[Book] An Assembly Such as This

Being an ardent Jane Austen fan, I'm usually apprehensive about reading any 'sequels' or spin-offs of her novels. The overwhelming positive reviews of this book on Amazon, however, led me to give it a try. Well, I tried. I wanted to like it, but the book turned out to be so dull that I finally gave up after struggling 2/3 through the story. It started out promising, as the author endeavors to present Pride and Prejudice from Fitswilliam Darcy's perspective, piecing together the clues left in the original to form her picture of Austen's most celebrated leading man. Pamela Aidan made an admirable effort to write in the voice of Austen, or at least in the voice of an 18th-century writer. While she does succeed, for the most part, in making the characters sound right, her writing itself is flat and Harlequin-romancy. In fact, as I read on, I couldn't get rid of the feeling that I was reading a book of well-crafted fanfiction (imagine my amusement when I later found out that it was indeed first written as fanfiction). Like most fanfic writers, Aidan often falls into the trap of using excessive purple prose, especially in describing Darcy's feelings (and he has lots of them) towards Elizabeth. As Mr. Darcy falls head over heel in love with the heroine, the writing quickly falls apart. The reader is treated to numerous descriptions such as this:

... Elizabeth turned, waving them off with a wistful smile. As she did, Darcy finally saw her complete. The sight utterly ravished him. It was, suddenly, painful to breathe. The roaring of the blood through his veins caused the world about him to go silent.

Besides the melodramatic writing, I find the story generally dull and the excessive details of Darcy's horses, dogs and clothes tedious. I guess the author needs to fill up the pages as she intends to drag the story into a three-volume saga (as if the first one wasn't drawn out long enough). It's also hard to believe that a grown man like Darcy would think and act like a teenage girl as he obsesses over every moment with Elizabeth and daydreams about her and her "beautiful dark eyes." Even though I do find some original characters interesting, the whole novel is quite tiresome. I couldn't bring myself to finish it, as much as I tried. In the end, I just couldn't be bothered. If I wanted to read fanfiction, I wouldn't have bought one.

4/10