I've never read any of the books, or ever even knew about. I'm watching this show based on what it is and I like it. It's pretty enjoyable so far. I have no context to base it on so I'm not offended if it decides to go off script.

 

Of those, Perrin's change is the worst. Just pointless. When I heard they were going to make a change to his character I'd originally thought they were going to change his sexuality, which honestly would have been a better choice than this. That would have made the cast more diverse and eliminated much of the stuff with Faile.

Matt's change is also kinda pointless and cruel.

I'm not so upset with Egwene and Rand banging. They're 20 in the remake, it's not realistic they'd have held out. And I'm not upset about Egwene being Ta'veren and possibly a Dragon. The Dragon being born a female and possible screwing up the female side in some foolish head on fight with the Dark One would be the most terrifying thing in that world.

We will see about Min.

 

Jordan's writing suffers from what I refer to as first-draftism. Some writers can escape it, others can't. I feel that way because I get EXACTLY the same feeling when I create a new story universe and write the first draft. In a first draft, especially sci-fi or fantasy, you spend as much time describing the world and how it works to yourself as you do telling the story. Sometimes more. Now, a good writer either edits the crap out of that draft to lose the four hundred unnecessary pages of rule creation, overly flowery descriptions and abundant direction for every twenty pages of actual action / necessary dialog, or you end up with Wheel of Time. I think I made it through two and a half books before I realized I was neck deep in description with no end in sight.

I went into this show with zero expectations. Hey, somebody's making a fantasy. As such, I watched it for what it was. Vaguely familiar names on completely different characters with loose ties to the universe I was sorta aware of. Meh.

It's not bad, but not really good either. Maybe it'll improve, but there's a lot of over-the-top emotional hits for how early on we are already. Gonna be tough to keep topping themselves that way. I guess we'll see.

 

So, I just learned Nyneave refuses to heal someone.
...
...
...the same character who took 5 books before she "didn't feel the need to heal someone" for the first time, and these were insane rioters who would have raped and killed her if not for Uno's Squad and Galad.

Yeah, fuck this show.

 

I read these books when they came out so long ago. Other than the scenery this show is trash. Changes to the characters are horrible. I was excited for this “adaptation”. The pacing and changes ruined so much. Total fail.

edit-
gonna find my audiobook version and revist the greatness this series is.

 

A fantastic title sequence, almost as good as Game of Thrones's map.

 

Yeah, they made a very minor character his wife and kill her off, and make Mat's dad abusive. They also hid the fact Rand is the Dragon Reborn until the second to last episode.

 

After reading through several posts in this thread - fuck this show indeed. Sounds like a lot of woke garbage.

 

I actually don't get the point of them playing coy like that with the Dragon Reborn and even say they could be female. Especially since they didn't end up changing who the Dragon is and likely were never going to. Also, it's pretty irritating that they still have yet to explain that there's both a male and female side to the One Power and the taint on the male side is why men go crazy using it. If they are ignoring it in an effort to avoid gender politics looking at the internet it seems to have backfired. All of which feels like the people creating the tv series either didn't really get the source material or just felt like making changes because they could.

 

I’m betting it more changing because they could. Seems to be the current method, find a property with a name and a fan base. Take the bare minimum of names and plot, ignore the source material and do your own thing and make the story you wanted to make but the guys up top wouldn’t let them because it wasn’t a known property. They took this crappy little nothing property and got it on TV, their version will be better remembered than the original cause it was on TV.

 

>trying to avoid gender politics
>WOT adaption


The entire series is built around it. The way men and women use magic is even influenced by it. They can disagree with his take on it, but if they are looking to avoid any discussion on gender and the interaction between them, they picked the wrong series.

 

Audience engagement for new watchers. Following the non-reader reactions week-to-week, there was a lot of fun speculation on who would be the Dragon. The theory that the real Dragon Reborn is the friends we made along the way/Voltron Dragon/all 5 of them are the Dragon Reborn together was quite popular. Rand becoming a super Warder was also a popular theory. The trickle of displays of power each episode kept a lot of people guessing, and opening up Egwene or Nynaeve to being the Dragon widened the field of speculation.

If it was designed as a drop and binge show and not a weekly release I doubt they'd have held the reveal so long. The biggest issue with it is setting up a guessing game for the audience but hiding the clues. Rand's channeling effects weren't always there for someone looking closely and we didn't get the very obvious hints from delirious Tam until the reveal because they'd give away the game

 

I haven't watched-watched it, but I have been in the same room as it.

The thing about the Dragon possibly being either a man or a woman could be chalked up to simply the Aes Sedai losing knowledge from the Age of Legends. I got the sense they're essentially the children from Asimov's "Nightfall" in that sense, being the remnants of a pre-Collapse organization operating on hearsay and myth.

I got the feeling the producers wanted to avoid frontloading the deep lore. A big opening crawl works for some media, but not all. Haven't read the books, can't comment on Perrin.

EDIT: Reading a review on Tor.com, I came across an interesting writing-related point about the Dragon "reveal". The Eye of the World has a POV character, Rand. The TV Show doesn't have that luxury, really?

 

Yes? He's one of the main characters. Rand himself doesn't believe he's the Dragon Reborn until much later. Anyways, trying to suggest Nyneave could be the DR is dumb anyhow, she's older than the others.

 

A point which is brought up repeatedly on the show.

 

Is this show any good? It popped onto Prime and I'm looking for something new to watch, but the trailer made it look like a really really bad YA novel, not something for people over the age of 12. Was it just a bad trailer?

 

It's an adaptation of a 14 book long fantasy epic that has been neutered and lobotomized.

 

I never read the books so I didn't go in expecting anything. The trailers looked off to me also but the show was actually fairly entertaining and I binged through it with no issues of loosing interest at any point.

 

Who are the books aimed at? Because the trailer made it look like it skewed young. Like the Power Rangers movie except fantasy.

 

Books are aimed at adults. The trailer honestly just wasn't very good. Also, despite my issues with some of the changes made from the books... the show itself has been generally entertaining as it's own thing in spite of said changes. I think if you don't go in expecting it to stay close to the source material you should be fine since any problems I have with it stem from my familiarity with the books.