The remarkable thing about movies is that they manage to condense an entire book into around two hours of screen time in a cohesive and entertaining fashion, or at least the good ones do.
This is why my teenage son, whenever he gets an English literature assignment, immediately goes looking for the movie. It saves time. It's the original "blinkist". Why spend 10 hours reading a book when you can watch the movie in two? Well lots of reasons, but I get the appeal.
This series is the opposite. Thirty 35 minute episodes (if you adjust for intro and credits) so well over 16 hour of story telling. I've read the book too and trust me it's a lot quicker. Him there are of course three books and this is only the first adaptation in the trilogy and all three books need to be read to get the full experience of this dramatic space opera, so it's a shame there's not more pace to this first outing.
At the heart of this series is a faithful retelling of the book, in fact remarkably so and serves very well as a second reading, albeit a much longer one as already mentioned. For me this was ok as it is a drawn out plot with a lot of characters and it was nice to revisit it for greater understanding, but it could easily have been done in half the time.
My girlfriend is Chinese and so we watch a lot of Chinese series and this one is very "western" in its style and, I think, well acted by the Chinese cast. The only thing that lets it down are the non Chinese characters - Americans and other "westerners" who are portrayed in an almost comically stereotypical way and badly acted.
The concept behind the story is a great one and worthy of a 7/10 in itself. I won't offer any spoilers here, except to say if you can't be bothered to watch the series then you should definitely read the books. Non fact you could likely read all three books in the time it takes to watch this single series.
This is why my teenage son, whenever he gets an English literature assignment, immediately goes looking for the movie. It saves time. It's the original "blinkist". Why spend 10 hours reading a book when you can watch the movie in two? Well lots of reasons, but I get the appeal.
This series is the opposite. Thirty 35 minute episodes (if you adjust for intro and credits) so well over 16 hour of story telling. I've read the book too and trust me it's a lot quicker. Him there are of course three books and this is only the first adaptation in the trilogy and all three books need to be read to get the full experience of this dramatic space opera, so it's a shame there's not more pace to this first outing.
At the heart of this series is a faithful retelling of the book, in fact remarkably so and serves very well as a second reading, albeit a much longer one as already mentioned. For me this was ok as it is a drawn out plot with a lot of characters and it was nice to revisit it for greater understanding, but it could easily have been done in half the time.
My girlfriend is Chinese and so we watch a lot of Chinese series and this one is very "western" in its style and, I think, well acted by the Chinese cast. The only thing that lets it down are the non Chinese characters - Americans and other "westerners" who are portrayed in an almost comically stereotypical way and badly acted.
The concept behind the story is a great one and worthy of a 7/10 in itself. I won't offer any spoilers here, except to say if you can't be bothered to watch the series then you should definitely read the books. Non fact you could likely read all three books in the time it takes to watch this single series.