Home :: Books :: Mystery & Thrillers  

Arts & Photography
Audio CDs
Audiocassettes
Biographies & Memoirs
Business & Investing
Children's Books
Christianity
Comics & Graphic Novels
Computers & Internet
Cooking, Food & Wine
Entertainment
Gay & Lesbian
Health, Mind & Body
History
Home & Garden
Horror
Literature & Fiction
Mystery & Thrillers

Nonfiction
Outdoors & Nature
Parenting & Families
Professional & Technical
Reference
Religion & Spirituality
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sports
Teens
Travel
Women's Fiction
Pride and Prescience : Or, A Truth Univesally Acknowledged

Pride and Prescience : Or, A Truth Univesally Acknowledged

List Price: $21.95
Your Price: $14.93
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 2 3 >>

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Pride Universally Unrealistic
Review: I found the book to be well written and entertaining. I enjoyed watching the characters develop in this mystery plot. I felt however, after I finished the book, that it left me feeling disapointed in what appeared to be an unrealistic story line.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A waste of time and money
Review: i have read many good Jane Austen "sequels", and this is not one of them...I would have given it no stars if that had been an option. The explanation for the mystery was so improbable - impossible, really - that i wonder how anyone could have praised this book...When I read in one of the early pages that "Darcy" said "me too" and throughout, words and expressions that obviously never existed in the days about which Jane Austen wrote so well, and the characters continually used "like" instead of "as", I could only think the author must have had poor education in the use of the English language. If you want to read Austen-like mysteries, stick to Stephanie Barron, and give Carrie Bebris a pass.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Irritating sequel
Review: I must admit to being an eager consumer of sequels to Jane Austen's novels. Dreadful I know, but I am almost helpless with curiosity when I see a fresh addition to this very long and seeminlgy endless list of the imaginings of others regarding our favourite characters and stories from Austen.
'Pride and Prejudice' I suspect to be the most popular in this regard, and so when I saw this one and read its premise I was intrigued. A new slant on the whole matter! We have had Miss Austen as detective in Stephanie Barron's series and now Darcy and Elizabeth!
Alas all my anticipation did not meet a happy eventuality. I found this made a good start with the opening scenes of the wedding and re-introducing the characters, but ... The whole thing upended itself with the arrival in London and Caroline Bingley's engagement to the mysterious American gentleman. It definitely became Gothic suspense and this is a genre that does not sit well with Austen, especially if one considers her gentle, sharp parodying of it in 'Northanger Abbey'. The resolution made my eyebrows shoot up with annoyance - the supernatural! All the good things in it were subsumed by this and it became silly. Very sad.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Slow and slogging, difficult to finish
Review: I read the other reviews and then picked up this book. I love mysteries, but there wasn't much mystery here. I found it predictable, though written okay. It dragged in places, getting bogged down too much in tedious description.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Austen and the Occult do not mix well
Review: I really enjoy the Stephanie Barron "Jane Austen mysteries" and thought that a "Mr. and Mrs. Darcy mystery" was a very clever idea. The book started well, I can live with some modernisms. Unfortunatly the book then veered in a direction completely contrary to the charactors Austen discribed. If Ms. Bebris wanted to write a story about the Occult in Victorian England that is fine, but she shouldn't highjack Jane and Darcy to do so.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Completely juvenile and dull
Review: If you are a ten-yeariold girl and love Nancy Drew, this is the book for you. In fact, it reads like a somewhat intelligent ten-year-old wrote it. The narrative references Pride and Prejudice in a most off-putting manner, making references to events in P&P in a manner most consistent with the Nancy Drew series. The dialogue and narrative also lifts phrases from P&P and other Austen works, for example, including the phrase "sense and sensibility" in a random, otherwise meaningless sentence. These silly tricks that might amuse a child serve to annoy serious Austen fans. The plot is stupid in the extreme, with a villian a truly intelligent ten-year-old could spot in the first few pages. The narrative's style owes nothing to Austen, and the dialogue is occasionally jarring with its use of modern slang. On the other hand, in two or three places, the author comes up with some original dialog that does resemble Austen, and that's an unexpected pleasure. But I can't believe I actually read this thing. Some authors have used classics as inspiration for their own work with some success, such as building a novel around a minor character in Great Expectations. I actually sought out a book inspired by P&P and chose this book because it got decent reviews and the library carried it. Believe me, I won't EVER read another book inspired by P&P again. This book was the cure.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Charming!
Review: It is very hard to take established characters like Elizabeth and Darcy and introduce them into a new experience. I imagine it's difficult for the author of such a book to balance her own voice and the voice the original author maintained in her work.

Carrie Bebris takes this challenge and succeeds with flying colors. I truly enjoyed the fast-paced, witty dialogue; the careful characterization and ultimately, the mystery that kept the pages turning. I'm very much looking forward to the second book in this series!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: superb Regency romantic mystery
Review: It should have been a happy uncomplicated day when Miss Elizabeth Bennet married Fitzwilliam Darcy, and Jane Bennet wed Charles Bingley in a double wedding ceremony. Unfortunately, Bingley's sister Caroline chose to announce her engagement to Frederick Parrish, an America with a plantation in New Orleans. There is no love lost between Elizabeth and Caroline because the latter also wanted Darcy only to be turned away when he chose a woman of inferior social standing.

Elizabeth and Darcy, although anxious to go home to Pemberly, stay over in London to attend Caroline's nuptials as he is close friend of the third bride's brother. After the ceremony, Darcy and Elizabeth spot Caroline in a very bad section and return her to her husband. Everyone travels to Caroline's brother estate so that she can relax from the stress she has been under. As time passes her condition worsens to the point that her husband is thinking of institutionalizing her. Elizabeth, who believes outside forces are the fault of Caroline's condition starts investigating and almost falls prey to the same evil force that holds Caroline in their grip.

Carrie A. Bebris has written an utterly charming, historically accurate Regency romantic mystery with the protagonists coming straight out of the pages of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. This is a work that Jane Austen would be proud to call her own since its focus is on the on the ton and tragedies that can result from a person believing they are superior to another.

Harriet Klausner

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Sequel so close and yet so far
Review: Pride & Prescience preserved the characters from Austen's work as well or better than other Pride & Prejudice sequels, especially the spoken dialog. Yet this book allows a significant slip of character to occur in Elizabeth. We all know how she relishes the study of people's character, especially new acquaintances. How could this characteristic be written out in a story where it would have made for some fascinating turns of events? To stir in the magic theme was really a stretch and quite unnecessary. All that being said, it was a story that held my attention and reached a satisfying ending.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Sorely disappointed
Review: Pride and Prescience is a fantasy mystery, relying on the occult for victim control and for resolution of the mystery. Reads as a contemporary, rather than a Regency setting story.


<< 1 2 3 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates