Customer Reviews

Mr. Darcy's Daughters

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Elizabeth Aston is one of the authors on my Jane Austen-sequel TBR pile. I have read two rather disastrous Pride and Prejudice sequels (Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife by Linda Berdoll and Pemberley by Emma Tennant) and one that I thought was good in a keeping-the-plot-neat-and-safe sort of way (Presumption by Julia Barrett) and I have to admit that I was wary of reading another one of these sequels again. Alas, I have already bought them, so I might as well give them a whirl. Mr. Darcy's Daughters is an apropos title for the book because it concentrates on the aforementioned characters and not so much on Darcy and Elizabeth. In fact, Mr. Darcy and Lizzy have to go on a business trip and leave their daughters under the care of Colonel Fitzwilliam and his wife in London. (They also have two boys, but are left under someone else's care.) The girls -- Letty, Camilla, Georgiana, Belle (these two are twins) and Alethia -- see this as an opportunity to have fun and perhaps cause a little mischief now that they are no longer under their parents' watchful eyes. There are some twists throughout the novel.

The novel has its good moments, but it nowhere near stays true to Jane Austen's style. The plot has a been-there-done-that feel to it and the sisters' personalities are not unlike those of the Bennett sisters. There is the witty, intelligent and spirited one (Camilla), there is the beautiful, albeit sensible one (Letty), and Georgiana and Belle are silly and scandalous. Alethia is the bluestocking, more taciturn one of the sisters. So, as you can see, their personalities are like those of Elizabeth, Jane, Kitty, Lydia and Mary. But just because the author made a blatant attempt at recreating the characters from Pride and Prejudice in the form of five new sisters does not mean that these characters are anywhere near as well written or as enjoyable as the ones in Pride and Prejudice. It came across more as a poor carbon copy of the original characters. And the subplots centered on sex scandals and premarital affairs did not sit well with me. It was almost as though the author wanted to write a typical Regency romance novel using Jane Austen's name for good measure. I have no problem with those sorts of plots, but if the author is trying to buy the reader into this being a P&P sequel... well, it nowhere near does the original justice and you're left with an icky taste in your mouth. And there are quite a few inconsistencies here as well. The original P&P characters used here don't sound anything like the ones Austen created. Sigh. Should I bother continuing to read these sequels? I have heard that An Assembly Such as This by Pamela Aidan is good. I hope that one will be a winner. As for this one, I guess it makes an okay Regency romance book (which I'm not pleased with because I pick this up hoping it'll be a "meatier" companion to my "escapist" read), but not a very great Jane Austen continuation.

Having slogged through most of the modern Pride and Prejudice sequels for an academic project, I was pleased to find that Aston's newest contribution to the crowd of such books is a good read with a new take on the familiar story. Strictly speaking, Aston's book isn't exactly a sequel, since its main characters are all original creations, but a few of Austen's characters -- like Lydia Bennet Wickham and Caroline Bingley -- make solid appearances.

Aston's prose may not be particularly deep, but her economical approach is better than the grotesque floral excesses of many Austen imitators, and the plot moves along very entertainingly indeed. My biggest quarrel with the novel is Aston's treatment of Colonel Fitzwilliam as the stuffy, repressive patriarch, but somebody had to take the job in order to complicate Aston's romantic plots.

None of the sequel writers has come close to Austen for skill and wit, but Aston's book is fun and well-written, and you can certainly read much worse when it comes to Pride and Prejudice sequels. I would definitely recommend it over the Baders' awful novels and Linda Berdoll's ridiculously lewd The Bar Sinister. If you like Austen spin-offs or historical and romantic fiction, then Mr. Darcy's Daughters makes a lovely weekend read or beach book.

First let me say - its not a totally bad book. Its kind of entertaining and page turning. It did keep me engaged. I guess if what you like about Jane Austen is the balls, and the gowns, and the drinking tea - you will enjoy it. It reads like a decent regency romance...

If you love Austens characters and her light witty touch on relationships between women and men and romance....I think it will be disappointing. It was to me...

My main problem with it was that it was so tasteless, and the characters had very crude behaviour, it didnt ring true to Austen at all. It was a bit like Paris Hilton meets Jane Austen.

You can expect premarital sex. You can expect affairs. Heck you can even expect Caroline Bingley thinking that if she were a man, she probably would have enjoyed catting around brothels. And maybe if it were a satire this could have been funny. But it wasnt.

It felt more like Dangerous Liasons than Jane Austen. I suppose the author did her research and felt this is how people really behave in 1830 London. She thought it would be an amusing new take on an old subject.

It didnt work for me. The daughters were SO unlikeable, it was hard for a fan of P&P to believe that the Darcys would have such rotten kids! And that Fitzwilliam would be such a crumudgeon. That the Gardiners would have little sense and utterly spoiled kids.

What people love about Jane Austen is her observation of human nature, her slightly flawed heroines, and the humorous way she exposes foibles and human nature with her less likeable characters.

If your looking for something witty and clever and true to the tone of Jane Austen, this is not it. If all you are looking for is a regency romance with plenty of betrothals and balls and weddings, you might enjoy it.

I found it very hard to believe these were Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth Darcy's daughters. The storyline is entertaining, but I could not help but be disappointed that someone would come up with a story of them leaving their five daughters in London for over a year without their supervision. After all that Elizabeth went through with her own family and Darcy with his own sister, it's just unrealistic.

This book would be okay if it stood on it's own and not as a sequel to P&P. The characters were unoriginal copies of P&P and the plot was incredibly predictable. By chapter 2 it was totally obvious what was going to happen. The characters were sadly flat and I just couldn't care about any of them. There were so many inconsistancies with the origial characters it was annoying: The Darcy's just leaving their daughters who they have somehow managed to raise without any sense or sensibility? (Sorry I couldn't resist) I don't think so. Mr. Fitzwilliams was nothing like Col. Fitzwilliams in P&P. What happened? Lydia was more spiteful and wicked than thoughtless and empty headed. The only character who seemed anything like the Austen character was Lady Warren (Caroline Bingly).
Also, the editor and proof reader should be fired. There are at least 3 instances I can think of off the top of my head where a character was called by the wrong name. That's just inexcusible.
If you can read it withough thinking back to the origianl book, it's okay, but if ou read it as a sequel it's just, well, flat. Maybe I'm just prejudice though. :)

I read this book with a small amount of concern. Pride and Prejudice is my absolute favorite novel in the world, and I was unsure that I would like any of the spin-offs that have recently appeared. Since the reviews of this particular branch were mostly favorable, I went ahead and got it. I have to say that the writing itself was fine, and Aston is capable of weaving a fine story, but her characters leave a lot to be desired.

To begin with, I cannot believe for a second that the sensible, intelligent, well-read team of Mr. Darcy and Lizzy would raise five such daughters. Camilla and Althea appear to be clever, but the remaining three are such obvious copies of Lizzy's three younger sisters. It felt like Aston was trying to draw a parallel between the two generations, but she shouldn't have. Nobody liked Kitty and Lydia, and yet she created the twins, making them just as frivolous and empty-headed.

In addition, she took the Gardiners and Col. Fitzwilliam, three of the kindest and most gracious characters in P&P, and changed their personalities entirely. I didn't believe them for a second.

The primary flaw in her story is the characters themselves. She seems to have decided that nobody in this novel should be nice or even likeable, not even her main character. She took the worst possible flaws of all the characters in P&P, and generously doused her own characters with them. I was hard-pressed to even care what happened to any of them by the end of the novel.

It was clear to me that Aston was attempting to write this novel in the period, with the opinions and morals of that period. That's admirable, but I think she took it too far. I think back to Austen herself, who actually lived in that age, and her novels are far more modern-thinking than this one, which was written in this century. If you look back, her novels were considered forward, but they were still fairly mainstream reading. Aston tried to appear the same way by adding some shock value, but frankly I was left feeling a little flat by her effort.

Finally, the fact that she conveniently killed off Wickham and gave Lydia a powerful and filthy-rich husband infuriated me. Frankly, I would have preferred a little karmic justice when it came to Lydia.

In summary, the book itself is decent, but as a continuation to Pride and Prejudice, I can only hope that Jane isn't turning in her grave.

I usually stay away from fan fiction, particularly when it involves my favorite literary characters. Unfortunately, the pretty cover wooed me into picking up this mediocre novel made more dreadful by its pretense as a Pride and Prejudice sequel.

In this sequel, Darcy and Elizabeth venture to Turkey for a year on a diplomatic trip. The five Darcy girls are introduced to all the delights and disappointments of a London season, wreaking havoc in a familiar fashion. Ms. Aston makes a number of missteps throughout this tale, each worse than the last.

The book opens with the author unable to decide if she's telling the story in her own voice, or if she's just channeling Jane Austen. The awkward juxtaposition of 21st century language and early 19th century phrasing fails miserably.

Ms. Aston has reincarnated the original Bennet sisters in the Darcy daughters. Eldest Leticia is Mary, Camilla is a poor imitation of Lizzie, and the twins Georgina and Isabelle are mirror images of Kitty and Lydia. Only the youngest, Alethea, escapes this fate. She sticks out like a sore thumb, as a girl more like a 21st century mallrat than a well-bred 19th century British girl. It's a tiresome re-tread of the same characters.

Perhaps that's a better fate than the resurrected characters suffer. Ms. Aston saw fit to return the Gardiners, Lydia, Colonel Fitzwilliam, and Caroline Bingley to the stage, only to strip them of all semblence of their original personalities. Lydia has been transformed into the toast of London. Caroline is no longer desperate with a wicked sense of humor; she's just an old woman with a taste for weak pranks. The beloved Colonel Fitzwilliam, who once admired Lizzy for her lively manners and mind, now seems to abhor all appearance of life in women at all. He's become a narrow-minded bigot. Mrs. Gardiner has become jealous and harping, rather than sensible and understanding. Would that Ms. Aston had left them out of the story entirely...

The final failure - grievous indeed - is originality. The end of the tale is a shade too familiar, with two of the girls reliving the same fates as their Pride and Prejudice counterparts, though without as much charm.

...

Considering that neither Darcy ("As a child I was taught what was right;but I was not taught to correct my temper.") nor Elizabeth([Mr. Bennet's] "talents which, rightly used, might at least have preserved the respectability of his daughters..") thought their parents perfect, I would think that they would have made some effort in raising their daughters. Instead, they leave the girls in London (was there no one to stand as guardian/companion and live temporarily at magnificent Pemberley?!) while they are away for almost a year in Constantinople. Given Miss Darcy and Lydia's experiences with Wickham, I seriously doubt if Austen's Lizzy and Darcy would do such a thing.

I barely recognized Col. Fitzwilliam and Mrs. Gardiner. In a way I'm glad Lizzy and Darcy were away, I'd rather not find out how the author will treat them. These girls bear little resemblance to their parents.

There was no effort to imitate Regency English which was fine with me, but I thought the characters addressed each other too informally at times.

This may be a good read for some, but not my first choice for a good Pride and Prejudice sequel.

I first tried reading Elizabeth Aston's "Mr. Darcy's Daughters" a year ago and gave up when Darcy's twin daughters, Georgina and Belle, joined their three other sisters in London; this was about a quarter way into the book. But because I had rather enjoyed her other two novels ("The Exploits and Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy" & "The True Darcy Spirit"), I thought I'd give "Mr. Darcy's Daughters another go. I rather wished that I hadn't, because though well written, there truly was very little to recommend this latest Austen pastiche.

"Mr.Darcy's Daughters" reads like another version of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" in that although it takes place almost twenty years later, and deals with Elizabeth and Darcy's children, the main theme seems to be the romantic ups and downs of a group of young girls let loose on society. In Elizabeth Aston's novel, Darcy has to leave England in order to take up a diplomatic posting overseas; Elizabeth has decided to accompany her husband, thus leaving their five daughters in the care of Colonel Fitzwilliam and his young wife, Fanny, in London (this removes the parents from the novel and so gives permission to the girls to misbehave). And while eldest daughter, Letty (the most beautiful of the sisters but who is also incredibly straight-laced and somewhat peevish) may bemoan their removal from Pemberley, her sister, Camilla (who possesses their mother's wit and their father's intelligence but is not that much of a beauty) is quite pleased to be in the bustling city with so much to see and do. London society may offer a great many pleasures and treats, but there are also a great many pitfalls for the unwary, which the sisters, to their chagrin soon discover -- especially when their headstrong and thoughtless younger sisters, Georgina and Belle join them and begin to set a scandal hungry London society on its ears...

The problem I had with "Mr. Darcy's Daughters" was in that I found it hard to believe that Darcy and Elizabeth would have allowed their daughters, Georgina and Belle, to grow up to be later day versions of Lydia and Kitty (Elizabeth's sisters from "Pride and Prejudice"). That they could have had a sanctimonious and peevish daughter like Letty was somewhat believable if not palatable, likewise Camilla (though I rather wished that she had been portrayed as possessing more charity and empathy for her sisters) and Alethea fall within in the parameters of possibility. But I refused to swallow that the empty headed, little heedless man-mad rattles could have been Elizabeth's and Darcy's daughters! Perhaps I'm not being broadminded enough about this, but I somehow doubt that. The other negative (in my opinion anyway) about this book was that it did read like a retelling of "Pride and Prejudice" and a not very interesting one at that. Unlike her later books which dealt with spousal abuse ("The Exploits and Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy") and the attempts of a woman with little money and without the security of a good name could earn her own living ("The True Darcy Spirit"), this book seemed to be about nothing much except the getting of husbands for the sisters. I had rather expected a little more than that. So that all in all, I would not recommend this Elizabeth Aston novel as a must read.

It's over twenty years since the eligible Fitzwilliam Darcy married the ineligible Elizabeth Bennett for love. We find them still very much in love and the parents of seven. The oldest five of which are young ladies of a marriageable age.

Mr. Darcy must take a business trip to Constantinople and his wife decides to accompany him on a journey which should last several months. The girls are to stay with Darcy's cousin, Fitzwilliam, and his wife in London, while the youngest children, two boys, will stay at Pemberley with Elizabeth's father.

And thus five country maidens who lack neither fortune or beauty find themselves in the glittering swirl that is the London Season...without their parents' watchful eyes. Let the games begin...

Leticia- Longs for the love she lost three years before at Waterloo, only to discover that he is still alive and married to another woman, sending Leticia down an unexpected road that could lead to heartache or true love.

Camilla- The sensible and intelligent one forms a tendre that proves unsensible in the extreme...

Georgiana and Belle- The beautiful Darcy twins are taken under their Aunt Lydia's wing...need I say more?

Alethia- The youngest of the sisters has a few secrets of her own.

Pride and Prejudice fans will adore it. A first rate sequal.