Jane Austen - Good, Emma Tennant - BAAAAAAD!

After reading both "Pemberley" and "An Equal Marriage," I have decided to compose a list of the reasons why Emma Tennant sucks:

* She doesn't seem to pay any attention to the ages of Jane Austen's characters, altering them to suit her own purpose.
* She makes Georgiana into a jerk or a dishrag, depending on the circumstances.
* She freakin' killed off Mr. Bennet!
* She's made Elizabeth both a wet blanket AND neurotic.
* She gave Charles Bingley an illegitimate son.
* She made Mr. Darcy a spy during the Napoleonic wars.
* She decided that Elizabeth should be the object of affection of both Colonel Fitzwilliam AND the son of Mr. Darcy's land agent.
* She decided that Mr. Darcy would frequently refer to his wife as "Eliza."

I seriously spent the last HALF of "An Unequal Marriage" hoping that Mr. Darcy had been replaced by RoboDarcy, which would be the only explanation I could see for why I hated him so much. Seriously, Mr. Darcy was my favorite character in the Austen book, and this woman made me want to hit him.

I couldn't resist reading the books because I had heard how awful they were and needed to see for myself.

After reading the books, I decided that Elizabeth Ashton's "Mr. Darcy's Daughters" is vastly preferable because she at least made her story about characters that hadn't been in "Pride and Prejudice." There WERE characters from the book, but they were usually minor characters or their names had been changed. In Tennant's books, she took some of Austen's greatest characters and screwed up their lives.

I couldn't bring myself to read her "sequel" to "Sense and Sensibility," but I flipped through it. Margaret Dashwood would never allow herself to be seduced by John Willoughby! And I hope to God that Marianne would never be dumb enough to (especially while pregnant with Colonel Brandon's child) run off with Willoughby.

Emma Tennant: You suck.