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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.
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It's also possible that just for the latter part, she felt badly about the original plot - which was basically "ancient Chinese curse terrorizes modern-day white protagonists" - and didn't want to continue writing a series that was dragged down by that decision made back in the early 90s. Or THIRDLY, the original book was published in 1992-ish, so it's possible she couldn't get a publisher to go for a 30-years-late sequel and writing a whole new series was her only option. In any case I assume it was a business decision.
I don't fault her for either looking at it in a business-minded way, or for still wanting to write about those characters, but to me it definitely *doesn't* feel like those characters. I think I would've preferred either entirely new characters or a total reboot in which she did a do-over of the first book (so they all meet again and we get the early relationship-building, etc) but absent the supernatural elements, which she clearly wanted to get rid of for either personal or commercial reasons or both. Oh well - it's her series, not mine! And it must be doing pretty well since she's on the third book now.
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(I do recommend reading Bride of the Rat God if you get a chance, it's really fun and pulp-fiction-y! I have an ebook copy, but I don't know if it's still available in that format now that she's rebooted it.)
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I keep forgetting she did that.
What are the names and the deals with them?
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It's one of the titles I used to see in used book stores in college and foolishly did not pick up on pulp strength alone because I wouldn't start seriously reading Hambly until 2016.
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If I ever see another copy!
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Christine is now Kitty, which actually does work for her character, I think! Norah is Emma, which I don't like as well simply because it feels more generic and less distinctive, but I think that's just a personal thing. Alec is Zal Rokatansky, which ... I can see what she's going for here, I guess, but it really does not work for me at all.
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I assume Zal is short for Zalman, but having some done minimal research into the subject (that is, read the first chapter of the original novel on Google Books) I'm not sure what she's going for, since if I meet a dude named Alec Mindelbaum, I don't assume he's anything but Jewish. And kind of already pushing his luck not changing it.
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Anyway, yeah - I assume she's going for "more Jewish." But (with the caveat that I'm supremely unqualified to comment), I don't think it works as well or feels as much a product of its time as the previous version. Alec was very clearly and textually Jewish before.
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It's fine! The first chapter made me want to read the rest of it! This reboot concept has obviously backfired!
But (with the caveat that I'm supremely unqualified to comment), I don't think it works as well or feels as much a product of its time as the previous version. Alec was very clearly and textually Jewish before.
Mindelbaum!
A browser glitch ate the original version of this comment, so tl;dr with the caveat in turn that the past is full of people who wouldn't pass muster in a novel, the change of name does feel like the novel leaning on its point. Even in 1923 Hollywood, I would be less surprised by a producer or a composer named Zal Rokatansky—a DP I would expect to have anglicized his byline slightly even if his friends still called him "Zal."
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I hadn't caught that she changed the characters' names. Also, I've found a number of her sequels are misses. The aspects of that she returns to play with aren't ones that interest me. I desperately try to forget the Dragonsbane sequels because they undermine the things I liked in the first book.
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But yeah, I assume it's a business decision, either because her publisher wanted it or because she wanted to make more money or both. And the books do seem to be selling, since there are more of them coming out.
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