Why this time?

Well, as you may recall, I’ve never finished reading Pride and Prejudice. Until zombies came into the mix. Then I read it in two days.

Ah, the zed-word. I haven’t enjoyed a zombie romp this much since Shaun of the Dead.

If you aren’t familiar with the idea, a few months ago a guy named Seth Grahame-Smith decided to expand Jane Austen’s classic to include scenes of zombie mayhem. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, as the book is aptly titled, “transforms a masterpiece of real world literature into something you’d actually want to read” (so claims the back of the book).

The book is good, silly fun. Somewhere around the introduction of ninjas it goes from silly to purely ridiculous. Even I, a lover of the silly and taking a joke one step too far, thought this was over the top. Seriously, Grahame-Smith. Choose ninjas OR zombies. Not both. And if you’re going to have people running around chopping off heads with Katana swords, at least have someone mutter “There can be only one.” That would’ve made me laugh even harder.

I also felt that having the zombie plague be around for over fifty years removes some of the urgency that is the zombie apocalypse. I think that the springing up of the undead would have paralleled even more humorously with the budding, blooming relationships between the various characters.

P&P&Z was still quite funny; my favorite part is the reader discussion questions at the end of the book.

While I enjoyed it, I’m a bit dismayed at the other Supernatural Works of Jane Austen. There’s Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, as well as Mr Darcy, Vampyre. I’m sure more will follow. Note that I have not read these, only that I’ve heard of them (and in the case of Mr Darcy, Vampyre picked it up and couldn’t find a blurb about it, so I promptly set it down). While I enjoyed P&P&Z, it should stand alone. When others try to capture the original magic, most often it just falls flat.

Enjoy one last bit of zombie/classic mash-up awesomeness.