Yeah absolutely -- I didn't read Piper's work in my teens, but I think it was, at the latest, in my early twenties. I know I have the exact opposite of an unbiased opinion about it, but at the same time it just strikes me as a really strange continuation of the original work. Not quite like with Pullman and "Let me rewrite the Narnia books RIGHT!", but I was just like....IDK. Maybe I'm wrong to be so disconcerted, but while I love fanfic AUs, it seems really odd to me for a pro writer to basically write a fanfic AU for fun and then decide he wasn't going to try to file off the serial numbers, he was going to publish it as part of the writer's work. He said he wanted to make it "approachable" to people who haven't read the original books, and to give fans of the books "the fun of seeing some old friends in new settings," and I honestly think he fails on both counts. Piper's vision is different enough that I think people who read his books as a result might be weirdly confused, and it wasn't so much "old friends in new settings" as "characters with the same names acting totally differently and at odds with the creator's vision." If he'd released it for free like the Brust Serenity novel I probably would have thought not much more than "Hunh," but....IDK. Maybe I'm just being too precious about it. It was sort of like reading a published pro "take" on Jane Eyre where Jane helps Rochester smother Bertha and runs off with him to the South of France, or something. maybe not that bad


--- Although I was thinking, and one of my favourite books ever is Jane Eyre, and another favourite is Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys's "take" on it. But she's not "rebooting" it -- it's the same plot, same people, same details. She just completely reimagines it but in a way that adds depth and huge poignancy to the original, that makes you look at the old book and see new things in it. But that was meant as a reflection, a kind of sister-book, not the possible opening of an independent franchise. ....clearly I'm just overthinking this. There's just something under my saddle blanket, sort of.