Having recently begun reading the Mahabharata, I would have to agree with the above assessment of "Palace of Illusions". The Mahabharata really didn't need to be "fixed"; as best I can tell (only halfway through), it is a fully realized epic, whose characters are nuanced and complex, leading to fascinating plot twists. True it is long, but it's an epic, not a novel. I think where "Palace" goes wrong is in trying to "update" myth, i.e. the heavy-handed feminism. Myth is timeless and does not need to be made palatable for subsequent generations. We can learn from and understand it on its own terms - even from a geographical and chronological distance - without adaptation. "Palace" is well-written, however it necessarily does violence to its material. Personally, I feel that novels tend to be more successful when they are drawn from original fictional material, rather than myth.