Customer Reviews

Pride and Prescience

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I found this book delightful in its portrayal of the newly-married Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy. The author has done a creditable job of maintaining the wit and lightness of Pride and Prejudice. I am delighted that the newly weds' intimacy is indicated by playful banter, not graphic sex scenes.

On the other hand, although I have a great love for folklore and I have read several detective series with supernatural themes, I don't think that it fits in well with Jane Austen.

I found the American connection in this story a bit implausible. A plot device has to satisfy both the ongoing narrative and the hidden plot(s) that are revealed as the story goes on, particularly in a mystery. If something seems odd, the characters need to comment upon it.

For me, the plot first began to fall apart with the unlikely suggestion that the solution to a case of nervous prostration would be to embark on a several month journey from England to the United States during the War of 1812, delaying any expert treatment until she arrives in New Orleans. The Bingleys and Darcys do object, but Elizabeth Darcy seems to have forgotten that Professor Randolph, who puts forth the scheme, has told her only the week before that the war had more or less stranded him in England. One needs to keep in mind that the US was what we would now call a Third World or Developing Nation. Sending someone with serious nervous and physical problems from England to the United States would be about like having a heart attack in Baltimore and going to Zimbabwe for emergency care. Even if one could get perfectly good care in the latter place, it isn't likely to be better than what one could get locally. Why risk the stress and delay of the trip?

After this incident, I began to question the entire likelihood of the American fiance. Would an American, even a wealthy one, be warmly received by the Polite World in England, especially when the two countries are at war? Granted, the Bingleys aren't aristocracy, but there seem to be no prejudices against him from anyone. Why has he come to England, anyway? Such a lengthy trip is quite an undertaking surely requiring some significant motive, even if he arrived before hostilities broke out. Would the Bingleys really be so unconcerned at this whirlwind courtship and marriage (less than one month) especially if he recently broke of his courtship of another woman? If his "crying off" is taken to mean that he broke an engagement, this would be a serious offense for a gentleman at this time.

I hope this isn't a spoiler, but since mysteries often involve money, maybe not. Then and now, the inheritance of money within a family is governed by laws that override the effect of wills. If any substantial amount of money was involved at that time, the families of the bride and groom set up settlements, prenuptial agreements, stipulating the financial obligation of both during the marriage and in the event of death. Spouses might not inherit from one another, especially if no children were born, although there was usually some legally required or mutually agreed upon support for a widow during her life. A bride's dowry might return to her family if she died without surviving children, even if her husband had control over it during the marriage. If her family didn't give her the money outright, he might only control the income. This would all have to be taken into consideration by The Villain(ness). Part of the action of that seminal mystery, The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins is determined by the terms of a prospective bride's inheritance: her husband would control only the income, not the principle.

Like another reviewer, I was somewhat bothered by some of the language, enough to look up "archeologist" in my Oxford English Dictionary. It is not recorded as being in use until 1824, after the period of this book, although "archeology" had been in use for centuries, so it's not an impossible usage. Would have been a nice touch to spell it "archaeologist", though.

This could be a charming series if the author works a bit on period detail and plotting. I will certainly read the next volume.

I have a love-hate relationship with this book and its sequel. On one hand, the author manages to draw quite a charming and convincing portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Darcy. I am happy to meet them again, and they do feel like the beloved characters of P&P. Having read a number of contemporary Jane Austen sequels, I dislike those that try to debuke the original characters and show their miserable futures. This is not one of those books.

On the other hand, I hate the woo-woo, supernatural plots. Miss Austen herself told us what she thought of gothic novels (and she read many) in "Northanger Abbey." I just don't think that this is the right approach for Jane-ites. Although the author has started this way, she can evolve her approach. Dorothy L. Sayers changed Lord Peter Whimsey considerably over the years. Agatha Christie changed Miss Marple--compare "Murder in the Vicarage" with "Nemesis."

Also as noted by others, the author has a dead ear for the language of the period. Many of her word choices are bizarre. For example, would Mrs. Darcy, would Jane Austen, would anyone in 1813 refer to the United States as "the States"? The solution is simple: use no words not used by Jane Austen or her contemporaries.

Finally, I must say that I was really irritated by the continual references to "Darcy." Elizabeth Bennett Darcy would never call her husband "Darcy." No one, except his equal men friends (i.e. Mr. Bingley or Col. Fitzwilliam), would. Elizabeth would call him Fitzwilliam, perhaps Mr. Darcy, perhaps darling, but never "Darcy." Nor would Jane Austen have referred to him in that manner. Why on earth the author didn't simply follow the conventions used by Jane Austen? In "Emma," she made it clear what she thought Mrs. Elton calling her husband "Mr. E" was vulgar. She would have been even more disapproving of "Darcy." (Although I must say that this doesn't fall to the level of a book called "The Countess" set in the same period: "Just call me Andy" said the c 1815 Andrea, Countess of Whatever.)

Others have already noted the lack of accurate historical and social context.

Since the people most likely to read these books are going to be familar with Jane Austen and her world, I can't understand why the author didn't take more care, didn't research more, and didn't resist the urge to "update" and "improve." These books are on some level good enough that it is really annoying that they are not better.

Jane Austen (or her family) never published any sequels to her novels. Instead, she rewrote the novels themselves, over and over, honing them into the form in which they were eventually published.

This gap leaves a lot of room for "fan fiction." As with any sequel, the challenge is to tell a new story while being true to the original characters and setting. This attempt is fairly successful at the former, and pretty much unsuccessful at the latter.

The worst offense of the novel is the introduction of magic and mysticism, which not only goes against the original novel but also cheapens the mystery element as well. Stephanie Barron's mysteries (featuring Jane Austen, rather than her characters) are better-executed mysteries precisely because they avoid adding in anything like this.

The other problem is that a big part of the book is set in London, which doesn't seem quite right. P&P was set entirely in the country, and any London action took place "off-stage". Elizabeth's familiarity with London is possible, but seems a little out of character.

Her stereotypical "amateur detective" routine seems even more out of character. I can picture the original Elizabeth confering with Darcy and Jane perhaps, trying to figure out a mystery, but not attending police interviews.

The author also runs into the typical fanfic problem of not being able to deal fairly with original characters which she disliked. It is true that Miss Bingley and Mr. and Mrs. Hurst were unpleasant, but they were not quite as stupid and as portrayed in this novel, and the fates they suffer in this novel seem significantly worse than what Jane Austen would have dealt out to them.

Structurally the novel was plotted well, and the characters were internally consistant and well-drawn. The problems with the book are in how it relates to the original settings and characters, not in how this book itself was executed.

As a mystery,the book was pretty pedsetrian. I thought the villan was obvious very early. It frustrated me that none of the chracters, some of whom were known for their intellect and wit, could not see something that should have been as plain as the noses on their faces. I was not a big fan of the supernatural elements, either

On the other hand, I very much liked the book as a Pride and Prejudice continuation. Other than contriving the have social climbing Caroline Bingley marry an unknown, upstart American(really!), the characters remained true to their P&P roots. For me, that was enough to overcome the books probelms that have been pointed out by other reviewers.

I saw the title of this book briefly, and instantly decided to borrow it from the library. I am glad that I did not buy it: it is not worth the space on my bookshelves.

In my opinion, Pride and Prescience contains three (non-contiguous) pages of truly wonderful Austen-like writing. Much of the rest is decent enough, but there are no perfectly crystallized characters, very few _mots juste_, and some of the characters that we already know are strangely altered: their words seem just slightly odd, their responses seem just slightly off. I suppose that some alterations were necessary to make the plot work, and more changes may have been made because of imperfect historical research, but overall I was disappointed.

If there's one concrete piece of information that may help you decide for or against this book, it is this: "Black magic" drives the strange plot.

While that may tickle the fancy of some readers, personally I think this is a very strange choice. While investigations into psychic phenomena were popular among certain elements in Victorian England (mid-19th century), Bebris' decision to morph our Regency-era Elizabeth Bennett into a person with paranormal/psychic talents is outrageous to those who love Elizabeth and/or those who know anything about social history. Dear Jane is probably spinning in her grave with the violence done to her character's character, and I'm sure that history teachers who pounded the dates of the English Regency (1811 to 1820) into students's heads are appalled by this careless conflation of the two periods.

What I really learned in the end is that I need to read more than just the first few lines of the top Amazon reviews. Blithely assuming that anything with these characters is likely to be pleasant proved to be an unsafe assumption. In this case, the reviews with the lowest ratings really were the ones that would have told me what I wanted to know -- if only I'd read them.

This book is being marketed as a mystery. On the assumption that there might somewhere be a reader who cannot spot the villain by page ten, by which time he has done everything but grow fangs, don a cape and go crawling down the walls of a castle, I suppose it is.

In skimming through other reviews, I find that I am giving nothing away by saying that it is a supernatural thriller. It is set smack in the middle of the Gothic period of literature: "Otranto," "Udolfo," "The Vampire," "Frankenstein," and all that. However, its overall tone is not even remotely like that of a Gothic romance, being more along the lines of early Twenty-first Century American casual.

The vocabulary of the author is shot through with anachronisms. I have not consulted the OED, but I have serious doubts that "frame," as in to build a false case against someone, "dig," an expedition for seeking ancient artifacts; "phoney" and "paranormal" existed in the English language in the winter of 1812-13. On the off chance that they did exist, they would certainly not have been used by the English landed gentry, who would have dismissed them on first hearing as particularly barbarous Americanisms. One of the characters in the book is called an "archeologist." While it is possible that the word was in use, the best-known exemplar of the breed at the time was Belzoni, discoverer of wonderful things in Egypt. Today, we would most likely not call him an archeologist, preferring "tomb robbing, treasure hunting, plunderer" instead. In any case, the character in the book is actually an antiquarian and would have been called just that.

All the foregoing I might have dismissed as mere trifles, authorial foibles, after all, even Homer nods, but this really stuck in my craw: One of the characters is described as an American from New Orleans, where he had long held prosperous, extensive lands and a large country mansion. In the course of the novel, this character considers returning to his family estates and is dissuaded from doing so solely on the basis of the length of the voyage and the delicate state of his wife's health. I have stated that this story takes place in the winter of 1812-13, for that is the date is specified in the preface to the author's second novel of this series. What none of the characters (and presumably the author) appear to realize is that the United States and Britain were then at war. In that particular winter, as the Royal Navy blockade had yet to close all major American ports, US Navy regular forces and pivateers were well on the way to accomplishing what Napoleon could not: they were effectively sweeping the English merchant marine from the Atlantic Ocean. There were far more pressing reasons than the state of a lady's health to offer against a sea voyage from England to New Orleans at the time. For that matter, I rather doubt that either of the two Americans in this book would have been held so firmly to the collective bosom of the English gentry during that war. (Some Canadians, especially those whose ancestors were then often called "American loyalists," still tend to be a little huffy about the War of 1812.)

Consider further, New Orleans became US territory by means of the Lousiana Purchase, less than a decade before. How exactly did anyone imagine that an American possessed ancient landholdings in a place that had so recently been French, Spanish and then French again?

I had fully intended to give this book a beggerly two stars for all its failings, but then I thought more about the superstitious woo-woo: one star.

This story is for Jane Austen readers who are familiar with Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, last seen getting married at the end of "Pride and Prejudice." Darcy and Elizabeth have just begun to find happiness and companionship with each other when the quick marriage of Caroline, sister of Darcy's best friend Bingley, to a Louisiana planter takes a sinister turn. All are caught up in the mysterious events that follow, with Mr. and Mrs. Darcy, but particularly Elizabeth, uncovering the source of the crimes.

Historical references are found in the book's close attention of the manners of the English "ton," with women's decorum and dress being of great importance. Given slighter attention is Bebris' interesting description of London where the elite live within blocks of shabbier neighborhoods, of the British-American war of 1812, and of New Orleans, with its "slave vodun and high society séances."

Bebris' prose resembles Austen's style, but lacks the original author's spark, insights, and wit. And the improbable ending, relying on Elizabeth's development of paranormal sensibilities, lacks credibility.

First in the Mr. and Mrs. Darcy series.

The author did a good job capturing the essence of Jane Austen's writing. She then threw in some Gothic elements to tell the story. I thought this was particularly clever since Austen often made reference to the reading of Gothic novels, particularly Ann Radcliffe.

A fun and fairly quick read recommended for Austen aficionados who also like mysteries.

Pride and Prejudice was one of my favorite Jane Austin novels when I was younger, and I think the BBC presentation of it Pride and Prejudice - The Special Edition (A&E, 1996) is just lovely, so when I saw the murder mystery featuring "Mr. and Mrs. Darcy," I decided I'd try it. I enjoy murder mysteries and this seemed a delightful setting for one.

The traditional "who dunnit" of Christie and her generation typically takes place in a country manor house, and so this mystery falls into that mode. The author has a firm handle on Austin's style, too, so the prose is musical and witty and the characters all true to their original form. She manages to keep the dialogue crisp, the clues in view, the red herrings ubiquitous, and all the lose ends tied neatly together.

I was a little disappointed by the ending of the story, however, not because it necessarily broke any of the "rules," but because it had a more gothic character that neither fitted a mystery nor an Austin romance. It felt a little awkward. Nevertheless, I will definitely order others in the series. It was a great pleasure to spend time with the Darcys and the Bingleys again.

Before I began reading this book, I was pretty skeptical of a Darcy "mystery." It just didn't seem right to see this kind of portrayal of an Austen classic. However, I enjoyed this book immensely. It was such an interesting spin to characters that I absolutely adore. Despite it being more of a Nancy Drew rather than Austenesque, it was quite a page turner. Due to my infatuation with Darcy and Elizabeth, I read every single PnP sequel out there. I thought it was refreshing to see a different twist on the Darcys' lives after their wedding instead of the usual renditions of the usual "married couple struggles" most authors write of in a PnP sequel. Bebris stays true to Austen's portrayal of her characters and creates a pretty entrancing story. I could not put this book down. I am so glad there are two more in the author's series!