Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Jun. 4th, 2009 12:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icepixieFor a while, I wasn't quite sure what to make of this book. About halfway through, I realized that it wasn't really Pride and Prejudice with zombie elements, but rather a piece of zombie/ninja fiction with elements of Pride and Prejudice, and it all made much more sense.
It's pretty good, all told. I certainly enjoyed it more than I enjoyed the original, but that's kind of a given with my Austen history. Grahame-Smith does a decent job fitting in the zombie threat; the whole ninja thing didn't seem to work as well, but maybe that was because I was not expecting there to be ninjas. I wasn't entirely sure what was up with that--were the Bennet sisters contracted by the crown to fight zombies? Was it just something their father wanted them to know as a personal safety concern? (This is probably me thinking way too hard about this.)
As a whole, the book didn't produce as many laughs as I thought it would; I had figured it would be more absurd than it turned out. (The discussion questions at the end are actually more overtly amusing than the book itself, though the novel did produce its share of quick smiles.) That said, I cackled for a long time at Elizabeth imagining cutting off Lydia's head. I was quite sad when the next paragraph revealed that it hadn't really happened. Charlotte Lucas slowly turning into a zombie and constantly thinking about brains was probably the other really funny part--I especially enjoyed her comparison of Fitzwilliam and Darcy based on the size of their heads and, thus, tender and succulent brains. :D I also liked that the zombies were always referred to in dialogue and often in narration as "the unmentionables," "the scourge," "the plague," etc. Seemed very Austenish. Also, the running joke about balls was juvenile, but hilarious.
Final analysis: though perplexing in spots, totally worth reading. Hee!
It's pretty good, all told. I certainly enjoyed it more than I enjoyed the original, but that's kind of a given with my Austen history. Grahame-Smith does a decent job fitting in the zombie threat; the whole ninja thing didn't seem to work as well, but maybe that was because I was not expecting there to be ninjas. I wasn't entirely sure what was up with that--were the Bennet sisters contracted by the crown to fight zombies? Was it just something their father wanted them to know as a personal safety concern? (This is probably me thinking way too hard about this.)
As a whole, the book didn't produce as many laughs as I thought it would; I had figured it would be more absurd than it turned out. (The discussion questions at the end are actually more overtly amusing than the book itself, though the novel did produce its share of quick smiles.) That said, I cackled for a long time at Elizabeth imagining cutting off Lydia's head. I was quite sad when the next paragraph revealed that it hadn't really happened. Charlotte Lucas slowly turning into a zombie and constantly thinking about brains was probably the other really funny part--I especially enjoyed her comparison of Fitzwilliam and Darcy based on the size of their heads and, thus, tender and succulent brains. :D I also liked that the zombies were always referred to in dialogue and often in narration as "the unmentionables," "the scourge," "the plague," etc. Seemed very Austenish. Also, the running joke about balls was juvenile, but hilarious.
Final analysis: though perplexing in spots, totally worth reading. Hee!
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Date: 2009-06-04 05:00 pm (UTC)YES. People are complaining that it doesn't keep with the rules of behavior for the time, and I'm going "THEY HAVE LADIES TRAINING WITH NINJAS TO FIGHT THE UNDEAD!" It's NOT P&P anymore! :)
Definitely looking at it as zombies PLUS P&P rather than the other way around makes it better, IMHO.
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Date: 2009-06-05 12:48 am (UTC)Silly people!
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Date: 2009-06-05 01:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-05 03:06 am (UTC)