Here via your link in sartorias' journal, and just wanting to stand up and be counted as a reader for whom the changed first sentence might well make me put the book down where the original opening would not (not that it is notably smooth either), precisely because it is spoon-feeding me the details of the setting rather than solidly inside a POV. If the narrative stops to tell me what it thinks I would think is important, rather than what that character thinks is important, it's a characterisation failure that breaks my suspension of disbelief, because it is foregrounding the nature of being told a story over being inside someone's head. (And if we're not inside someone's head, I want a consistent omni narrative voice which again tells us things about what it considers important.)