Title Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Author Seth Grahame-Smith Cover Art Doogie Horner Publisher Quirk Classics - 2009 First Printing Quirk Classics - 2009
	Title Dawn of the Dreadfuls Author Steve Hockensmith Cover Art --- Publisher --- First Printing ---
	Title Dreadfully Ever After Author Steve Hockensmith Cover Art --- Publisher --- First Printing ---
	Category Horror Warnings None Main Characters Elizabeth, Darcy Main Elements Zombies Website ---

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

I've always loved the Pride and Prejudice story ever since I saw the TV mini-series with Colin Firth as Darcy. I'd always intended to read the original but something always came up and I kept bumping it year after year till finally I decided that this January that I would finally sit down and read the thing. I loved it, as it was practically word for word as I remembered the shows and movies. I love the way they can turn the politest conversation into the nastiest of insults, without ever saying a mean word. And well, yes, there's Darcy in this one too.

Now having read the original, I could finally give this zombiefied version a try. It was, for the most part, the original text with zombies slipped in, but that was done expertly down to their conversations and how one would go about discussing such a disagreable creature. Or when the women were covered in "exercise moisture" after a sparring match (honestly sounded like something out of Strange Planet, it made me laugh).

But...it was also ridiculous. I could maybe accept the Bennet girls training to be zombie killers in China, if I didn't then there wouldn't be much of a story. And I loved how picking a good wife now depends not just on her breeding and conversational skills, but her ability to dispatch the undead (although oddly, once married, you have to stop your slaying ways?). But it just got more and more absurd as it went along, to the point it became one of those silly parodies.

Take some examples, at Darcy's aunt's place, Elizabeth is asked to prove her fingerstrength so she spends the entire evening walking about the room upside down on her fingertips. That's just dumb. Or the fact that any time she felt even slightly slighted (and that happens a fair amount even in the original) she feels that she needs to kill the offender of her honour. Or that she kills a ninja and then eats his heart. I mean there's zombies and zombie slaying and then there's just nonsense that destroyed my ability to believe this zombiefied version of the original could actually happen.

The illustrations were also off, I mean maybe fashion would have changed from the high waisted nightgown like dresses of the time period to something that looks a lot more Victorian, would make fighting zombies a little easier perhaps. I did smirk a little at the Reading Guide at the end of the book with some tongue it cheek book club discussion questions.

I'm also not convinced it would make people like the original more. If they found Austen's version boring, in truth there is very little additional action or plot in this one, its so tightly integrated into the original. I thought the integration was great (though not seamless, see comments earlier comments on ridiculousness), but others might be bored to tears if they aren't into comedies of manners, even with the occasional zombie showing its rotting face. I think I have to agree with one Goodreads reviewer, it starts off great and you find yourself amused by the integration of the two, but by the time you're about a third of the way through, the novelty wears off and the joke gets old fast.

I am however intrigued by the idea of these twisted classics and I think I might continue the pairing, reading the original and the later in the year, getting a copy of the revamped one (talking of vamps, I would so love to read a take on a Darcy vampire, gotta dig one of those up...)