Also, they did the thing with the Panama Canal.
I just finished the series and that was easily the worst thing in the whole series. I guess it was in the books?
Otherwise loved the series. Best Sci-fi since the Expanse. Hope they can keep it up.
I've finished the Chinese series. Which is longer and much more faithful to the book
[1], which is commendable. I'd suggest not judging it by the first few episodes, as the pace and acting seem to improve substantially once
Wang Miao stops worrying and learns to love the countdown and Shi Qiang stops having to justify his obnoxious detective credentials.
Ye Wenjie gets to be a properly developed character.
Like the book, it buries the Cultural Revolution back-story somewhere in the middle so as not to upset the censors. It's also unashamedly Chinese, and isn't afraid to play to a scientifically literate audience.
The bit with the Panama Canal was in the book, and the Chinese series did it better than Netflix, both in terms of the reasoning behind it and the physics (though the Netflix version had better visual effects). Ultimately it was always going to be more spectacular in writing than on screen. (Much more of that sort of thing in the third book, I'll wager.)
IMHO I think it's stronger for finishing properly at the end of the first book, though I'd certainly watch a second series.
[1] The Netflix series is evidently setting up to do the whole trilogy, and contains elements from the later books in an appropriate chronological order.
