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A review by xonrad
Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Ben H. Winters, Jane Austen
2.0
If you despise Jane Austin's novels, you will most likely not enjoy this.
This mutation of the story is amusing in parts, and the sea monster setting in itself is very good at evoking the gloom that Lovecraft was so brilliant at expressing with his ancient ones... but the waffling on of "proper behaviour" and the like, and in the grammatical style that Jane used along with the vapid personalities and conversations from the original. If those things are what fueled your contempt for the original characters and made it impossible for you to read ANY of Jane's original, unmutilated works all the way through... all of that still remains.
I am of that school of anti-Austin readers. I could appreciate the alterations and everything that has gone into it, but I still found it very difficult to tolerate the characters and their conversations even as they are repainted upon this dark and intriguing sea monster canvas.
Personal preference to be sure. It would have been funnier if I were at least neutral about the Jane Austin style.
What Ben H Winters has done here is not really a parody of the original as the blurbs lead you to believe, rather it is the original infused with the sensibilities of a horror themed parody.
And I feel unclean for making that vague little pun too.
This mutation of the story is amusing in parts, and the sea monster setting in itself is very good at evoking the gloom that Lovecraft was so brilliant at expressing with his ancient ones... but the waffling on of "proper behaviour" and the like, and in the grammatical style that Jane used along with the vapid personalities and conversations from the original. If those things are what fueled your contempt for the original characters and made it impossible for you to read ANY of Jane's original, unmutilated works all the way through... all of that still remains.
I am of that school of anti-Austin readers. I could appreciate the alterations and everything that has gone into it, but I still found it very difficult to tolerate the characters and their conversations even as they are repainted upon this dark and intriguing sea monster canvas.
Personal preference to be sure. It would have been funnier if I were at least neutral about the Jane Austin style.
What Ben H Winters has done here is not really a parody of the original as the blurbs lead you to believe, rather it is the original infused with the sensibilities of a horror themed parody.
And I feel unclean for making that vague little pun too.