Jane Austen reworks, hacks and rehashes seem to be all the rage – so I thought I’d try my hand. I’m not a big fan, though (I refused to read Mansfield Park while at University studying English Lit – made it through 50 pages and hurled the book against the wall) so I’m taking a different approach. Warning – spoilers ahead.
In the first book of the series Maximilien de Robespierre leads a peasant French army marching barefoot and armed with pitchforks. They invade England, capture all the characters from the Jane Austen novels, liberate the walk-on servants from their lives of neglected servitude, and guillotine all the pretty young things and the dandies in possession of a good fortune in the public squares of our towns and villages.
In the sequel, Robespierre’s army breaks out of the bookworld and invades our reality. This time they guillotine anyone who’s ever appeared in Hello magazine.
Publication dates yet to be confirmed.