In the wild? For people who read books, they probably weren't a fan. For people who don't care about source material, the show was amazing. I'm still pissed it was cancelled. It was apparently ridiculous expensive to produce and that's all the more reason they should have kept going with it: to show that we want more of those types of things.

Recasting of the main character didn't help, even if it's explainable in-universe.

I thought it was a great standalone show. What I found unforgivable were the underlying plot changes vs the books.

The Last Envoy? What? That did not even become a plot point (at least in season 1, I bailed pretty early in S2). Also, Envoys are terrorists and not the ultimate-special ops forces?

This is what really threw me. In the book, Kovacs was hired because he had been a highly-trained UN envoy. It made little sense for him to be hired as a known terrorist. I wasn't much of a fan of any of the terrorist cell background, or the other background elements like those with his sister, that they decided to add to the show.

let's make it three then. Read the books, enjoyed the series(s). Want a unicorn backpack to carry around, but don't think I can carry it off (pun intended) the way Joel did.