So far the casting is great and it seems like all the actors have a solid grasp of the source material. Lan and Moiraine stand out in particular.
I'm only on the second episode so I can't say much more but from the dialogue and portrayal of the Two Rivers village to the climactic battle scene in the first episode I'm pretty sold so far.
Warning: Book spoilers
I finished the series a couple years back and I think it's been really good so far. I didn't like the first episode during my first watch on account of some (what I see as) superfluous story changes. I think giving Perrin a wife was a strange choice; I get that they're trying to give him an easy-to-follow reason for hating fighting, with her death as motivation since we don't have his inner monologue from the books, but I think you could have him accidentally kill anyone for the same effect without shoehorning such a big change in. Hell it could have been just a teenage love interest and it wouldn't have bothered me. I also didn't like them making Abel Cauthon a "bad dad", in the books he's pretty cool and good friends with Tam iirc.
My biggest gripe is I don't like them making the decision to tease the idea that a woman could be the dragon reborn. I say this as a trans person myself so I've given a good deal of thought to the whole Saidin/Saidar split, how it's bound to the soul and how there literally is a Saidin-channeling woman in the books. Absent the existence of Lews Therin, I think the possibility of a trans-female dragon channeling saidin would be possible and fit narratively, but since the dragon REBORN is literally just Lews Therin again, we would guess that even if trans people are accounted for and accepted in the Wheel of Time universe, that the reincarnated dragon reborn would have the same gender identity as Lews Therin (male). But that's giving a lot of more credit than I think is deserved for this thought experiment, I doubt trans people even crossed the show writers' minds when adding in the "maybe its a girl dragon" tease.
That being said, episodes 2 and 3 were phenomenal, Shadar Logoth looks exactly as I had imagined, Thom looks fantastic and his actor plays him great, the main cast is excellent, the darkfriend's plot in episode 3 was great, probably even better than the scene it replaces in the books. I rewatched episode 1 and the changes didn't really bother me on rewatch as most of them don't matter (except the female dragon thing, I'm just head-canoning that as not a thing). I could wish that the pace was about half as fast as it currently is, but obviously this is a profit making tool for amazon and they wanna get as much main story out there as possible to hook people. Very excited for Friday when the next batch of episodes releases.
I also dislike the female dragon thing cause in my eyes part of the whole setting was "what if original sin but a dude did it".
While Jordan didn't execute particularly well I appreciate that he was trying to get there
Woah I never thought about it that way. Really interesting point.
I agree generally. The "Fridging Perrin's wife" thing feels like a writing shortcut to me, to wring extra pathos out of his story, and speedrun his arc. I think Perrin's arc in the books is generally one of the worst received for readers, and he's kinda off doin his own thing for so long, before it become relevant to everyone else, so I get big vibes that the writers are planning on shortcutting a lot of it in general. Which, I instinctively don't like, but also I understand somewhat what they're trying to do.
Also, someone pointed out to me something I wasn't aware of, that RJ's notes do mention a 'female dragon', for when the world needs a female channeler to save the world in the cycle, though in book canon, she is called Amaresu instead of dragon, so there's a chance that the show writers could be referencing that as well.
Yeah I noticed some of that "short cutting" with Mat too, having him steal from Two Rivers folk seems a bit out of character, but I guess they want to develop him as this rogueish archetype early on. Also I pretty sure he didn't really pick up gambling until Tar Valon but I could be wrong.
I didn't know those notes about a female dragon either, I always figured that there absolutely could be a female dragon in other turnings of the Wheel, but this specific turning's one was male and thus the Aes Sedai would be hunting exclusively male channelers.