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Ars Technica has a series-recap-thing going on for "The Wheel of Time" series on Amazon: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/11/two-book-readers-recap-the-first-three-episodes-of-amazons-the-wheel-of-time/
In the event that you dislike people ruining great books for stupid political agendas, perhaps you should steer clear of this review of Amazon's TV Series.
These recaps won't cover every element of every episode, but they will contain major spoilers for the show and the book series. If you want to stay unspoiled and haven't read the books, these recaps aren't for you.
#1 The way magic works in the Wheel of Time (WoT) is crucial to the plot of the entire series. This is ignored entirely in the first three episodes. Which makes me think, they're going to be doing even more stupid things.
#2 Being inclusive and trying to say, but the girls should also be included as possible main plot "Dragon Reborn" hype is stupid. Egwene goes from village girl to badass quite well on her own in the books, thank you very much.
#3 Lan in the first few episodes sucks. In the books, he can take a few dozen trollocs on his own. Whereas in the first few episodes, Moiraine is barely able to take down a nice grouped up bunch? That is stupid beyond words. (We will gloss over the deliberate destruction of the town's property, because apparently it's easier to throw bricks.)
#4 Mat is a thief and his parents are evil, essentially. His Mom is a drunk, apparently driven to it by his Dad who is shown as unfaithful and essentially a deadbeat.
#5 There is a lot of sexing going on. This is a long ways away from Perrin and his lady falling down the stairs on top of each other and being embarassed.
#6 Where is Elyas?
This is no faithful adaptation from the books. In the event that you happened to like "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe", but were put off by "The Silver Chair", because they turned Peter into a whiny brat... you will be even more put off by the random stupid changes they made in this book. Rand wasn't always a brooding semi-sociopath and Mat is a lot more honorable than portrayed by these first few episodes.
[...] Probably the most annoying things to me are the twisting of characters and plot to make them more "woke". Like, if they'd added a scene in Lord of the Rings where someone asks, if Frodo and Samwise are gay. You know, because they are traveling together, so you must be gay. What kind of stupid?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Snotnose on Friday November 26 2021, @10:14PM (4 children)
I read the first book around 2000 or so and was "meh". As the series was trending on Usenet or whatever I read in those days I started book 2, and gave up halfway through.
I should mention that, while I enjoy hyperdrive, alien civilizations, laser pulses, and planet destroying bombs; I usually don't enjoy hand waving, dragons, and powers that follow a gene line. In other words, fantasy disguised as sci fi is ok, fantasy as fantasy I don't get into. Whatevs.
I am enjoying the series. No where near as good as White Collar (which I just finished binging, check it out), but an entirely different genre and intended audience. The show is pretty good.
Seriously, if you want good TV watch The Americans and White Collar.
But I digress. I still have my 2000 edition of book 1 of Wheel of Time around here somewhere, wonder if it's worth my time to ebay it.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Saturday November 27 2021, @01:17AM (2 children)
The Americans and White Collar are both good series. I'd add that the fun thing about the Americans was that it re-told the history of the 80's from a putative Russian/KGB perspective. That, I think, is a much more interesting way to approach established canons and historical events than the rash of ret-conning that has dominated film and TV for the last decade.
Imagine how different and interesting it would have been to not destroy Star Wars as Disney did, but to put in installments that told things from the Imperial perspective. The Mandalorian series touched on a little bit of that when a former Imperial storm trooper went PTSD on his old, brutal commander.
If you do it that way, you don't have to reboot series like Star Trek had to. You don't alienate your loyal fan base in order to bring the canon back to the screen and win new fans, because they'd love to be along for the ride. If it's based on events in history, you can ask new questions without projecting modern political sensibilities backward onto established facts.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Saturday November 27 2021, @04:24AM (1 child)
The world you imagine, where people make stories based on their ideologies and share them, rather than shove them down everyone's throat with the barrel of a gun... a magical place. I wish we lived there.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Saturday November 27 2021, @06:19AM
There is nothing wrong with telling stories from different perspectives, but they ought to be told honestly. Overwriting established canons is Orwellian.
Robert Jordan is dead, so he can't object to the adaptation. But he certainly wrote enough books with enough pages to figure out what he meant the story to say. Hijacking that to push one's own agenda is dishonorable, to say the least. It even doesn't make any sense in this particular case, since women play such a prominent, powerful role in the story as written.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday November 27 2021, @06:59AM
I chugged along through the end of book 7. Yeah, I found the series barely better than "meh". Had its draggy parts before that, but almost the entirety of book 7 was one long slog. So, for book 8, I read only those chapters that start with Rand's actions. Haven't troubled to read further.