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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MNblockhead" data-source="post: 9317231" data-attributes="member: 6796661">Huge fan of the book. One of the few books that I didn't want to see in film, but I couldn't help myself and with much trepidation I gave it a chance.I was pleasantly surprised. I loved the first season and hope they finish the trilogy. I do worry about how they'll handle the far future portions. It will be very expensive to make it look right. [SPOILER="Not really a spoiler but in case some people want NO idea of what will be covered in future seasons."]And while there will be some characters who will remain in it for continuity, so many of the main characters will be gone. They did a great job with casting for the first season and I hope that continues with new characters for future seasons.[/SPOILER]In terms of changes. First, the cultural revolution era scenes were not where the book started in the original version released in China. That was because the Chinese publisher didn't want that to draw too much attention from government censors. When translated into English, they rearranged it back to how it was first written, which I think works better for the story.The only thing that I missed from the books was other than the cultural revolution era scenes, they cut out the modern scenes in China. Shi Qiang (史强), "Da Shi" (played brilliantly by Benedict Wong in the Netflix show) is a Beijing cop in the books. In the TV series, the modern period of the story starts and stays mostly in England. I admit that this works very well for the show, keeping the main plot, and making it jump around less, which might feel more frenetic in a TV show than when reading the book. But it is a Chinese book, written by a Chinese author and I feel that the Netflix show loses some of that cultural flavor.I highly recommend reading the book even if you have seen the show already, but going on and reading the 2nd and 3rd book of the trilogy before the next seasons come out. Even though the books are great reads, much of the joy is the mystery and suspense, so reading it after watching the show isn't going to be the same, in my opinion. But then again, I'm the type that will close my eyes and cover my ears during previews of movies I'm excited about, because I hate spoilers.Speaking of spoilers, I'll put the potentially very light spoiler in spoiler quotes to discuss something I hope they don't do in future seasons.[SPOILER="Very light potential spoiler for future seasons."]I'll be disappointed if future seasons continue to take the story out of China. I want to see future China as depicted in the books.[/SPOILER]</blockquote>

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