I still have 50 pages to finish the first book, I'll eventually write a review about it in another topic, but I've watched the first episode and... I thought it was pretty good. I've notice myriads of small changes that can go all butterfly effect in the future and change the story more or not... Some of these changes seem to be along the lines of not referencing real religions like there's the arch-diocese, and very little mention of "neo-catholic" characters, as opposed to making it all about how it's catholics that have this different relationship with storing and resleeving, also I suppose that they won't go into the Sharia thing (though that would be a point where something that could be perceived as political correctness would actually be censoring what I understand as clear anti-irak/afghanistan war undertones, taking into account when the book was written... and that's kinda sad).
I also thought that the expository bits about how the cortical stack works were too handholding and that showrunners should respect the audience's intelligence more, that they could have understood all of that from context and more natural dialogue... but they pulled it off kinda decently.
I was also pretty worried by the trailers that portrayed the scene of Kovacs's resleeving too much in the vein of Robocop remake or any story about a "man out of time"... but no, in the episode itself, they make it clear that it's not such a big deal for him, as here in the series he's still been a user of this technology for his whole life. I mean, you see the scene with the shouting in front of the mirror, and listen to some of the lines out of context and you would think that they're changing Kovacs into some kind of "I-never-asked-for-this-Adam-Jensen-type". But it's not the case. I thought Kinnaman was great, and I've never liked him in anything before. He's an asshole, pretty much like Kovacs in the books if not a bit more.
I don't know about Ortega... there was this very short shot of her face as she saw Kovacs but as the show progressed... I don't know if they're going to go the same route as the book... because I'm not sure she had the same reaction? I also pictured her a lot more tomboyish in the book.
The scenes and the setting are somewhat different but not distracting. They fit the visual nature of a show. The Mansion of the Sun of Bancroft is nothing like I pictured from the description in the book, nor is Miriam Bancroft, but I suppose her looking more like a MILF... telegraphs better what kind of character she is for a show. Bancroft is OK, though a lot younger looking that his sleeve in the book.
The Hotel is not the Hendrix... I don't know why? Probably image rights? The Raven with an Edgar Alan Poe AI was a nice tradeoff, though, and maybe they can do something with how that kind of persona fits with a world where people don't really die and where someone can walk away in the sleeve of your loved one as he or she is stuck with another one...
More than anything I think I'll praise the visual presentation in general: aesthetics, special effects, photography and coreography. One thing that I'll say has been putting me off with the book is that it doesn't help you visualize, as many places, things and characters are never physically described, even in their first appearance, sometimes failing to cause an impression, which becomes annoying when the writer decides to rescue them again and you don't remember them.
