Sunday, January 24, 2010

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

I’m an odd girl. Two of my favorite movies are Titanic and Fight Club. I love romance just as much as I love watching guys beating each other up. So, I was super excited when one of my favorite books of all time, Pride and Prejudice, had zombie violence added to it. It was like a marriage of a favorite sister with an undead monster; a match made in comedy heaven!

This book is literally the exact same text as the original Pride and Prejudice except that now there is a strange plague facing England that is bringing the undead back to life. Good thing the Bennet sisters are some of the best fighters out there, having been educated in China by the best dojo’s of the day. Seriously though, what could be better than a regency romance, zombies, and ninjas? Nothing.

This book was really so much fun to read. The one thing you have to remember is that at the end of the day, it’s the same text as the original Pride and Prejudice. A few times during my reading, I was confused about why the book was taking so long to read and I even thought to myself, “this is like reading a classic!” Oh wait, it IS reading a classic, just with some flying limbs every now and then. So when you approach this book, remember that it is classically written and take it slow, it’s worth it.

But besides the fact of this book being a good way to introduce yourself to Jane Austen in a very entertaining way, it’s just hilarious what Seth Grahame-Smith wrote into this book. Two of my favorite scenes in Pride and Prejudice are the first ball at Netherfield and when the dreadful Mr. Collins comes to dinner. During the first scene at the ball, zombies attack!

“Unmentionables poured in, their movements clumsy yet swift; their burial clothing in a range of untidiness. Some wore gowns so tattered as to render them scandalous; others wore suits so filthy that one would assume they were assembled from litter more than dirt and dried blood. Their flesh was in varying degrees of putrefaction; the freshly stricken were slightly green and pliant, whereas the longer dead were grey and brittle- their eyes and tongues long since turned to dust, and their lips pulled back into everlasting skeletal smiles.”

Don’t worry, everything works out because the five Bennet sisters form the awesome Pentagram of Death and slay Satan’s army (Yeah, that was how it was in the book, it’s fabulous.)

But without a doubt my favorite part of the book happens to be the about the author section on the back of the book. It reads:

Jane Austen in the author of Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and other masterpieces of English Literature. Seth Grahame-Smith once took a class in English Literature. He lives in Los Angeles.

I laughed for a full five minutes after I read that and it was what ultimately made me want to read this book. Grahame-Smith has a great sense of humor and when you think about it, he has to know this book inside and out in order to so skillfully inject zombies into it and make it seem like they were meant to be there, which he manages to do. My one negative comment about this book is actually that there weren’t enough zombies. Sometimes it seems like they come out of nowhere and there is literally no point to their scene in the book. Or you will be reading along for pages of the original text and the only mention of a zombie or anything is one random sentence about the girls training in China. It made it hard to follow a few times because it got to be distracting when it should have been the center of attention. But all in all, this book was so much fun to read and I recommend it to any lover of Austen and zombies alike!

Until next time, happy reading! Send me your book recommendations if you have them, I’d be happy to check them out and review them all! Leave any comments below! I’d love to hear them!

1 comment:

  1. well, it looks like I'll have to try this. I'm in an Austen fix right now (reading Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman series--totally recommend it!), so a new twist sounds good!

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