Mr. Darcy, Vampyre - Amanda Grange

Amanda Grange (Mr. Darcy's Diary) continues Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, beginning on Darcy and Elizabeth's wedding day and follows the two on their honeymoon trip to Paris, the Alps and Venice during a lull in the Napoleonic Wars. Told from Elizabeth's point of view, the story is about her expanding horizons as she leaves the sheltered life she led at Netherfield for her new world as a wife and a traveler outside England. 

 Darcy's continued lack of physical attention to Elizabeth makes her realize that something isn't quite right, but the clues provided in the text are too subtle for her to figure out his secret. By the time Darcy reveals his true nature, more than two thirds of the way through the book, Elizabeth is able to accept his announcement (which she sees as less disturbing than her more mundane fears), but its impact on the reader is greatly diluted by the revealing title. 

Grange manages to capture the period in a manner that will appeal to Austen fans, but vampire fans are likely to be disappointed.*

* I'm a vampire fan. BIG vampire fan. 

The vampirism did not disappoint me.
The ending did. See my review.

I'm not just reviewing young adult novels on this blog, because that's not the only thing I read, nor is it the only thing I write. I also write the rare novel for adults, and have plans to turn my hand to a Pride and Prejudice novel of some sort at some point in the future.

I adore Pride and Prejudice (the book), have read at least a dozen variations thereof, and seen all three "movies"—the mini-series from the BBC made during the 1980s where Elizabeth is sort of a dirty-blond, the A&E mini-series starring Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy, and even the one from 2005 with Kiera Knightly.

Pride and Prejudice is one of the most often retold classical novels in the world, with variant themes ranging from psychic abilities to werewolves to simple "what-if-instead" scenarios, and that doesn't include a number of various sequels by various authors. Some of these books are brilliant, some are good, some are simply okay, and some of them are just plain terrible. I've read and plan to review a few in each category. This one is one of the good, but not brilliant ones…and in a way, that's really sad, because it could have been brilliant, if not for the ending.

I'm talking about Mr. Darcy, Vampyre by Amanda Grange. The title might sound a little hokey, but I love vampires as well as Pride and Prejudice, so I thought, "Oooh! Interesting!" So I read it.

Ms. Grange immediately swept me up in a well-crafted literary world of vampires and tortured love and deep-rooted fear of the taint of evil and all that stuff. Her word choice was beautiful, her settings thrillingly exotic (Darcy and Elizabeth went to Italy among other places for their honeymoon). And even though any idiot could guess from the title that Darcy's a vampire—shocker!—the point was never about the reader finding out.

I actually have to give props to Ms. Grange because since the title gives one of the big plot twists away to the reader, it's sort of like, why keep Darcy's vampirism a secret? But as I was reading, I realized that this nefariously crafty word-sorceress had created an Alfred Hitchcock-esque feeling to that part of the story, similar to that movie he made about the bomb on the train. From almost the very beginning, everyone in the audience knows there's a bomb on the train. We see it a lot. But that's not the point. We know there's a bomb; nobody else knows. No one on the train knows. And that's the point.

It's sort of that suspense-building feeling when there's a character hiding in a cupboard or under a table or something, and the bad guy is slowly creeping closer to their hiding spot, and you're just like, "Soft gasp hitching in the throat! Oh, no. Oh, no! Look out! It's the bad guy! Look out! The big, plot-wrenching thing is about to happen! What will be the fallout? Eeek!"

And that's what Amanda Grange does in regards to the revelation of Darcy's vampiric nature.

On top of that, Darcy is a HAWT vampire. He's not actually one of those angsty guys with fangs who're like, "I hate my life, someone should just stake me, I'm an abomination, boo-hoo-hoo." He's pretty well-adjusted, which is so refreshing and really nice to read about. His one hitch in the vampiric lifestyle is that he doesn't want Elizabeth to become a vampire because being transformed that way can change people, and the immortality thing can become a bit of a burden after a few centuries. So it's understandable and doesn't detract from his hotness.

Another thing that makes him hot (and this applies to almost all Darcy incarnations everywhere) is how he talks. Not only does the old courtly language of Regency England make him splendiferous, but he has the whole "I'm a vampire and I love you but I wanna bite you too" thing going on. At one point, he calls Elizabeth "ravenously appetizing." Considering they haven’t consummated their marriage yet (we'll get to the wherefore of that in a moment), of course she's not taking this in a vampiric sense since she doesn’t know he's a vampire yet. And of course every girl who's had her neck nuzzled by the guy she adores while he whispers things like that to her knows how weak-kneed and tingly that can make you.

Also, this is the ONLY book I've read where Lady Catherine de Bourgh has a good reason for being like, "Elizabeth Bennet, I hate your guts." It's because she, too, is a vampire, and is like, "Darcy could never be happy hiding his vampirism." When she finds out Elizabeth knows and accepts Darcy's undead state, she backs off. So kudos to Amanda Grange for being original in that respect.

Fair warning, the rest of this blog post contains SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS- SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS- SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS- SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS-SPOILERS!!

Unfortunately, Elizabeth's acceptance of Darcy's bloodsucking leech-ness is one of my problems. Not because she shouldn't accept him (she should), nor does she accept him too quickly (she doesn't). But here's where things get ridiculous with the plot.

Elizabeth is okay, once she calms down from freaking out because holy crow, her husband's a bloodsucking creature of the night. She's like, "Well, you became a vampire because it was either that or die. You don't kill people. I'm okay with this. And I want to be with you. I want to be your wife. So let's be together."

And inside, I cheered when I read that. I was like, "Good girl!"

Then you find out that Darcy was told by someone who would know that apparently it's possible to "pass on the curse" of vampirism during sex, which is why they haven’t consummated the marriage yet.

Firstly, I was like, "What?" when I read that, because that's gotta be the first time I've ever heard of sex without biting being a conduit for transmitting vampirism. But whatever, right? I could roll with that. And Elizabeth is like, "Well, I don't care, I love you, you're my husband, let's make love."

At which point, I'm like, "Yay! True love and devotion prevails in the face of adversity! Go have your real honeymoon off-stage, please, and come back without the angst and frustration this has caused you."

But no. This is when the book falls from brilliant to merely good. It was a five-star book. I wanted to own it. I would have sold a metaphorical kidney for this book. I was in love, and I only had about 60 pages left…when the dumb thing happened! Because one of Darcy's servants is like, "Oh, boss. I didn’t know you were worried about being a vampire because you're so well-adjusted, but the thing is, I know a way you can become human. You just have to do this dangerous Indiana Jones type thing and it'll be great."

So Darcy, because he trusts the guy and wants to safely be with Elizabeth, is like, "Okay! I'll do it! Come, Elizabeth!" Now, this was RIGHT AFTER Darcy was like, "Since you accept all my darkness, my dearest love, come with me upstairs. We shall chase passion into the night." He doesn’t actually use those words (that last part comes from a song by Tim McGraw) but that's the gist.

And then he's just going to be like, "Forget how much you trust me and don't care about my curse and forget how my life is actually pretty great as a human leech, and how everyone I care about other than you is a vampire, let's go do this super dangerous thing that might not even work just to make sure I don't accidentally make you a vampire (even sans my fangs in your body) while we're making love."

*flat stare*

I beg your pardon?

Not only that, but then they succeed, nearly dying in the process, and the sun rises, and in the light I believe the bite mark scar from Darcy's transformation has vanished or something, thus proving him human, and they go have sex (off-stage, as it were) in a cave on the beach now that it's all safe and stuff.

Let me repeat that.

They have SEX.

For their FIRST TIME as husband and wife.

In a CAVE.

On the BEACH.

With SAND.

SAND!!!

Not only is that the. Most. Unromantic! Thing for a first night together in that way, but it's like…why? Why even make him human? The whole book has basically been building up (and very beautifully, I might add) to Elizabeth accepting Darcy as he is and being willing to make that commitment to him, and now the writer has made that entire inner journey and…I guess we'll call it willingness to risk for love…she's made it all pointless.

Why did it even happen, if he was just going to be human in the end? Why not make her a vampire? Eternal love and all that? I mean, in Vampire Darcy's Desire (oh, stop laughing, I know it's a hokey title, shush), vampires are evil, so it makes sense. But in this, they're not! So why?

I don't know. When I finished the book, I literally stared at it for a few seconds and then threw it across the room at the wall, waking my roommate in the process. I felt like that final climactic event of the novel ruined the entire experience for me. I suppose in a way I felt betrayed. Like…in a way, it was like "Beauty and the Beast," except in that story, the Beast doesn’t want to be a Beast and never did, and so it makes way more sense for them to be like, "Yay! Human again!" But in this, it was just like…what was wrong with Darcy the Vampire? He was cool. He wasn’t evil. Why was that a problem? Why did it need to be resolved physically rather than handled emotionally?

So…I don't know. I just was very, very disappointed by the end of the book. The rest of the book was fantastic, but the end just destroyed it for me. So this book originally received 5/5 stars, but the ending drops it down to a 3/5. If someone bought me this book as a surprise or something, I'd be like, "Oooh, yay!" But I would not buy it with my own money unless it was like, fifty cents.

Depressedly yours,

LA Knight