Mr. Darcy, Vampyre by Amanda Grange (2.5/5 stars)

This is a book that tells the story of what happens between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy after "Pride and Prejudice" ends. It was an okay book. I was a bit disappointed in the simple dialogue and the lagging plot.

Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy get married and are embarking on their wedding tour. Elizabeth is surprised by Mr. Darcy's quickly changing moods. Then he tells her that they are not going on a tour of the Lakes but instead to Paris. As Elizabeth grows increasingly depressed over Mr. Darcy's lack of attention and fickle nature; she wonders if maybe they should have married at all. What she doesn't know is that there may be more to Mr. Darcy's moods than she could have ever imagined.

First let's talk about what was good in this book. Grange did a wonderful job of seamlessly tying this story in with "Pride and Prejudice". Grange recalls scenes from the original book that support her evidence for Mr. Darcy's strange behavior. She does this very well. She makes Mr. Darcy being a vampire seem like a credible thing. Grange also does an excellent job of integrating vampires into normal European society in a very believable way.

Unfortunately there was a lot about this book that I didn't like. The fact that it is called "Mr. Darcy, Vampyre" takes much of the tension in the plot away from the reader. Elizabeth spends the majority of the book figuring out that Mr. Darcy is a vampire. The reader knows this from the beginning, so it takes a lot of the mystery away from the story. Additionally I found that Elizabeth had been dumbed down as a character. Much of the sharpness and wit she showed in "Pride and Prejudice" is mellowed; for much of the book I was frustrated by how she blindly followed Mr. Darcy's lead. It took her forever to question him about his actions; the original Elizabeth as portrayed by Austen would never have taken that long.

I also found the dialogue in general to be disappointing. At points the dialogue was very witty; but much of the time it sounded more awkward and forced than free-flowing and snappy. There were a number of times, especially early in the story, where I thought the dialogue was very immature and couldn't imagine any of the original characters speaking that way. "Pride and Prejudice" was all about the witty banter; and this book missed that mark for me.

Lastly the pacing was a bit off. The beginning of the book starts to drag on as Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy go from one location to another; then suddenly there is a ton of action packed into the last chapter. I wish that the action had been spread out more; it would have been nice to see more of how Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth dealt with him being a vampire and it would have been nice to have the end quest take up some more page space.

In summary, the book was an okay read. It is a nice fluffy diversion if you are really into vampires and "Pride and Prejudice". Personally though, if you are in interested into taking "Pride and Prejudice" into a paranormal realm I would read "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" instead; this zombie version retains much of the original story's wit and adds to it a little. I probably won't be checking out any other of Grange's books; I just wasn't that impressed with her writing style.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith (4/5 stars)

This book is exactly what the title suggests. Some parts of the book are intact and then zombie scenes thrown in. Much of the dialog is also changed to incorporate that Britain has been overrun by zombies for the last 50 years or so.

The good stuff about this book is that parts are hilarious. The pictures in the book are also very hilarious. Sometimes I was chuckling loudly at the craziness of the whole thing. Somehow Grahame-Smith managed to do zombies in a very Victorian way. It is awesome that there are now fight scenes and zombies and ninjas! Yes, I said ninjas. The ninjas and the Bennet's combat training sometimes give the book a bit of a kungfu taste at points. So I liked that too.

Now for the bad stuff. I found the beginning of the book, with zombies, to be just as long and tedious to get through as it was without zombies. Also, since I already knew what happened in the end (kind of) the story just wasn't as interresting the second time through. I also have a stylistic quip. A big part of what makes "Pride and Prejudice" awesome is how all the characters use their subtle wording as weapons. Well, a lot of that is lost when instead of being clever about how something is said, Lizzie whips out her katana and slices her "enemies" head off. I mean it is funny but the story looses a lot of it's intelligence too...if you know what I mean.

Overall this was an okay book; it gets an extra star just for being a very novel and interesting idea. I would read it mostly if you like zombies and you like "Pride and Prejudice". If you don't like one or the other very much I think you will have trouble getting through it.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (4/5 stars)

I have always wanted to read this book and I am sad to say that I was spurred into reading it because I wanted to read "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" and decided that to be fair to the humorous version of this book I should read the original.

This was a very enjoyable book. It starts out a bit slow as Austen has to set up all the family relations. It takes a bit to keep all of the names thrown at you sorted out; it also takes a bit to get used to the manner of speaking used. There are many times when a characters is trying to say "no" but they take a whole paragraph of finely crafted language to do so.

Despite the above; the language is clever and the story (after page 80 or so) is very engaging. I was actually surprised by how much I enjoyed it. The plot has a lot of surprises and mis-direction and much attention is paid to characterization.

It is not a quick read, you really have to pay attention to what you read. But for those who like victorian stories, this story should hit the mark. In fact this story seems to be what all the more recently written victorian fictions I have read are striving to be. Definitely a good read if these kind of humorous victorian romances are your thing; this is the original.

Although I don't think I will be reading a ton more Jane Austen; I did find this to be an enteraining book. I am also looking forward to reading the spoof on it "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies."