A review by flappermyrtle
Jane Bites Back by Michael Thomas Ford

3.0

I read this to get away from Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. And I finished it within a day. Yeaah. I won't say it's any sort of literary masterpiece, but it does manage to make Jane Austen a credible 21st century bookshop owner. Who happens also to be a vampire. So that's quite something, isn't it?I'll be doing research on Austen as a fictional character, and this book is definitely on the list. Because it simply gets some things right - likeable characters, the idea that Austen is trying to publish her novel Constance, and the chunks of said novel speckled through the book. It gives a nice touch. The novel's the first in a trilogy about Austen and a horde of other authors turned vampire (Lord Byron, Charlotte Brontë). Apart from that, there are some horrid historically unsound happenings and Lord Byron is sort of a standard irresistible gentleman vampire, which isn't very original, really. So you have to be willing to put your credulity-sensor on low, but it makes for a very entertaining read when you do.