Centennial, the miniseries

[RipVanWinkle]

I started reading the book about two weeks ago. As of this post, I've read about 70% of the book.

As I started reading the book, it motivated me to watch the miniseries. The miniseries aired on NBC from October 1978 to February 1979. I just finished watching the 12 episodes of Centennial on STARZ.

Overall, I would rate the miniseries 8 stars out of 10. The first 4 episodes were excellent. I feel that the quality of the miniseries went into a decline after episode #4, mainly due to the loss of the original main characters (Pasquinel, McKeag, Clay Basket, etc.) due to their deaths, and the arrival of new main characters and story lines that didn't interest me as much.

I'm sure James Michener, the author of the book, meant well when writing book when he included a massacre, a cattle drive involving gun fights, a range war, and the Dust Bowl in order to preserve some level of historical accuracy. I guess I'm not into gun fights, range wars, cattle drives, and massacres.

[Aristus]

1. I'm a passionate, lifelong reader. I just can't get into James Michener.

It's not the length of his novels, or his prose, which is serviceable enough. I think it's a lot of his narrative choices.

I was about a third of the way through "Space" when I realized: Wait. Hold on. Michener invented a fictional state for his hero to be from? Something wrong with the fifty real ones we have? I thought it was lazy storytelling.

And I couldn't get further into "Centennial" than fifty or so pages, even though I saw the miniseries as a kid and enjoyed it very much.