What strikes me is how much less fun this is to read than the original.

Voicey, unevocative, social media obsessed prose. Omelas for the age of X. When I say voicey I mean voicey the way average YA books are described. A literary style meant to be informal and engaging, to encourage children to read, but even as a child I usually thought it sounded condescending. The literary equivalent of an adult talking down to a teenager. Of course, now that YA is mostly for adults I suppose it isn't condescension any more so much as it's something like self-infantalization.

I don't hate all voicey prose, far from it. I've read plenty of books where the style is used to great effect. Obviously the original Omelas story has a strong voice and an informality to it while being wonderfully written. But I didn't like the voice here, where it stands as a poor example next to Le Guin's original, and I don't like that it's become a sort of default for so much of popular literature. Modern voicey prose reads like something that was designed by ad-copy writers and publishing houses and cracked.com editors to sell the impression that what you're about to read will be easy.