Linda Berdoll's second book, Darcy and Elizabeth: nights and days at Pemberley, had fewer pages of detailed, erotic sessions than her first book, Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife. However, within the 429 pages, like the first one, no opportunity for danger and excitement was missed. The book is a good read but one can hardly describe it as written in the style of Austen, who saw a far kinder and more benign world than probably existed at the time. This novel contains murder, deceit, kidnapping, attempted rape, bankrupcsy, deaths, misunderstandings galore, and more coincidences than chance meetings in Nature between a dog and bitch in heat.
Berdoll's style of writing makes following the characters interesting in that she gives every subject a chapter of its own, a cameo no more than 1 to 3 pages long. It sometimes takes a moment for the reader to understand that events in several chapters are happening simultaneously rather than sequentially. The many characters require some intense concentration, especially when characters new to the life of Elizabeth and Darcy are introduced. Darcy and Elizabeth remain the same as do the members of their immediate families but the additional, extraneous roles of the new characters become complicated. The interpretation offered deviates somewhat from the original book, also, in terms of behaviors during the original novel which were never included.
Interestingly, the price of the sequel books seems to get by their popularity. That seems odd because it is quite separate from readability, cohesiveness, development of characters, and probably other criteria of which I too little notice. Nevertheless, if you liked Austen's Pride and Prejudice and are not too rigid to wade through someone's imaginative sequel, I highly recommend this one as well as the 17 other sequels to it I have now read.
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