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I need to rate this twice, because depending on what you like to read, this book is a -4 or a +3.
If you are looking for a genuine continuation in the spirit of Austen, or even a decent Regency novel, DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. The language is a tortured mishmash of Elizabethan, Georgian, and Victorian English (if you doubt these are different, try reading Aphra Behn, Anne Bronte, and Mary Humphry Ward - in fact, try reading them regardless) and the locutions are so gracelessly elaborate as to rob many sentences of meaning. By the time I finished the book, I was ready to get a spray bottle and squirt the author every time she used the word, "Howbeit."
Go read some Georgette Heyer, who is admittedly no Austen, but her Regency romances are light, charming, and well-crafted. Or try Fanny Burney, whose novels were tremendously popular in the late 1700's and early 1800's, and should be popular now, as they are excellent. Austen would certainly have been familiar with them.
HOWEVER--
If you like bodice-rippers, if you like to read eleventy-three installment crackfic epics on FF.net, if you want to play Spot-The-Anachronism or Fanfic Bingo ("Carriage Sex...Secondary Mary-Sue...Hurt/Comfort Sex..." "BINGO!" "We have a winner! Come up and pay for your copy of the sequel!"), if you need something to mock, rant, spork, or wank about in your blog, if you have a taste for So-Bad-It's-Good, oh boy howdy! HAS SHE GOT THE BOOK FOR YOU!
Or you could just hit the fanfic archives and read this sort of stuff for free instead.
I bought the book and enjoyed the hell out of it for all the wrong reasons. Don't say you haven't been warned.
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(5 of 7 readers found this comment helpful)
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Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife: Pride and Prejudice Continues by Linda Berdoll
Roxann, January 27, 2008
I need to rate this twice, because depending on what you like to read, this book is a -4 or a +3.If you are looking for a genuine continuation in the spirit of Austen, or even a decent Regency novel, DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. The language is a tortured mishmash of Elizabethan, Georgian, and Victorian English (if you doubt these are different, try reading Aphra Behn, Anne Bronte, and Mary Humphry Ward - in fact, try reading them regardless) and the locutions are so gracelessly elaborate as to rob many sentences of meaning. By the time I finished the book, I was ready to get a spray bottle and squirt the author every time she used the word, "Howbeit."
Go read some Georgette Heyer, who is admittedly no Austen, but her Regency romances are light, charming, and well-crafted. Or try Fanny Burney, whose novels were tremendously popular in the late 1700's and early 1800's, and should be popular now, as they are excellent. Austen would certainly have been familiar with them.
HOWEVER--
If you like bodice-rippers, if you like to read eleventy-three installment crackfic epics on FF.net, if you want to play Spot-The-Anachronism or Fanfic Bingo ("Carriage Sex...Secondary Mary-Sue...Hurt/Comfort Sex..." "BINGO!" "We have a winner! Come up and pay for your copy of the sequel!"), if you need something to mock, rant, spork, or wank about in your blog, if you have a taste for So-Bad-It's-Good, oh boy howdy! HAS SHE GOT THE BOOK FOR YOU!
Or you could just hit the fanfic archives and read this sort of stuff for free instead.
I bought the book and enjoyed the hell out of it for all the wrong reasons. Don't say you haven't been warned.
(5 of 7 readers found this comment helpful)