Book Review: Mr. Darcy's Enchantment: A Pride & Prejudice Variation

Mr. Darcy's Enchantment: A Pride & Prejudice Variation
Abigail Reynolds
4/5

Overview

I live for Pride & Prejudice rewrites, for some reason they are just the coolest thing to me. This one is a little different from the others that I have read, because it starts after the events of the Netherfield ball and what I consider as the first maybe forty percent of the events of the original. It is actually a lot more original in terms of plot than most variations are considering it begins around the time in the original when Elizabeth is taking her tour with her aunt and uncle? It's difficult to match the timelines considering there is so much contrast between the original.

But like aside from that divergence, this book has magic. It isn't just like magic like spells or elements or anything either, it's solid Shakespeare, fay courts, Titania and Oberon type stuff. A lot of work went into creating the guidelines for the rules of relations between the fay and immortals, it confused me a little bit with how intricate it got and I loved it. It was so complicated and at the same time very simple, there was almost no animosity in the entire book. The Iron Fey dealt with the same Shakespearean court system, and there were people against the protagonist in the courts. Here, the fay were way more tranquil, even their conflict with mortals is just kind of fake. I loved the concept and the intricacy, but I feel like the whole political part of it could have been dealt with better.

Don't judge a book by its cover! I know that when I first saw it, it looked like something self-published twenty years ago, but the quality of writing is much better than the cover design.

Would I Recommend?

It maintains the integrity of the main characters of Pride & Prejudice while adding magic. For that reason alone, I feel like it's worth the read. However, it's a pretty long read, there are a lot of elements of which I consider somewhat superfluous. If you're just looking for something similar to the original, I don't think this is what you're looking for. While I do believe it maintains the integrity of the original, it's very obviously completely different and neglects to really mention any of the Bennet sisters besides Elizabeth. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet are completely different, Bingley is literally non-existent, and there are a lot of new characters. The differences between wild magic, spell magic, and sorcery are not very well-defined, making the villains difficult to really dislike besides Wickham. It's probably more for fans of fantasy than of Jane Austen.