Changed my rating from 6 to 1 stars after reading books

I saw the made for TV movie first, but recently got free copies of the new trade paperback reprint of the books.

I thought the mini series was OK - merely OK, absolutely nothing special - before reading the books, but after having read them, I was retroactively horrified at the long string of absurd decisions they made with the movie.

What were they thinking?

For one thing, they took one of the heroes of the books, Richard Burton, and made him the villain. They made the main characters people who didn't even appear in the books. Most of the characters in the books did not appear in the move and almost none of the characters in the movie appeared in the book. There is a riverboat in both, but the role it plays in one is nothing like the role it plays in the other. Alan Cumming's character isn't quite like anything in the book (unless he was supposed to be like either the Agents or Ethicals).

I am just astonished at how badly they botched the movie.

I do NOT think that shows or movies need to be slavishly faithful to the originals. In fact, they are usually better when they are not. I think THE WALKING DEAD TV series is absolutely brilliant, but it isn't rigidly the same as the comic. But if you are going to depart entirely from the original source material, at least have a reason for it or come up with something good. This movie was just a godawful mish mash. I now think that this might have been as bad a version of another source material as I've ever seen.

BTW, I've finished the original quartet of books. I'm now going to read the fifth novel (found it used off Amazon). I understand it isn't very good. But still, I bet it is better than the movie.