They nailed the characters, the story beats, the villains, costumes, everything. I was skeptical after season 2 though I’m not a book purist, but they really know what they’re doing. Even constrained by the stupid 8 episode per season limit by Amazon.
And that episode this season is probably one of the best episodes of fantasy television.
I had the same opinion as you when I first started the series. I felt like I was missing something about the characters but couldn’t pin it down. I was taking what was happening on the pages at face value (and rushing thru it a bit tbh). The overly descriptive writing didn’t help. But then I stumbled upon a liveblog of a person reading through the series and sharing their thoughts. Just reading a few chapters of the blog unlocked a whole new layer of depth for the characters and the story for me that I had been missing. So much so that the infamous ‘Slog’ didn’t faze me at all and I prolly had some of the most fun reading WoT during that time. All because I was able to read between the lines of what Jordan wrote.
Now is it a knock against WoT that an external source was needed for me to understand it fully? I don’t think so. Plenty of great works sometimes need a guiding hand to be fully appreciated. But that’s just me. I’m bringing this all up in case you ever wanna get back into reading the books again. This will surely help enhance the reading experience and maybe make it actually enjoyable.
Honestly, I just dislike his writing style. I don’t think the pages sings with his words like other authors do. I feel that it’s wordy for the sake of using words and has absolutely no sense of rhythm.
I know a lot of people like it but it just does nothing for me. I’d rather read anything by pascal quignard than jordans.
I also dislike Tolkien’s writing style… I know, I know… To be fair it’s mostly a me problem