Review: Mary Bennet and the Bingley Codex

Mary Bennet and the Bingley Codex by Joyce Harmon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the third in a brief consecutive run of books I've read featuring characters from Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth Darcy was an incidental character in Unwritten ; Miss Bennet’s Dragon is an AU fanfic based on the story of Pride and Prejudice; and this one is written as a sequel to P&P (but in the fantasy genre).

Both Miss Bennet's Dragon and this book tackle the problem of Mary, who in the original is the plain, long-winded, conventionally pious, bookish but not very intellectually capable middle sister. Here, she's given something of a literary makeover into a highly intelligent, completely self-educated young woman who discovers a talent for magic while cataloging the library of a house that her brother-in-law Charles Bingley has bought as a deceased estate. Her prosy piety and conventional outlook get quietly dropped; instead, she's something much more palatable to a modern reader, a reformist who approves of educating the poor (and women).

While the middle of the book drags a little (it's essentially a long, slow training montage with a bit of setup for the end), we do get the promised fantasy adventure at last, and Mary does herself proud and saves the day. The incidental characters are well drawn, though I did wonder if some of their names (Geoffrey, Max) were much in use in the Regency period. It could have benefited from a stronger throughline and more focus; Mary doesn't have a strong goal she's striving for through most of the book, which may be why the middle feels so flabby. But it's well enough told that I wasn't at risk of losing interest. The copy editing issues were minor, which helped.

I do plan to read the rest of the series, though I'll wait for sale prices on the books; this one was enjoyable, but not so much so that I'll pay more for them than my usual maximum.

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