I don't get the appeal of this one.
It might be because I don't know the first thing about Austen or any of her books. It seemed like it was very dependent on being an Austen-o-phile. I can't say that I dislike Austen's writing because I've never read any of it, but none of it sounds even slightly appealing either. I expect I'll read it at some point, filing that under the heading "Wanting to find out what all the fuss is about" but it'd be near the bottom of my substantial "to-read" stack.
I got the impression anyway, that the story didn't really need to be about Jane Austen in particular, and if it didn't, then it just seems more like name-dropping in the hopes of increasing the popularity of the story without it actually enhancing the content.
Of the five I enjoyed the 4th one with the vampire sister the best. As a standalone flash piece, I'd probably say I liked it. But lumping the five together and presenting it as a single unit hurt them all as far as I'm concerned. There was some tenuous linkage among them, but nothing that I'd say really adheres them together, so it just ended up losing the flashbang appeal of a quality flash piece and overstayed its welcome beyond the merits of the text.
By the way, does anyone know what was supposed to be happening in the 5th world, with the attack on the ship? Is that supposed to refer to anything specific? Who are the attackers, and why can't she fall into their hands? A bit and piece here and there reminded me of Frankenstein with the mention of a monster and them being on a boat, but I'm not sure who the army of attackers would be in that case. The fifth world is the only place where I really got a hint that these stories are truly connected, because she is carrying the cross that an unnamed man had given her. From that I gathered that the time traveler has been going back in time many repititions to try to save her life, and these 5 were times that he failed to save her from a fate, but then he went back and tried again in a different way, presumably coming before Cassandra started draining her and giving her a cross to preserve her, etc...
I tend to overthink such things, but just thinking about the title drove me a little bit crazy thinking about sets (in the mathematical/logic sense). Presumably there is exactly one way that Jane Austen died in our world, but the complement of that set is the ways that Jane Austen did not die. This is an infinite set. I saw the title many weeks before I listened to the story and so the title had more time to make an impression on me than the rest of it. "Five Ways Jane Austen Never Died" is less appealing to me than "The Way Jane Austen Died" because it lacks the specificity and reality, and any 5 plucked out of the infinity will make me ask "why these five?". It kind of reminds me of a line I've seen while critiquing someone's story, that was along the lines of "Candace's sister was as thin as Candace wasn't." Odd wording, and so incredibly non-specific as to be a bit maddening. Even if we know exactly how thin Candace is, the complement of her thinness is an infinite set. The same goes here.
