I’ve read 5 of the books, I’m fine with the adaptation. The books all but make it impossible to have continuity of characters in any real way, which would make for a weird show, IMO. This is fundamentally different than LOTR which does have continuity (and even the hobbit), so I feel like that explains the character smearing (Gaal, Hari, Cletus) and time compression.
The original books are great but honestly the characters aren’t even in the books long enough to really develop them beyond the crises at hand, it’s more like a collection of short stories (and I love short stories, but beyond Black Mirror I can’t think of any other sort of short stories series I like much).