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A stray DNF
Okay, I gave A Scandal in Babylon one more chance - this is Barbara Hambly's no-supernatural reboot of Bride of the Rat God, a reboot which I've already bounced off once - and .... no, it's going back in the return-to-used-bookstore box.
I can see why she would want to edit out the Orientalism of the original and the supernatural aspects that make it (potentially) a hard sell to historical cozy readers. But the reworked version is just - not good! Or at least not as good. Her historical ambiance is top-notch as always, but I reread the opening chapters of the original for comparison and I don't think it's just my wistful nostalgia for the original book that makes the reboot feel flat and charmless by comparison. It's like reading fanfic of a beloved canon that doesn't quite nail it.
If this is meant to be the first book in a new series, it doesn't sell me nearly as strongly on the connections between the characters as the original did in just a chapter or two, and if it's meant to have Bride as its ghostly first volume where the character relationships are actually built up, it's simply weird to be shunted off into an AU in which the events of the previous book clearly didn't happen, and the characters have different names now! (Also it doesn't help that of the three reboot names, I only feel that one of them fits the character it's attached to as well as the original did, and one of the new names I actively dislike.)
But also, compared to the clarity and brisk pace of the original, the reboot feels slow-paced and cluttered. Trying to lose the baggage of the original and approach the reboot characters as new characters, I just didn't care all that much about them. I skimmed it a bit to see if it was going to engage me more, and it didn't, so DNF it is.
I honestly wish that, if she was going to write more about 1920s Hollywood, she'd created a new set of characters and let us get to know them on their own merits. But there are many other books in the world, and I'll always have the original to reread.
I can see why she would want to edit out the Orientalism of the original and the supernatural aspects that make it (potentially) a hard sell to historical cozy readers. But the reworked version is just - not good! Or at least not as good. Her historical ambiance is top-notch as always, but I reread the opening chapters of the original for comparison and I don't think it's just my wistful nostalgia for the original book that makes the reboot feel flat and charmless by comparison. It's like reading fanfic of a beloved canon that doesn't quite nail it.
If this is meant to be the first book in a new series, it doesn't sell me nearly as strongly on the connections between the characters as the original did in just a chapter or two, and if it's meant to have Bride as its ghostly first volume where the character relationships are actually built up, it's simply weird to be shunted off into an AU in which the events of the previous book clearly didn't happen, and the characters have different names now! (Also it doesn't help that of the three reboot names, I only feel that one of them fits the character it's attached to as well as the original did, and one of the new names I actively dislike.)
But also, compared to the clarity and brisk pace of the original, the reboot feels slow-paced and cluttered. Trying to lose the baggage of the original and approach the reboot characters as new characters, I just didn't care all that much about them. I skimmed it a bit to see if it was going to engage me more, and it didn't, so DNF it is.
I honestly wish that, if she was going to write more about 1920s Hollywood, she'd created a new set of characters and let us get to know them on their own merits. But there are many other books in the world, and I'll always have the original to reread.