The Last Man in the World aka Mr Fiztwilliam Darcy: The Last Man in the World by Abigail Reynolds
The Last Man in the World (TLMITW) is, like most of Abigail Reynolds other stories, a what if story, taking an element of P&P and changing it, thus changing the story that follows to something else entirely.
Why you should read this: If you like sitting at home during the day eating ice cream and watching daytime soap operas. If you enjoy historical romances, perhaps those published under some subsidiary of Harlequin. If you prefer your prose to have competently-constructed sentences that are readable and even–at times–good. If you care about the quality of writing more than other JAFF fans seem to. If you think Jane Austen has too much humor in it.
Why you might not like it: The soap operaish and historical romance qualities mentioned above. If you don’t like paying for JAFF. If you prefer your characters to actually be in character.
Regency, AU, R, available for purchase at the usual places.
I think I should preface this by mentioning that I spent all of my husband George’s money on gin and entertainment; so I didn’t have enough money or even want to buy this so my review is based off an old PDF of the story that I downloaded before it was published. That said, I have no idea how much (or not) this has changed since it was published. The PDF is 73 pages, so even adjusting for smaller pages in a book this doesn’t seem quite long enough to be a novel, however I am glad that it wasn’t long enough, because by the end I was getting quite bored and found myself skimming it.
This story is very much a soap opera. I’ve never actually read a historical romance that isn’t JAFF, to be honest I’d much rather have people over for drinking games than read that type of thing. Come to think of it, I’d rather have people over for drinking games than do most things. However I’m now going to attempt to stick to writing this review. The basis of this story is that Darcy compromises Elizabeth at Hunsford and so they are forced to marry, Elizabeth still unaware of Wickham’s true character, Darcy unchanged and so on. Elizabeth is desperately unhappy and tried to please Darcy by not arguing with him etc, and so seems much unlike herself. This story has the common JAFF conflation of Regency and Victorian mores. For example, Elizabeth is silent and still, lying back and thinking of England because ladies don’t take pleasure in having sex.
As I said before so many times, the plot is soap operish, after the forced marriage and Elizabeth’s initial unhappiness with her situation, she and Darcy have an argument and she tells him what she really thinks of him. They very little contact until Darcy has a clichéd bad fall from his horse and of course, he almost dies. Elizabeth nurses him back to health and during that time realizes she loves him, however under the effects of that evil laudanum he orders her from his bedchamber and she becomes extremely depressed and even considers suicide until her maid tells her she’s pregnant and forces her to eat. It reminded me of when George killed our son, and even did it in front of our guests. That was quite depressing, however the gin helped me get over it the very next night. Back to (TLMITW, eventually they reconcile and realize their lurve is mutual and live happily every after until a tenant hits Elizabeth and then Wickham and Lydia come to visit and attempt to wheedle money out of her. But those problems were easily dispatched so Darcy and Elizabeth could live happily every after. I don’t understand what the purpose of those last elements were, as far as I can tell they existed to make the story longer and even more soap opera-like then it already was. This story was almost completely devoid of intentional humor, which is its biggest shortcoming, indeed most of JAFF’s biggest shortcoming.  That said the plot was funny, although I don’t think the author intended I find that aspect funny.
Another problem was the characterization. Like in the novel, Elizabeth undergoes a transformation and realizes her past mistakes. However unlike in the novel Darcy does no such thing, he’s already his changed self at the beginning and undergoes only a minor change after realizing his mistake in assuming her anticipation and acceptance of his proposal. Someone I know once noted that one of the problems with AUs is that once someone starts changing one thing, they change something else and something else again. And this story definitely suffers from this problem, not only with plot but with character. This Elizabeth is certainly not the one made for happiness who would laugh herself out of a broken heart quickly. She’s not the Elizabeth I know and love from Pride and Prejudice.
The good aspect of this story is its writing. While the prose is by no means great it is much better than most JAFF, so that redeems some of the problems with the characterizations and lack of humor. I can at least read it without cringing at the actual writing itself, which is more than I can say for most fanfiction. I really don’t have much more to say about this topic and am feeling much too lazy to find quotes to give as examples for any of this. Also I’m getting bored with writing this and need to get ready for the salon I’m hosting tonight. Right now I’m listening to very good music, so I’m feeling generous. I’ll give this:
