Sunday, February 26, 2017

Heartstone / Elle Katharine White / 352 pages

A.K.A. "Pride and Prejudice and Dragons." 

Alastair Daired (Darcy) is a warrior and dragon-rider from a long line of nobles sword to protect the country from the deadly monsters that overrun it. Aliza Bentaine (Elizabeth) lives a peaceful existence befriending garden gnomes. Their first impressions of each other do not go well.

This was what the book "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" should have been, but wasn't. White takes Elizabeth and Darcy's story and transplants it into a quasi-medieval world, freely changing and adapting the characters to fit the new telling. All of the characters from Austen's story are there and recognizable, but with different motivations and backstories that makes this more than a simple copy-and-paste story. And there are new characters, like Daired's sentient dragon Akarra, that change the dynamic extensively.

It's a fun and clean read, fine for teens or adults, but the wit and banter of the original is gone, as is the social critique. If you like adaptations like tv's <i>Once Upon a Time</i>, this is a fun way to pass a few hours, but the character motivations are lacking and the plot gets rather ridiculous. Recommend to girls who swoon at the idea of Darcy as a dragon rider.

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