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| Ms. Hen enjoys drinking coffee from her Jane Austen mug |
MR. DARYCY, VAMPYRE
Amanda Grange
Sourcebooks Landmark
2009
Ms. Hen is not done with Halloween yet. She had read PRIDE
AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES years ago, and she wanted to read SENSE AND
SENSIBILITY AND SEA MONSTERS, but she looked it up and it was not available at
the library, and she didn’t want to pay for it, but when she tried to find it, she
discovered this novel.
She was intrigued by the title, and it made her wonder what
it was about. Mr. Darcy, a vampire? What could be more delicious? She was dying
to find out about Mr. Darcy as a vampire and how Elizabeth Bennett survived
that situation.
When Ms. Hen started to read the novel, she had questions.
How did Elizabeth find out Darcy was a vampire? What did she do when she found
out? And does he turn her into a vampire?
The novel starts at the wedding of Elizabeth and Darcy.
After the wedding, he tells her that instead of going to the Lakes District, he
wants them to travel to the Continent for their wedding tour. The trip takes them to the salons of
Paris, to a castle where a Count lives, Venice, and outside of Rome.
The fact that Elizabeth Bennett travels to Paris and across
the Alps, and to Venice made Ms. Hen happy. She knows that Jane Austen never
left England, and would not have been able to write about those places with
authority. She thinks that Austen might be happy that Elizabeth Bennett got to
travel more than she did, even if it had to be in a book as badly written as
this.
Ms. Hen thought this novel reminded her of other vampire
novels. The part about the Count reminded her a lot of DRACULA. The sections
about Paris and Venice made her think of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. Ms.
Hen has not read every vampire novel, but she’s sure that there are more that
inspire this one.
The main problem Ms. Hen had with this novel was that the
writing was bland. She is used to reading great books by exceptional writers,
and this one did not measure up to her usual standards. And there were mistakes
in the text! Ms. Hen can’t stand when a publisher doesn’t take the time to
double check to make sure every word is spelled correctly and there are no
typos. Ms. Hen thinks that is the problem with publishing today – that there
are people willing to publish this kind of mediocre work while thousands of high-quality novels don’t get published. All the publishers are
interested in is making money, and they don’t care about art! They don’t care
about good writing!
This makes Ms. Hen sad. She wishes she lived in a world
where people cared more about art than making a lot of money publishing dumb
books.
But the point of a plot driven novel is to discover what
happens in the end. Ms. Hen was dying to know if Elizabeth Bennett became a
vampire. She will save you the trouble of going to your library and taking this
book out, or even, heaven forbid, buying this book. Mr. Darcy does not turn
Elizabeth into a vampire; he becomes human again. They find a Roman temple
where he could convert back into a human again, through a process that reminded
Ms. Hen of the scene in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK in which the huge boulder
rolled out of the temple and Harrison Ford runs away.
Even though Ms. Hen thought the writing in MR. DARCY,
VAMPYRE was pure drivel, she thought the book was fun. It was a nice escape
from the serious books she has been reading lately. Ms. Hen gives this novel
two feathers up, because she couldn’t stand to give it more than
that.
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