Month: July 2022

Classics Gone Wild

Classics Gone Wild: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Beyond — A Guide to Literary Monster Mashups by Kate Nagy and Rachel Hyland is a non fiction book that I loved.

If you like literary monster mashups, then this is the book or ebook for you. This is a fairly short book that offers a fairly comprehensive review of the ones available. 

It has a nearly complete list of all the Pride and Prejudice monster mashups – warning, there are a lot. For example, it includes the famous Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. However, it does miss out one of my favourites, Pride and Platypus: Mr. Darcy’s Dreadful Secret by Vera Nazarian. I presume that came out after this book was written. 

It also includes sections on mashups of other Jane Austen works, other classic English literature, classic American literature, classic foreign literature and a miscellaneous section that includes It’s Beginning to look a Lot like Zombies, which mashes up Christmas carols with yes, you’ve guessed it, zombies. I’d already heard of some of the mashups such as Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters or Little Vampire Women or The Meowmorphosis but there were a fair few I’d never heard of such as A Vampire Christmas Carol or The Late Gatsby.

There’s a review for every novel mentioned as well as a nifty Monster Mashup Generator at the end, which suggests classic novels and monsters for a literary monster mashup for aspiring authors although the authors do point out that the craze for these is probably over now.

The reviews in Classics Gone Wild are interesting and amusing and can help you to choose which literary mashup you want to try.

The other thing I really like about the ebook version is that it has a working table of contents, so you can click on a title and go straight to the review. I hate ebooks that don’t have this feature when it’s so easy to include.

Pride and Prescience by Carrie Bebris

Pride and Prescience: Or, A Truth Universally Acknowledged is a novel by Carrie Bebris who has written several Pride and Prejudice (or Austenesque) novels. It’s the first in the Mr & Mrs Darcy Regency Mystery series. It’s a murder mystery with Lizzie and Mr Darcy in the starring roles. At first, it seems to be just a murder mystery but later on some supernatural elements are added.

Plot

It starts at the double wedding of Lizzie and Mr Darcy, and Jane and Mr Bingley. Caroline Bingley announces her engagement to Frederick Parrish, a rich and charming American at the wedding breakfast. Mrs Bennet is infuriated by this blatant attempt to upstage the weddings, and Lizzie is none too pleased. Lizzie and Mr Darcy are hoping to go to Pemberley as soon as possible after the wedding but their plans are thwarted by Caroline’s plan to marry the week after their wedding. Then Caroline begins to behave strangely, and the plot develops from there.

Characters

Several of the characters from Pride and Prejudice make an appearance including Jane and Mr Bingley and Caroline Bingley. Caroline has a major role in the plot. Other characters such as Mrs Bennet and Mr Collins play cameos.

Several new characters are introduced in the novel, Frederick Parrish, Juliet Kendall, Professor Randal, Mr Kendall and Lord and Lady Chatfield, some of whom play a fairly major role in the story.

Lizzie seems fairly true to her character in Pride and Prejudice. Mr Darcy behaves much as you would expect. Lizzie is more open minded about the possibility of the supernatural while Mr Darcy has no truck with it.

There are no steamy scenes in the novel, so if you like that sort of thing, you’re going to be disappointed.

I enjoy mysteries so I enjoyed this Pride and Prejudice inspired mystery and will look forward to reading the next in the series.

Dangerous Magic by Monica Fairview

Monica Fairview has written a fair few Pride and Prejudice inspired or Austnesque novels, mainly variations but a few sequels. She’s not written any other Pride and Prejudice inspired fantasy novels apart from the two in this series although she has written Steampunk Darcy set in the future (which I intend to read and review at some point).

Dangerous Magic: A Pride & Prejudice Fantasy Variation is set in Regency England where magic is real. It’s the first in a series – Mr Darcy’s Magic. It has a similar premise to Abigail Reynold’s Mr Darcy’s Enchantment but this variation is quite different. Here, mages are involved in the war against Napoleonic France. It did remind me a little of Susannah Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

Plot

Lizzie Bennet is forced to marry Mr Darcy because he is a Janus Mage whose “twin” has recently died and he needs a new one. Because she is female, they must marry to be respectable. They need to bond but find it difficult and need to find out what or who is stopping them from bonding. On the way, they fall in love.

There is a rigid hierarchical structure, there are Royal Mages and Rogue Mages. Royal Mages are descended from pure blood lines, have been trained at academies and work with spells from spell books. Rogue mages are less traditional driven. There are several types of mages, Healers, Warders, and Elementals. Mages who haven’t formally trained at an academy like Elizabeth are looked down on. Families like Darcy’s with generations of Royal Mages are in the top set of society. Mixed marriages are frowned on. This really reminded me of the Harry Potter series – “muggles” and “mudbloods”.

Characters

Some of the characters have been cut such as Charlotte. Mr Collins and Mr Wickham, and Jane is barely mentioned although they may appear more in the next novel. Lady Catherine De Bourgh plays only a minor part in the story, Lady Alice Enright seems to take over her role for this story. While Lizzie’s family and the Bingleys all appear indeed, Caroline Bingley is a supporting character.

I liked the way Lizzie and Mr Darcy came to understand and appreciate each other. I also liked that this novel reflected the original by having Mr Darcy change his attitude about the way magic was organised and the rigid hierarchical structure. And Lizzie come to realise that there is keeping to the rules is sometimes the best thing to do.

Style

I also liked the way the author wove parts of the dialogue from the original novel into hers.

For example, when Lady Alice insults her by asking her if she is chaste, this is Elizabeth’s reply – “If I were not,” said Elizabeth, stung by Lady Alice’s audacity, “you could hardly expect me to admit it”. And when Darcy expresses his feelings to Elizabeth about the proposed marriage, he says, “Do you think I can rejoice in the inferiority of your connections?’

Summary

In short, Dangerous Magic is an entertaining, well written novel. If you like your Pride and Prejudice inspired novels mixed with magic, then you’ll love it.