Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is... bad. The cultures in these books were an important part of the people in them, and Emond's Field, being the home of the bulk of the main characters, especially so. But the showrunners spent literally zero time building the character of Emond's field and the Two Rivers; they made poor choices that have little value, like trashing Abell Cauthon's character from a pillar of the community to a lecherous bum (which the Women's Circle in the books would not have tolerated.) The cast's acting has not been particularly inspired or engaging, but there has been little of note for them to aspire to. They are not young people out on an adventure with dreams of glory which are ground down by the hardships of reality, they are not small-town kids out in the world for the first time, amazed by what they see. They're bland, sulky blank canvases. In a series as sprawling and, at times, problematic as the Wheel of Time is, you know they are going to have to trim it some. But some of the stuff they've left out or changed is head-scratchingly bad. I wasn't completely put off by the fact that they left the Dragon open to be a man or woman, except that they left in that men with the power still go mad, which is the primary reason people are so afraid of the prospect of the Dragon Reborn... a female Dragon would not be nearly as frightening in the setting. By the middle of the third episode, I was convinced they must have cut Thom Merellian when he suddenly showed up in some.. mountain town.. after Shadar Logoth. What they thought they were gaining by delaying his entry to this point, instead of introducing him at Emond's Field, is beyond me. It did let the series first batch of episodes end on a relatively high note, because to me the actor who played Thom and the woman that played the bartender were the highlights of the series so far. I did like the White Cloak's scenes, so there is that. And the special effects... seriously Amazon, come off the money, it looks like this show was made twenty years ago. I'll watch the series and hope it gets better, but it's probably like Perrin said, "Hope is like a piece of string when you’re drowning. It just isn’t enough to get you out by itself." That's book Perrin of course, the Perrin in these episodes would probably just grunt.