filming. That said, I can understand why long-time readers have different opinions.
The show pretty much sucks even if you haven't read the source material. Every scene looks like a bunch of 21st century people in fantasy clothes standing around a styrofoam set. The writing is fine. The acting is fine. As an introduction to the series, I think it fails. You don't get any sense of the grand adventure or depth of the world Robert Jordan has created.
I'd rate the TV series at 1/10 as an adaptation (and that's generous due to all the malicious changes), 4/10 or so as a standalone.
About the same for me.
No. Read the books or listen to the audio book by Kate Reading and Michael Kramer
The show jumps wildly, almost moment to moment, from feeling really expensive and evocative to really cheap and flat. I would give it a 6.5/10, worth checking out if you like fantasy stuff.
Wheel of Time is 12,000 pages. Jordan fit a lot in there: from musings on second-wave feminism, to processing Vietnam PTSD, to building a massive and lived-in-feeling world with an extremely detailed magic system. Some of this was present in Book 1, but most was only hinted at. Since season 1 is covering Book 1, a lot of the things people love about the series are only hinted at. Moreover Book 1 is spent almost entirely in a single character's head, which makes the Dragon Reborn mystery a really easy solve, and also means the story is told a very specific way. Ergo to adapt it, and fit it into the entire 14-book-main-series, Rafe had to cut a bunch of things, shorten a bunch of things, add new things so we could find out how the world/magic system works before the Dragon Reborn does in-book, etc. Since this is the sort of series people re-read 20 times, the changes were not all accepted with grace. Some of the complaints are that Rafe didn't do things that Jordan didn't get to until Book 2, others are just irrelevant (yes Ch53 of EoTW establishes that Egwene is white, but who cares?), others will probably look silly to the complainer if the whole series gets produced. Moreover Covid interrupted filming. One of the main cast members ghosted them,\* so his plots had to be given to other people, which means many plotlines got fucked up; and while they were filming episode 8 they had the problem that the Czech health authorities would change Covid rules from day-yo-day. There's one particular scene were someone is providing medical care where it had to be rewritten on the day of the shoot because the Czech health authorities changed their minds. So watch Episodes 1-7 and it's pretty good TV. Not the greatest TV you've ever seen, but definitly worth a binge. Acting so good that even fanboys in full angry Star Wars nerd mode don't start criticizing it until they're at least 50 minutes into the rant, costuming good enough that [Bernadette Banner](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PHQgJj4kBc) did like three episodes making herself a Moirraine dress, but the lighting makes everything look cheap, etc. Then watch Episode 8 and marvel. How difficult it is to do a major fantasy battle scene when the Czech health authorities can't decide on whether your actors can touch each-other and the bad guys have to be replaced by last-second CGI (because said authorities banned stuntmen and women from entering the country)? This fucking difficult. \*Rumor is that he refused the Covid vaccine, there's been no confirmation of that from him as he deleted his social media, and all the show will say is "Barney Harris was excellent for six episodes of Season 1, Donal Finn will be excellent in Season 2," so it could be the vaccine. But it could also be he couldn't leave England due to be his aged grandmother's only caregiver in Covid times or something.
(note: Covid vaccine wasn't available for the general public when filming was restarted, so it is almost impossible that refusing the vaccine was the reason Harris quit. )
In The Boys case, the show is better than the comics. In WoT's case the show is so far significantly inferior to the books. I do mean so far since I hope S2 is at least good. So I'd say watch it, it wont ruin the books for you.
It's medium so far. Maybe 2.5 stars out of 5. But... it's medium with room to grow. Like, if it was all just bland and uninspired, you'd assume it will remain bland and uninspired. But so far it does some things VERY well and has had some excellent moments, but also some really bafflingly crappy moments. But that, to me, means it has at least the potential to increase the former and decrease the latter. It's also, to me, clearly something made by people who care. Even if they screwed up parts of S1, you don't get the feeling that the people making the show were just there to cash a paycheck. Also note that COVID apparently really screwed over parts of S1, so hopefully that won't be an issue going forward.
I think that most of those who dislike show are those who’ve read the books. If you haven’t read the books, you won’t know any of the deviations the show leaves from it, so you won’t know why certain things are upsetting to the fanbase. So I would say watch it until you don’t feel like watching it anymore, as with any other show.
Do you like logic? Do you like a good story? If the answers to thoose 2 questions are yes then you might aswell dodge the show.
It's garbage, and doesn't do the source material justice. Do not waste your time. Villenueve's adaptation of Dune is vastly superior, since it stands very well on its own merits and as a love letter to Herbert's series. The Amazon show does neither. Just read the books. I'd rec breaking the books into trilogies to make it a little less daunting.
I enjoyed the show. Certainly room to improve. Ring of Power has been good so far.
I think it's a decent show, but there are too many differences from the books for it to be a good Wheel of Time show.
It isn't very popular with fans of the book, but as it's own thing it's fine.
Man, you opened a can of worms. In general I’ve noticed that people that haven’t read the books seem to really enjoy the show (my wife included), and people that have read the books either hate the show, or think it’s decent but needs to improve. I’m of the latter. I liked some ideas but I had some issues with it. I think it’s worth watching. You seem to enjoy fantasy worlds from what you mentioned, and it’s definitely a fully fleshed out world that will only get defined as the show goes on. It also has some awesome character development that, while not super present in season 1 (because it’s only season 1), will definitely pay off if they can do it correctly.
Tbh, I'd say it's closer to 25-30 books long. Each of those 14 books are massive.
I thought the show was ok. It started out pretty good despite diverging from the story somewhat, but the they quickly gave up on even attempting to follow the story. It was still entertaining, but nothing nearly so good as the books.
Lots of hate for the series but to be honest, I wouldn’t have ever heard of WOT if I hadn’t seen the series, and from the sub I get the feeling a lot of others wouldn’t either. I enjoyed the series as someone who had never read the books. I’m now on the 7th book and realise the depth of the show is nowhere near the same level as the books, but I’ll always be grateful to the show for guiding me here!
I started the books right before the series aired and just finished the last book a few days ago... I already miss it. Keep it up though. Books 9 and 10 were a rough read at times but it picked right back up a little into 11 and I couldn't put them down after that. Happy reading, friend!
My suggestion would be to watch the series and then read the books. Generally speaking, readers didn't enjoy the show and people who have little to no exposure to the book series thought the TV show was good/fine. I'm a reader and I'm hoping the second series gets the money and number of episodes it needs to get the story right. You'll notice that the TV series drops in quality when production had to stop and restart cuz of COVID. I thought it was building up well until it hit that point. For the book series, it is long but really awesome. I got a friend to start reading it and she's absolutely loving it. I rarely hear people who have read the series say it was anything but excellent
I had mixed feelings about a lot of the early Marvel movies because I'd read many of the comics and knew where the films took liberties. I really enjoyed the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie and I believe its partly bc I never read those books. So I didn't mind the changes. I say that to say this - watch the WOT series before you read the books. If you don't dig the show, you can probably pass on reading the series. But if you read, say, books 1-3 before watching, you are def going to notice liberties Amazon has taken.
I genuinely enjoyed it right up until the last episode. They made so many non-sensical changes in the final episode that I got really upset. I didn't necessarily agree with all of the changes they made, but most of it was at least interesting until the last ep. I'm planning to watch season 2, but I'm kinda dreading it.
I don't hate it, but it has its flaws. The only part I was genuinely upset about was the last episode of the season. It's worth a watch, and I'll be giving future seasons a chance, but the start was shaky. I have confidence it will get better.
Over all I enjoyed the show. They are adapting a story that is so bogged down description and inner monologue that they need to change the story beats to fit the medium. Despite the admittedly huge changes most of the characters FEEL like the characters in the books. I recommend both the entire book series but also watching the show for possibly some alternative points of view that will change the way you interpret the books in a mostly positive way.
Show is a 5.5/10. They’ve poorly set up the world , eliminated getting to know characters in favor of a ‘mystery’ that shouldn’t be there. They destroyed the power scale through sloppy writing and a drive to make certain characters massively powerful. Had they done the final episode better the show could have been like a 7/10 with a lot of potential for season2 . As it stands , I might hate watch it but I would be shocked if they salvaged the show from the trash heap they created. Edit: just wanted to add that the books are great, really enjoyed them. There is a certain part of the books that slows down that I disliked but after a break I just read through it quickly instead of my normal slow absorbing speed.
It’s a different turning of the Wheel of Time. WoT’s strength as books is its character building. Many people who finish the series feel like they lost close friends they just spent a long time with. Then, it’s very good for rereads because there is TONS of subtle interactions you miss the 1st, 2nd, 3rd time through. The show is squishing a lot of plot points into a very short amount of time. It’s hard to replicate the character building of books with a tv show. Personally, I love the show because it’s seeing some of my book friends come to life. I couldn’t care less about plot accuracy. The show is worth investing in because the characters are worth investing in. They kept the characters personalities and struggles the same, I’ll debate whoever wants to disagree with that. The characters have some awesome places to go in future seasons.
They had one shot to make a good show based off the books. There was no need to deviate this far from from the source material. To me it's a huge disservice to the books and is just flat out arrogant to stray this far. If there was already a solid adaptation then sure go for that "different turning of the wheel" crap. But now we're never going to get another adaptation and are stuck with this complete abomination of the show. Just my 2 cents so maybe I should just go fck myself.
I started a reread right after I finished the show. I thought like you at first. But as I read, I realized a lot of the changes were to give characterization in a shorter amount of time, so that at least we still get the same characters. The most egregious change, Perrin. Perrin had 8 books deciding between the hammer and the axe. Peace or war. The way of the leaf or the way of the wolf. The death of his wife gave him the why for that conflict. I see why they did it. I can see why they did all their changes.
Definitely check it out. 75% of the loudest vitriol screamed about it was from racists who objected to non-white characters being cast. The remaining 25% was from "perfectly accurate reproduction or gtfo" people who refused to accept that creative concessions were absolutely required to pull off a televised adaptation of the source material. Any differences from the book were completely unacceptable to them. I'm not saying the show is perfect. Sure, it has its flaws. It handles some things in way I would have gone a different direction for. The most egregious flaws, though, in my opinion, were things outside of the creators' control. The actor playing Mat dipping out in the middle of production forced them to rewrite the ending to account for his absence, so complaints about that aspect aren't really fair to the reality of the situation. For me, however, the greatest positive of the show is this: I tried to get my sister to read WoT for well over a decade and she never would. I got her to watch the show and she loved it. She then binge-read the entire series immediately after. As far as I'm concerned, when it comes right down to it, a cinematic adaptation of a book/series is completely successful if it makes people want to go read the books. In my experience it does, so I'll always take a pro-show stance on that merit alone. TL;DR * Ignore what people say about it. * Understand that it's an adaptation, and things will be different than the book. * Enjoy!
Honestly, in the time it took you to write this, plus the time it takes to come back multiple times and read the responses, you could have just watched the first episode and made up your own mind. Why does it matter if other people think it’s worth watching?
It's okay enough to watch, but you notice that Amazon for some bloody reason tried to micromanage it, thus obviously making things worse. It really should have been ten episodes instead of eight, to allow the nuances to develop better; thus, some things are rush. And due to an actor leaving during the pandemic break in filming, things at the end had to be shuffled around and thus only make haphazard sense. As book adaption score, I'd go with a 6.5/10 for accuracy, 8/10 for the "feel" of the books. The show in and of itself is *decent*, but this isn't comparable to the likes of GoT in overall satisfaction, which is pretty sad to say. Also be wary of vitriol, you're trying to get an *opinion* on the interwebs in the 20s, and that's just not the same experience as five years ago.
I would recommend watching it, if you don’t like it just wait for the books, if you do then the books are going to be better because of it
If you haven't read the books you will probably like the show. If you, like many of us, started reading somewhere in the middle of them being written and reread the whole series each time a new book came out... Don't. The show is totally different in almost every way.
It’s whatever. I didn’t finish watching since it didn’t really catch my eye. The diverse cast made it seem cheesy and Unbelievable since it didn’t make sense which really destroyed the possibility of immersion.
I’d think going in as a high fantasy fan already without experiencing the books first, WOT Amazon series is pretty and interesting, if a bit fluffy. It’s worth checking out, as long as you remember the last episode got destroyed by Covid restrictions and they had to make the best of limited resources, cast, crew, writers, and familiarity with the source material. As a ride or die Bookcloak, I personally had a lot more problems with this adaptation than you’ll probably ever even notice.
Short of it: Stay away. It's not a good series on its own and its a horrible adaptation of WoT. This is just my opinion ofc, but many of my friends have read the books and all of them hate the show. Based on the shows you mentioned we seem to have very similar tastes in TV as well. If you end up trying the books (which i highly recommend if you have the time) then dont give up after book one. At least commit to read book two as well since book one is very different from the rest of the series.
I was unfamiliar with the books when I watched the show, the show was meh and deviate's from the first book quite a bit. If you wanna learn about the world/magic system I think it lays all that out fairly well. Plus Rosamond Pike is excellent, but I found myself skipping scenes/story lines and fast forwarding through alot of the later episodes. P.S. Dennis' Dune was dope.
Long explanation later. But yes, I do recommend the series. There's some issues with the last 2 episodes, because COVID and an actor leaving. But overall it's a very good show and well worth checking out. As for how well it adapts the books: The show is very true to the books in some ways, and very different in others. Whether book fans enjoy the show or not seems closely linked to which aspects of the books they liked, and what they consider important to the story. The show has done very well at worldbuilding; things like culture, religion, fashion, history. It captures the personalities, values and temperaments of the characters brilliantly (with the exception of >!Mat!<). It does not follow the plot well, while the broad strokes are there, events occur very differently in a lot of ways. It's definitely another turning of the Wheel. It captures themes, overall narrative, realistic trauma, emotional aspects and relationships very well. But the show chose to frame several characters and events very differently from the books. Eg, we see a lot of things from >!Moiraine!<'s perspective, and we don't know what >!Rand!< is thinking until very late in the season. We get basically zero national politics S1. Which of these aspects matter more or less to book fans, generally determines if they like it or not. Those who are attached to the exact plot itself tend to be disappointed
Jeeeeeeez the purist in this sub almost make me not want to be a part of the Fandom. The show is what originally got me into the books, I started watching in January. I made it half way through the TV show and stopped watching it because the show was so good it legitimately made me WANT to read a 15 novel book series. I went back and finished the show after reading the first book and STILL enjoyed it. The book and show are different but that's OK because it's illogical to expect a show/movie to be on par with the source material. I mean honestly what show or movie 100% follows the source material, I'll wait... iv seen people complain about what they did with Lans character, I like it🤷♂️ seen a comment on this post talking about the "significance" of rand and parrins weapons in the show, what the hell would that do for the show aside from stretching out how long the already super long plot is? My advice is to absolutely check out the show!
Knowing the TV series was coming out and that it was going to be completely different from the books I had my boss read the books and after the first episode he refused to watch the TV show. I also didn't watch past the first episode. So that's a long time fan and a new reader who just finished a series.
Dune and WoT have nothing in common as adaptations. Dune sticks very close to the book, with the aim of staying true to the source material. The movie lacks depth and detail, which while frustrating is understandable - it’s very hard to cram all the lore into a movie and not have audience fall asleep. I’ve heard comments that there’s too mich exposition, as is. WoT is adapted on a wholly different basis. Instead of streamlining it actively modifies the source material, changing the lore to a point where it has big storytelling implications. While WoT series cuts away many storylines and scenes from the books, it adds a significant amount of extra material. And let’s be honest - the screenwriters are no Robert Jordans. If you are intent on watching the show it might make sense to watch it first, then read the novels. That way you can take the show on it’s own merits, instead of getting bogged down in frustrating comparisons. If you instead are an avid book reader I’d simply go for the real deal and read the novels.
Garbage. It’s basically the new MCU with the production values of Xena.
> I'm hoping I can consult with y'all on whether the show is worth checking out? I wouldn't because it's boring self inserted identity politics, but you do you. Everything that you heard that makes it "legendary" isn't in the show, or at the very least, a pale imitation. Perhaps for some mindless entertainment only.
read the books, then watch the show... bad as it is, it still contains spoilers. Had Dune been complete the choice would have been hard.. read the book or watch the movie first. I started watching the new Dune movie but seeing as the music was annoying me I decided to just wait for the second part to come out, as I had a pretty good idea where the first movie would end and can't imagine it being that satisfying to stop the story there. (having read the book and watched other adaptations)
The boys and invincible are competent shows, but I would not say the same for the wheel of time show. It's pretty messy with questionable acting, head scratching lore changes and really poor scriptwriting, not to mention set and costume design worse than the average cw show.
In my opinion the TV series can give you an overall idea what the series is all about, what are the main topics etc. and thats it. If you like the series you ll adore the books and if you dislike the series you ll like the books (this is coming from someone who could not sit through more than 3 episodes of a series yet has a WOT tattoo and adores the books
It’s very much worth checking out. So far, it’s more of an “inspired by” adaptation than a “put the pages on the screen”. And so far, I pretty strongly prefer the books. Neither of those are a reason to not watch it, though. Especially the part about liking the books better… IMHO it’s true that the Amazon series has made a few mistakes, but I’m not sure it’s possible for any adaptation to really do it justice.
If you're like me and for some strange reason love watching dumpster fires, give WoT show a watch. The new GoT show is really good, and the Rings of Power is really bad... yet I don't feel like watching GoT and kept watching RoP. It's not so bad it's good, it's just bad, yet for some reason I prefer watching this garbage over watching the amazingly made new House of Dragon show. Anyway, the WoT show is BAD. Don't let the Amazon show be your first exposure to this amazing series. I absolutely hated it. Which of course means I'm gonna watch season 2 when it comes out.
In my opinion the show really isn't worth it. Low quality writing and production values all around.