It's been touted as the next game of thrones, the new series to take the throne and although Amazon has poured millions into creating a screen worthy adaptation; you have probably come to realize that this isn't anything like Game of Thrones.
So, this article is here to inform you about the Wheel of Time series … and why you should keep watching.
It is a beautifully written story set in a wonderful world.
The wheel of time is set in a wonderful and complex world featuring a large set of characters, nationalities and interweaving plot lines. There are entire books in which some of the Emond Field's five ("Mat", "Rand", "Egwene","Perrin" and "Nynaeve") do not even appear. This amount of content means that the scriptwriters have a lot of premium content to choose from. So, there's about the series being too small in scope or that you might get bored of the same characters.
Lots of fight scenes incoming
The series greatly expands in scale as time progresses and very soon, we will bear witness to large scale wars, clashes and battles with the one power as the world clashes with the armies of the dark one. There's also another enemy yet to be introduced … coming from across the sea to retrieve their inheritance. 😉
The character development is amazing.
Much like how game of thrones transformed a sniffling, pampered princess into a ruthless woman who eventually outsmarted the trickiest person in the series. The wheel of time has its fair share of naive, optimistic characters.
Sure, it's not a good thing to watch someone have all their joy, naivety squeezed out of them by reality and the sudden burdens of responsibility. It's certainly fun to watch. Luckily, while most of the characters become broodier and darker as time goes on. Mat still manages to mask his hurt with his humor.
So, while he will endure some of the most grueling and captivating character development ever written. His smile never slips.
The TV series is making a lot of changes
Currently, there are just 3 episodes released but the large number of changes made has been decried by long-time fans (Facebook is practically a warzone right now).
At the moment though, none of the changes have significantly altered the overarching plot of the series. I believe the most significant change is Perrin's wife (She didn't exist in the books).
Off the top of my head, a few others are:
- Moiraine meeting the other Aes Sedai
- The complete removal of the town of Baerlon and consequently Min (an extremely important character who will probably be introduced someway else).
- Thom not being present in the two rivers.
- Nynaeve being kidnapped by a trolloc.
- The story behind Mordeth and Mashadar being scrapped. ("We might write an article on this")
- Elyas being a no-show so far.
But as you can see, the changes are pretty much minuscule and so far do not have long running repercussions on the books. This gives us hope that the writers intend to follow the original storyline as closely as they can.
Pacing issues.
You probably felt it; watching episode one. So many things seemed rushed, how can they make an hour-long episode and still need to rush things so glaringly?
They don't have a choice. If they want to finish the series before the characters get too old or change to much; they have to make decisions like this and although I feel that the pacing could be improved or at least made less obvious. We just have to come to terms with the fact that its here to stay.
The extent of Season One.
As you may or may-not know, the wheel of time spans 14 books and a novella. Each book averages about 700 pages and this means that there is a lot of content to adapt. Judging from the current pace of the TV series. It seems like season 1 won't be able to cover more than the first book.
Of course, we may be wrong; they might cut even more stuff and cover the first book by the sixth episode. All I know is, I'm here for the ride till the very end.
