Book Review || Death Comes to Pemberley

Death Comes to Pemberley
P.D James

First published in 2011

Faber & Faber, paperback, 330p.
ISBN: 978057111170

Dancing, Merriment... and Murder

The year is 1803.  Darcy and Elizabeth have been married for six years, and the orderly world of Pemberley seems unassailable.  But all this is threatened when, on the eve of the annual ball, a chaise appears, rocking down the path from Pemberley's wild woodland.  As it pulls up, Lydia Wickham - Elizabeth's younger, unreliable sister - stumbles out screaming that her husband has been murdered.

Death to Pemberley is one of the biggest bookish disappointments I've had.  I love Pride & Prejudice.  The BBC adaptation from 1995 was amazing.  The characters memorable, the story witty and watching Darcy and Lizzy find each other leaves you with the warm fuzzies.  When I read, or watch, P&P I often wonder what could have been had Austen written a sequel.  Yet, this adaptation was complete and utter crap!  It took all my fangirl dreams and shattered them.

It has been nearly a year since I started reading this book, and after getting just over a third of the way through last January, I have not been able to make myself go back and read it.  I don't care if Wickham did it (I seriously doubt it, because I couldn't be that lucky!), or if Lydia ever leaves Pemberley.  I have post-it notes lining the pages I did read, with annotations everywhere, marking out inconsistencies, annoying rehashing of information the reader should already know, because only an Austenite would attempt to read this!, or just things that seemed out of place...

"I take it, Belcher, that your clever scientific colleagues have not yet found a way of distinguishing one man's blood from another's?  We would welcome such assistance..."   p.108

Seriously, blood typing didn't become a 'thing' until the beginning of the 20th century (1901), let alone 1803!  Such inconsistencies annoy me.  I doubt that the medical community had any idea of the existence of blood types, let alone the investigative capabilities it might provide.

Apart from that, I found the characters to be pale shadows of the originals, the dialogue annoying and this has really put me off trying any of P.D. James's other works as she has butchered this retelling/adaptation.

So after a year of trying, Death Comes to Pemberley has officially become my first DNF!  

If you love P&P, and don't want to spoil your love of the story, then I advise you to skip this.  Watch the marginally better BBC adaptation if you must find out what happened.

DNF

Well, that's all I have to say about Death Comes to Pemberley.  I can now put it on the bookshelf somewhere and forget about it. 

Do you agree with my review, or did you love it?  Let me know below as I'd love to hear your thoughts on this book.

Until next time,

 

Modern Classic with a beautiful cover

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
 

When my postman brought this to my door this morning I was so happy! This book is even better in person than it was online.  First off, it has a gorgeous movie tie-in cover, plus it has that lovely suede-like feel to it (always a bonus), and finally it is nice and floppy.  I won't have to worry about cracking the spine on this baby.

Why did I buy this book?  Well, this is the book that I have had in mind for a personal challenge for quite a few years now, but I've never found an edition that I liked.  I finally managed to snag this edition from Book Depository - with a hefty discount!  So, this will be my 2016 modern classic challenge.  I have a year in which to read the book - all 984 pages! - from cover to cover.

Still wondering why I set myself this goal, but... I can't remember why.   If you have read this, let me know what whether you liked it, or not, and would you recommend reading this book to anyone?

Wish me luck.

Until next time,

 

Book Review || Heraclix & Pomp

Heraclix & Pomp
A Novel of the Fabricated and the Fey
Forrest Aguirre

Published: October 2014

Underland Press, hardcover, 285p.
ISBN: 978-1-63023-001-2

Heraclix and Pomp, Aguirre's first full-length novel, explores the ideas of identity and immortality through the eyes of a man-like golem and a time-bending fairy who can barely grasp the idea of now, much less the dangers of what's to come.

Before being sewn-together, Heraclix was dead—merely a pile of mismatched pieces, collected from the corpses of many troubled men. And Pomp was immortal—at least, so she thought. That was before her impossible near-murder at the hands of the necromancer, Heraclix's creator. But when playing God, even the smallest error is a gargantuan weakness. When the necromancer makes his, Heraclix and Pomp begin their epic flight.

As they travel from Vienna to Prague to Istanbul and, even, to Hell itself, they struggle to understand who and what they are: who was Heraclix before his death and rebirth? What is mortality, and why does it suddenly concern Pomp? As they journey through an unruly eighteenth century, they discover that the necromancer they thought dead might not be quite so after all. In fact, he may have sealed his immortality at the expense of everyone alive . . .

Heraclix and Pomp is a richly textured and decadent read, filled with Baroque ideology and Byzantine political intrigue. Fans of fantasy and historical fiction alike will revel in Aguirre's layered prose and vivid characterizations. Heraclix and Pomp brings the surreal and the macabre to one of history's most violent eras, and it does so in a voice sure to resonate among this season's best new releases.

NOTE: Minor spoilers mentioned in the review.

I bought this book for myself as a birthday present.  The cover is gorgeous, and once I'd read the synopsis on Book Depository I had to have it.   However, once it arrived I found myself putting it on my TBR shelves.  I kept picking it up, admiring the beautiful and detailed artwork on the cover, yet for some strange reason I just didn't want to read it.

Then yesterday I decided 'enough is enough!', and I pulled it out of my TBR stockpile.  Even then, it took me a little while to start reading it.  I don't know why I had such a hesitance about reading this book.  It's not long, it's in a genre I love, and since I hadn't spoiled myself by readin any reviews, what was I worried about?  

Famous last words.

I started reading.  The first dozen or so pages were great.  Then it went downhill from there.

The altercation between the sorcerer, the golem, and the fairy, the one that's hinted at on the front flap - and the one that I thought was going to be the climax of the book - was actually the beginning.  Really... REALLY!  There is also one HUGE mistake that I'd just like to mention right off the bat.  Heralix, one of the main protagonists, is not actually a golem.  He is NOT made from clay but is rather a Frankenstein monster who has been assembled from pieces of numerous corpses and reanimated.  

Having said that, he was however the one character who's story I found interesting.  As a by-product of the reanimation process, his memory is wiped, and instead of just getting on with his 'life', he is obsessed with his past and nothing can deter him from seeking out the truth about his former life (lives?).  If we could have stuck with Heraclix as our narrator, the one POV, I might have found this book more interesting, instead we have numerous perspectives which jump around and just add to the confusion.

Our other protagonist is Pomp.  She is an interesting stereotypical fey character.  She seems to have all the tropes.  She is very small, with major powers, has wings, and is very skittish and literal.  Pomp, as well as her fellow fairies, have no concept of the most basic of things.  In one scene two of her friends are playing with a small bat.  They do not realise - or care for that matter - that they end up killing it.  When it won't play anymore, they move on to something else amusing and forget about it.  But this is also the scene where you see the change in Pomp as a character.  She feels for the creature.  She feels bad.  It is her character's growth that was the most surprising in this story.

But, even though Pomp is maturing as a character I found her endless questioning of things so annoying.  What is slept?  What is dream?  What is remember?  All through the book she is questioning everything.  Yet while very annoying, in all fairness this did differentiate her voice from Heraclix's.  So it evens things out.

So while the characters of the book had almost equal points on the pros and con list, it is the world building that I find of nearly equal importance to having great characters.  This world was gritty, a very real and oft times violent world.  However we didn't see much of it at all.  Just the sorcerers house, parts of the forest they escape through, an urban area or two, and other vignettes during interactions with characters along the way.  Perhaps if this had been a 500+ page book we might have seen more of this world, but as it was we only received a very limited overview.  Instead of a rich world to put these character into some context, I found myself with a very sepia toned palette instead of rich Technicolor hues.  This was another tick on the con side of my checklist.

Would I really like to continue this as a series?  No.  I think since I'm not enamored with this book I'll leave well enough alone.  I should have waited for the paperback as this book was definitely not worth the nearly $24 I paid for it on Book Depository (and that is with it already discounted and then using my 10% off voucher!).   So while this is by no means a rave review, I can see hints of why a lot of people liked this book.  I wouldn't say don't buy it or read it, it's just not my cup of tea.

I gave Heraclix & Pomp

Let me know in the comments if you've read Heraclix & Pomp.  Did you love it?  Why, and if so, should I give it another chance?

Until next time,

 

Book Review || Jane Austen in Scarsdale

Jane Austen in Scarsdale
Or, Love, Death, and the SATs
Paula Marantz Cohen

Published in 2006

St. Martin's Press, hardcover, 275p.
ISBN: 9780312325022

Anne Ehrlich is a dedicated guidance counselor steering her high-school charges through the perils of college admission.  Thirteen years ago, when she was graduating from Columbia University, her wealthy family - especially her dear grandmother Winnie - persuaded her to give up the love of her life, Ben Cutler, a penniless boy from Queens College.  Anne has never married and hasn't seen Ben since - until his nephew turns up in her high school and starts applying to college.

Now Ben is a successful writer, a world traveler, and a soon-to-be-married man, and Winnie's health is beginning to fail.  These changes have Anne beginning to wonder... Can old love be rekindled, or are past mistakes too painful to forget?

This is a fluffy, romantic contemporary that I picked up from the library purely because of the Jane Austen association, and while I am still undecided as to what I really think of this book I do know that I will not be adding it to my bookshelves.

As you can tell from the synopsis above it all sounds rather familiar doesn't it - like a Jane Austen book perhaps?  And you would be right as this is the basic premise that Austen used in Persuasion.  So this book is basically an updated, and contemporary version of Austen's final book.

Even though I know this, I was still hoping to enjoy the book.  Sadly it was not to be.  I found the characters to be rather two dimensional and I had no emotional connection to them whatsoever.  I didn't care if they got reunited, fell in love, or just wandered off into the sunset alone.  I just wanted to get to the end of the book!

To be fair, there were bits I did like.  Winnie's final letter was well done, as was the final scene with the fiance and Anne.  The cover is quite attractive, and for a hardcover it was easy to handle while read.  However, that is about all the positive aspects I can say about this book.

This alone tells me that I was either in a reading funk of enormous proportions - or I really didn't like this book.  I may give it another read-through before sending it back to the library {just to make sure that I gave it a fair chance}, but I won't be checking out any more books by this author for a while regardless.

If you want to read a great book about getting a second chance at love, with all the feels, then read Persuasion and save yourself the disappointment.

Overall I rated this book:

Until next time,