Are you objecting to the in media res technique in itself, or only when it's done in a clumsy way that necessitates clunky expository conversations, or because it's become a cliche in recent years - like first person present tense narration in YA, which also functions as a cheap and easy way to get "immediacy"?
I've a lot of sympathy with the latter two points - and the Tim Powers example does look very unfortunate. On the other hand, just because Tolstoy and Twain can write a gripping expository introduction doesn't mean that everyone can, any more than Tim Powers's clumsiness means that all stories that begin in media res contain similar clumsinesses.
Writing a novel, like all complicated engineering problems, is a continual trade-off between different desirable things. Pullman, for example, really does gain something by beginning his book with Lyra hiding in the wardrobe (and I don't mean just the "homage" to Lewis), in provoking the reader to figure out which aspects of the situation are familiar and which don't belong to our world - a task he further complicates by setting the scene in a place that most readers won't have personal experience of, and which is notorious for its arcane and idiosyncratic customs - namely, the inner sanctum of an Oxford college. One might see this as needlessly confusing, but I find it stimulating - and I'm not, as you perhaps know, an unbridled Pullman fan. It's true Lyra overhears a lot, but that isn't all due to narrative technique: some of it is the result of her being a child, and not the kind of person to whom adults would normally confide secret affairs of Church and State. And she is, of course, established as the kind of person who will sneak in to hear things she didn't ought to, right there on the first page.
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I've a lot of sympathy with the latter two points - and the Tim Powers example does look very unfortunate. On the other hand, just because Tolstoy and Twain can write a gripping expository introduction doesn't mean that everyone can, any more than Tim Powers's clumsiness means that all stories that begin in media res contain similar clumsinesses.
Writing a novel, like all complicated engineering problems, is a continual trade-off between different desirable things. Pullman, for example, really does gain something by beginning his book with Lyra hiding in the wardrobe (and I don't mean just the "homage" to Lewis), in provoking the reader to figure out which aspects of the situation are familiar and which don't belong to our world - a task he further complicates by setting the scene in a place that most readers won't have personal experience of, and which is notorious for its arcane and idiosyncratic customs - namely, the inner sanctum of an Oxford college. One might see this as needlessly confusing, but I find it stimulating - and I'm not, as you perhaps know, an unbridled Pullman fan. It's true Lyra overhears a lot, but that isn't all due to narrative technique: some of it is the result of her being a child, and not the kind of person to whom adults would normally confide secret affairs of Church and State. And she is, of course, established as the kind of person who will sneak in to hear things she didn't ought to, right there on the first page.