The Ninja Reader

Before I get to the actual review, allow me to give you a little backstory on how I came across this book and why I wanted to read it so very badly. A year or so ago, I stumbled to the "Jane Austen" section in fanfiction.net and read a story by the author Mary Simonsen, which was a "what if" retelling of "Pride and Prejudice" with Mr. Darcy correcting the first impression he'd made on Elizabeth the very next day after the ball in Meryton. It was... well, it started off a tad rushed, but it settled to a nice pace and the characters, the humor, the situations, they all made me love it. So naturally, when I discovered that the same author had published not one, but two books, I was ecstatic. Isn't it the best thing for a fanfiction author to eventually write and publish their own stories? Also, the premise, with it's literary mystery and history and love stories was very close to the one of A. S. Byatt's "Possession", which is one of my favorite books of all time, so as you can see, I wanted to give this one a good review.It's very clear that Mary Simonsen did her history homework well, because her descriptions of Regency England, Pre-war Brittany, Post-war crisis, the influence of the two wars on people and the regime in England are all spot-on. The first and second world wars were some of the most traumatizing events in world history, and they naturally triggered many, many sociological and economical changes. The demolishment of the class structure in England, the sexual revolution, the destructive effect it had on people's psyche, all of this played an important role in the social development of...well, today's society, and it is well portrayed in the book. It makes up for some really interesting character development, and I was really happy to read it.Another plus of the book is the fact that the author actually worked into developing the story of Elizabeth Garrison and Will Lacey so that it would be believable and would match the social context of the Regency Era. At some point someone said that the differences between the actual story and "Pride and Prejudice" only serve to highlight Jane Austen's talent, as she was able to spin straw into gold and turn a mildly interesting story into a fabulous book. However, to me, it just seemed to show that Mary Simonsen also has a talent, because she took a book so full of coincidences like "Pride and Prejudice " and turn it into a believable story. Many of the "actual" characters were not nearly as extreme, nor as insignificant as Jane Austen actually portrayed them (Mary and Kitty and Charlotte and Anne most of all), which in my opinion is one of the best features of this book.That being said, I'm afraid that in spite of the great concept, the book suffers in execution. The writing is... good, but not exceptional, and extremely fast-paced. This book is nearly 500 pages long, but it is so rushed at times that it makes me angry that the author didn't take her time to develop the scenes and give us some character development. Because this is one of the book's flaws - a lot of people do a lot of things, but we are rarely given their reason. What's the reason Maggie is so interested in "Pride and Prejudice"? Why did the Crowells take her in so quickly? Why are they willing to share their personal history with someone who is virtually a stranger to them? What has Maggie done to deserve their trust, their friendship? And why does it matter to her whether or not great-aunt Marie is sick?See, this is a problem, because nobody is ever given any motivation. Sure, later in the story, we discover that the lives of our heroes are far from peachy, having to deal with religious and class prejudice, war, poverty and psychological trauma, and I do get it that the research regarding "Pride and Prejudice" can be a sort of escape for them, but still, it does not explain how these characters come together and why they grow to trust each other so easily. For all the promise this book has, it sure wastes a lot of potential character development.All in all, it's a pretty good historical piece with some very nice scenes and ideas. Also, I do appreciate the fact that the author goes out of her way to create a believable story for Elizabeth Garrison and William Lacey instead of flat-out copying from "Pride and Prejudice" like some other people (Amanda Grange, Seth Grahame-Smith and Ben Winters, I'm looking at you right now). However, the originality can't make up for the writing, so I'm giving this a three and a half out of five, and I hope that if you like the original story, you would appreciate this take.P.S. - The fanfic I originally read was taken off fanfiction.net on the account that the author sold the publishing rights to Sourcebooks. It'll come out in the summer of 2011, and I'm looking forward to seeing if my first impression lived up to the truth.