As an adaptation of books this is absolute disaster. No way around it: they have butchered those stories beyond recognition, they have invented new content which is below mediocre and only weakens the original plot, they have changed spirit and nature of original characters, they have changed rules and meanings of things in this universe. As a big fan of those books I feel personally insulted. "We wanted to tell Yen's story!" - go make a damn spin off (that nobody wants to see really) when you finish the original series, you dummies.

As a TV show it is not good too. Here are some flaws: those time jumps were obvious weak point, those "big" battles were weak and pointless to show, there were some really outrageous props (nilfgardian armor and weapons, those pikes...), terrible CGI, weak secondary actors and even weaker extras, rushed and just bad pace, weird focus and general feel of money and screen time wasted on all the wrong things. As a whole it just was weird and felt mismatched.

As a strong points of this show I can mention Henry Cavil's amazing work - this show gets more that 1/10 only because of his acting. Acting of Joey Batey was a real find. I guess that Anya Chalotra made a good job - I still cant see her as Yen, but she was not bad either, which is achievement by itself (and all failings were in the script, and not acting, which was on point).