McVeigh’s retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice focuses on Darcy’s perspective.

For the most part, the author’s retelling of Austen’s classic tale is precisely that—the basic elements of the story remain the same, in an homage too loving to allow much revision. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. FitzwilliamDarcy make their acquaintance in acrimony—he offends her with his aloof social clumsiness, which is misread as acerbic pride. She is courted by the predatory George Wickham, a charming but amoral and cunning man who also attempts to take advantage of Darcy’s naive sister, Georgiana. Meanwhile, Darcy’s closest friend, Mr. Charles Bingley, courts Elizabeth’s sister, Jane; she’s the beauty of the family, but so impassively unassuming that Darcy wrongly assumes she’s not really all that romantically interested and intrusively prepares to thwart their courtship. The major addition to the plot from McVeigh is a potential scandal involving Darcy—in Rome, he falls in love with an Italian singer, Giuditta Negri, a beautiful but temperamental woman who accuses him of making romantic commitments and then skipping town, a development that threatens to sully his family’s name. The author masterfully captures not only Darcy’s strange combination of decency, aristocratic stuffiness, and rhetorical bluntness, but also the lightsome elegance of Austen’s style: “It was all madness, of course. I could not imagine what people would say. An Italian noblewoman might be acceptable, but Giuditta was equally undistinguished by birth or fortune. If one inclined towards the brutal, she was a beauty with a voice.”

By including excerpts from Darcy’s diaries, the author aims to more sensitively plumb his innermost thoughts, an aim she admirably achieves. The reader sees, in sharp relief, the tension within Darcy between his moral rectitude and sense of honor and his clumsy truculence. Also, McVeigh has a remarkable sense of the literary world Austen established, and she is able to recreate parts of it with masterly skill. More specifically, she reproduces Austen’s prose style with great fidelity, in all of its charming sophistication and clever wit. However, this virtuosic imitation is only that—for the most part, this retelling is the same story, written in the same style, but any devoted fan of Austen will detect the distance between original and counterfeit. Why not simply reread the peerless original, then? One could imagine an admirer of Austen, who has read Pride and Prejudice countless times, pining for a whole new story—maybe a glimpse of Darcy’s life set before the action of the novel, or of his time with Elizabeth after the book is over. Instead, McVeigh largely retells the same story, and, for all of its pleasures, this novel is nowhere near as mesmerizing as the one that inspired it. The author’s obvious reverence for Austen actually appears to stymie her creativity—she seems insufficiently bold to stray too far from Austen’s original vision and inadvertently disrespect the novel by staking out new ground. One can’t help but credit McVeigh’s powers of imitation, and to share her enthusiasm for a marvelous work of literature. Nonetheless, a true Austen devotee is more likely to be bored by this reproduction than excited by the attempt at reimagining.

An admirable exercise in literary mimicry, but unlikely to excite genuine fans of Austen.

Two of Jane Austen’s supporting characters tell their own stories in McVeigh’s latest novelistic homage.

 In Austen’s classic 1815 novel, Emma, the eponymous Emma Woodhouse provides obstacles to her own happiness as she turns her attention solely to those around her. Harriet Smith, Emma’s penniless friend, becomes her unrefined protégé, and village neighbor Jane Fairfax comes off as an aloof object of envy amid Emma’s romantic scheming. In this new novel, McVeigh, whose previous work, Susan: A Jane Austen Prequel(2021), also delved into Austen’s literary canon, attempts to fill in what Harriet and Jane are thinking as Emma deals with the many consequences of her own actions. Their first-person accounts alternate every few chapters, staying on the fringes of Emma’s well-known story and imbue Harriet with a compelling self-awareness; she displays a cunning desire to rise above her station, using the expectations of others against them to befriend Emma and those in her circle: “I believed there to be a vacancy—not for another governess, but for someone youthful and doe-eyed, submissive and easily led, to give the young mistress of Hartfield an object. And though supremely unqualified for the post…I had faith in my powers to appear so.” Jane is not shaded as deeply as a character, but she shows a vulnerability while navigating various suitors’ affections and keeping her engagement to Frank Churchill secret.

McVeigh deviates from the source material by interpolating characters from other Austen novels and changing Harriet’s parentage, and purist fans may object to such alterations. Over the course of the work, the two girls’ stories occasionally intertwine, and the pair appear to have much in common; both are outsiders in the Highbury community by birth and class, for example. However, one may wonder what might have happened if they’d ever had a conversation about Emma rather than with her. Whenever the characters adhere to Austen’s plot points, Emma’s plotline simply becomes a distraction. Harriet’s protracted naïveté and obsession with rising from her station and Jane’s clandestine and imperfect love with Frank allow for some of McVeigh’s strongest prose: “I could not deny the ache in my heart when I remembered Frank’s kisses on the bridlepath—that terrifying temptation to yield—my breaking away—and the desolation I felt, on turning around, to find that he had gone,” reflects Jane at one point. That said, although the setting and tone are certainly era-appropriate, the expansive cast of supporting characters has a tendency to muddle some of the bigger scenes. Harriet is the stronger of the two main players here and exploits the potential for creative liberties; indeed, some readers may feel that she could have led this novel alone, allowing McVeigh to more deeply explore her origins and her ambitions for a life in which she has agency. Jane’s romantic encounters with Frank are sweet respites from all the gossip and social maneuvering, but they do little to make her more dynamic.

An earnest tribute to immortal characters that doesn’t quite offer enough novelty.

A Jane Austen pastiche involving a disgraced young lady, amateur theatricals, and matrimonial machinations.

Disliking her dull lessons, 16-year-old Susan Smithson is more pleased than saddened to be dismissed from school after allowing the music master to kiss her hand. As an orphan possessing a great deal of beauty but no fortune, Susan is dependent on the generosity of her uncle, George Collins, who’s redoubled his determination to make her “thoughtful, quiet and obedient.” At first, things go well: Susan manages to behave, meets some attractive gentlemen, and is given a new gown by a rich widow. The young woman even charms the formidable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who’s now visiting London. But a further indiscretion with the rakish Mr. Oliver is the last straw, so Susan is sent to Hunsford to stay at the country parsonage of her tiresome uncle, the Rev. William Collins, and her Aunt Charlotte; at least her shy cousin and friend, Alicia, will be there. Lady Catherine is the clergyman’s patroness, and on returning to her country estate, she gives Susan further chances to ingratiate herself. Susan gets to know the local gentry and their set, including Frank Churchill (from Emma), the Johnson family, and their guest, the heiress Miss Richardson. After noticing that Alicia and young Henry Johnson share an attraction, Susan hits upon a scheme to bring them together: putting on a play. Using her skills at reading people and quietly manipulating them, she convinces Henry to hold amateur theatricals. Onstage and off, there’s much life-changing drama—including proposals, an elopement, and a death. Although its events take place sometime after Pride and Prejudice (and include some of that novel’s characters), McVeigh calls her debut a “Jane Austen Prequel” in that it tells the origin story of the title character in Austen’s unfinished work Lady Susan. By the time the latter novel opens, Lady Susan Vernon is a widow in her mid-30s, and although she’s beautiful and charming, she’s a cold, scheming, and shameless seductress. McVeigh introduces a much milder Susan, even if she is manipulative and self-involved. But it isn’t easy for readers to see how she’ll become the older version, as there’s little Austenian character development in these pages. Whatever Susan’s future, McVeigh portrays her as much the same person at the end of this novel as at its beginning—possibly because the young woman has no real obstacles to overcome or any foil to challenge her perceptions. This contrasts with how Pride and Prejudice’s Elizabeth Bennet is challenged to reconsider her judgments of Mr. Darcy, or how the timid Fanny Price must stand up for herself against Henry Crawford’s determined courtship in Mansfield Park. All Susan has to do is wait out her forced exile from London. Undeniably, though, McVeigh displays a brilliant, spot-on command of Austen’s diction and tone, as well as familiar phrases, as in the observation that “nothing is more fragile than a lady’s good name—for that, once lost, is lost forever.”

An intelligent prequel packed with enjoyable Austen references, hampered somewhat by underdeveloped characterization.

A human rebel leads a desperate attempt against alien overlords in Taylor’s debut SF novel.

In 2067, World War III laid waste to Earth’s ecosystem, and in 2084, extraterrestrials called the Xirfell conquered the planet. Now, in 2094, the Xirfell’s King Hebdith and his minions, including alien creatures gathered from other worlds, impose despotic rule on the surviving earthlings. Despite the aliens’ vast advantage in numbers and assets, a scrappy human resistance movement has organized itself. Thirty-year-old half-Anglo, half-Indigenous Aiden Tenten has been part of the rebellion since his days attending Australasian Academy, where he was recruited for three major qualities: “an outstanding brain, a stubborn spirit, and a determination to make a difference,” and also because of—or despite—his reckless confidence and craving for the spotlight. When an unknown source disclosed his affair with Ravene, the king’s half-human, half-Xirfell daughter, Aiden was expelled from the academy. Since then, he’s been a successful rebel operative, but he’s apparently been betrayed again. As he languishes in prison with a death sentence, the Xirfell question and torture him; the seductive Ravene even conducts one of the interrogation sessions. Nevertheless, he manages, with help from allies, to embarrass the regime by foiling the public execution of Leelack, a breathtaking mermaidlike creature who managed to infiltrate the Xirfell’s high council. Aiden also escapes and is tapped for a crucial mission in which he must disguise himself as an enormous alien enforcer, get close to the king, and assassinate him. He won’t have to do it alone, but the odds are against his little team—and the betrayer in the resistance is still at large.

Over the course of this novel, Taylor tempers his bleak, post-apocalyptic fictional world with Aiden’s energetic narration and darkly comic humor, as when Aiden, in his alien disguise, finds himself seduced again by the unwitting Ravene: “But, before you write me off as the feeblest—if possibly the sexiest—operative in rebel history,” he says, “I was also hatching a back-up plan.” The overall tone of the narrative recalls Nick Harkaway’s novel The Gone-Away World (2008), but it does so without ever feeling derivative. The action scenes are excitingly unpredictable, and they also have an emotional element, as brave, goodhearted characters face mortal danger from truly cruel and evil beings. Similarly, Taylor handles Aiden’s growth toward humble self-knowledge in a moving and believable manner; as self-centered as he’s been, he’s also been taking care to note the examples of others who’ve found true greatness—“that kernel deep inside, that immortal core” whose recognition “can merge, from all our separate selves, into the person we are meant to be.” His later mission gives him the chance to move past his restless desire for fame and become his truer self. The book is also a standout for its inventive array of alien species; for example, Pavlina Dafina Evangelija, a tiny and fuzzy “gromeline,” is an intelligent and fearless creature who provides essential help for the rebels’ mission.

A thoroughly entertaining adventure with imaginative action and an appealing hero.