My wife and I are enjoying the show. The pacing is still off, imo. I can do without the slow character development scenes. I’d rather have a shorter runtime than have to sit through the relationship garbage. I get it, you’re in love.
There is a WOT origin story airing, done in animation, would you be interested? I think it is a background story, mostly prequel stuff.
Just watched all the shorts. Pretty cool stuff. I would definitely be down for a good anime. Still, show remains too grim, it doesn't have any of the levity of the books and it misses it.
I've now finished episode 4 since I wanted to give it another shot. So happy so little of those Trolocs or whatever and it has some intrigue. I like what the main villain looks like in dreams with that fire / light coming through his eyes and mouth. I cannot however get over how they use THE DRAGON as a title, the writer of the books that is, especially since people have made the GoT and LoTR comparisons...you'd expect some freaking dragons to show up. If I hadn't expected that, I would've been less disappointed realizing it's actually just a person. WTF was that author thinking?!
So I finally caught the finale the other day. Kind of disappointing in some ways and overall the first season was nowhere near what I hoped it would be. But oftentimes the first season of a series is rocky as it is finding its way. Hopefully season two gets in the groove and they improve upon what worked this season. Having 5 women who could channel link together and basically be able to destroy tens of thousands of Trollocs felt way too overpowered (even if 3 of the 5 died as a result). They will probably regret that later when they have to right-size how powerful the Aes Sedai really are. I feel like they maybe needed 2 more episodes to better flesh out some of the relationships and world building. But I'm definitely excited for what season 2 will bring. Some book spoilers below: Spoiler So that was unexpected. Loial dies, Shienar is basically destroyed, Moraine has been STILLED?!...for a moment there I thought they were going to kill off Nynaeve. Loial dying makes me sad but the show version was pretty far off from what I imagined the book version anyway and he wasn't doing much for me. I have no idea why they had Moraine stilled and I'm curious where they are going with that since she still has LOTS to do from the book story. Maybe they will accelerate Nynaeve learning how to heal a person that is stilled and get Moraine back in the game? Or maybe they don't want to keep paying Rosamund Pike rates and are looking to move her character out of the main story. Looks like next season will focus on the Seanchan. That could be interesting. They were pretty easy to root against in the books with their enslaving women who could channel. The show version of the a'dam looks pretty badass and we should get introduced to Elayne next season.
Nyneve and Egwine are powerhouses so that could explain the massive amount of power, but it pretty much nullifies how overwhelming they made the trolloc hoard out to be. If it was that easy why didn’t they go into the blight with every Aes Sedai and wipe out the Dark One’s minions? I still think the pacing is off on this show, way too much time on relationships and not enough on action/story building. Spoiler We don’t know that Loial is dead and Moraine is stilled for sure. It’s a cliffhanger.
If you read the books what they did with a group of women channelers linked together is pretty normal, especially with 2 of the most powerful channelersin the world providing power. They only wiped out a small army that didn't have channelers to counter them and paid the price burning themselves out. The potential of what they can do with the one power is very much in line with the books. Spoiler Remember, the dragon broke the entire world with the one power.
I just burned through the audio book - it is like the TV writers and the book author both sat down with writing prompts that gave them a general story arc and characters and each wrote their own story. Past the 1 sentence description of plot that you would find in a TV Guide, it is amazing to me how much the TV show deviates from the books while still telling the same story. I guess because the books are so long (the audiobook I got from Audible was 29+ hours) and with budget considerations and visual story telling in mind they've had to pear everything way down and simplify a ton of things, which is kind of a shame. Saw the TV show first, but the first book is much more interesting to me. I also dont like the way they reduce "the one power" in the TV show to swirly black-or-white lines so it is easier to visualize - again, probably in practical terms it makes everything much easier. There's one bit in the book about Moraine steps over a city wall, where they at first describe it as a trick of perspective until she is on the other side of the wall; the swirly lines take something that seems intentionally vague and mysterious in the books, and makes it very mundane and easy to characterize. It kills all the mystery of it. Game of Thrones clearly was intended as a big budget showpiece for HBO in terms of how much money and effort was put forth. I get the impression that the budget is a much bigger concern here, and to me it is very clearly reflected in the final product. Not saying it can't be just as enjoyable, but in terms of actual TV production stuff, it's clear that GoT had much more money and time put into every moment you see the show on the screen. I don't think it's fair to compare the two, and trying to compare the productions, WoT is almost always going to come up short. Even when it crashed-and-burned, as in the final couple of episodes, GoT looked good in a way that is lacking here, for what appears to me to be budget reasons.
I don't think what they did there was reflective of what was done in the books. That was an army of 60,000+ Trollocs that they wiped out in one go. When in the books was that done? Spoiler And in the books the breaking of the world wasn't just the Dragon. It was ALL the men that could channel (and at that time, there was a LOT because the one power for men wasn't tainted yet and they weren't hunted by Red Aes Sedai) going insane when the Dark One corrupts the power. All of them going nuts combined was enough to reshape the world. I don't recall them ever showing the level of power that those 5 women demonstrated. Remember the battle against the Shaido Aiel? That was like 100,000 warriors and Moraine, Rand and crew were only able to do some damage here and there with lightning bolts. If they just needed to link together like we saw in this episode, they could have wiped out the Shaido Aiel no problem. Instead of was a battle that lasted all day.
Was it 60,000 by the time they broke through? The defenders did kill a lot of them before they broke through. I don't necessarily remember the numbers quoted on the show but that didn't look like 60,000 trollocs, I would say closer to 10K. I believe 5 channelers including powerful ones like Nynaeve/Egwene working together and linked can easily destroy say 6,000 that broke through, given that they are willing to burn themselves out, which they did). Plenty of room open for interpretation, especially with the liberties the show takes from the source material. Spoiler And you're right, it wasn't the dragon himself, it was the dragon and 100 other channelers. Still, all working together, with Sa'Angreal and other unknown artifacts still managed to break the world. Let that sink in, not a measly small army in a plain. The entire world. Having read the books multiple times it seemed plausible for them to destroy that small trolloc army. Anyways, it's all high fantasy anyways, very subjective and open to interpretation in a world full of magic that can break and reshape the entire world.
I did forget that the front line would have taken out a lot of Trollocs. So it's anyone's guess how many made it through. If we are talking 6,000 moreso than 60,000, then that wouldn't be crazy overpowered. But in general, I do feel like they set an a precedent that will bite them later in the series when there is a large force and available Aes Sedia that could link, but don't because it would be too easy. Kind of like the giant eagles Deus Ex Machine in Lord of the Rings. But that wouldn't be unusual for a TV show in season 1 to set a precedent that they later decided to ignore.
I binged the whole show. I thought it was enjoyable for what it was. I know nothing and dunwannit read anything of the books. I was the same for GOT. As an outsider, I didn't think much of GOT until late season 3. I feel this is on par if we have to compare them.
