Reading massive amounts of book reviews every week makes it easier to spot tropes. Some of these tropes are like catnip to me. Books about weird libraries or bookstores? I’m in. Sometimes, though, there are tropes that will not only put me off the book but also get me to stop reading the review. One of those tropes is when authors take an established character created by another author or a historical figure and make them the protagonist of their own books. This trope does not include authorized series continuations. What I’m talking about is when authors take a character and drop them into a new setting.
Most of the time, this drives me nuts. It’s probably not fair to not give these new authors a chance. After all, Laurie R. King does a wonderful job with Sherlock Holmes in her Russell and Holmes series. But the problem is that there are so many authors who are resurrecting characters, especially Holmes, that it strikes me as very unoriginal. I think what bothers me about so many of these books is that the authors don’t always take advantage of the possibilities. Instead of gender-flipping the characters (which has been done well) or using the characters to discuss issues of race or colonialism, for example, I mostly see authors just using them as a cut-and-paste protagonist. The unoriginally bothers me, but the wasted opportunity really bothers me.
But, so that this post isn’t completely negative, here are some great books where established characters get another chance to tread the boards in exciting new (to me) ways, in no particular order:
- The Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde
- Jane Steele, by Lyndsay Faye
- Hyde, by Daniel Levine
- Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys
- Lamb, by Christopher Moore
- A Thousand Acres, by Jane Smiley
