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A review by ricksilva
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen, Seth Grahame-Smith
dark
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This has my all-time favorite about-the-author blurb: "Jane Austen is 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."
Testing the time-honored theory (I first heard it from late-night bad movie host Elvira, Mistress of the Dark) that everything is better with zombies or ninjas (and yes, this book has both), Seth Grahame-Smith inserts a zombie plague into Pride and Prejudice only to discover that it doesn't actually change the plot all that much.
And therein is really the true joke of this mash-up. There are zombies, and Elizabeth and her sisters are Shaolin-trained martial artists, but really, nothing much changes in the classic love story between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy.
In fact, so much of the original text remains that I found this a nice refreshing of the details of the original, which I read a few weeks ago.
There is a lot of tongue-in-cheek ridiculousness in the small details of the plague of zombies (or, more politely, "unmentionables"), not to mention the rivalry between Chinese and Japanese martial arts traditions, all handled with a kind of intentional offhand superficiality. The whole thing felt like the author is not trying all that hard, and again, this is part of the joke.
And it's a moderately amusing joke with a few very good moments and a few bits that felt like they were just tacked on because there was a quota of zombie scenes per original scenes that needed to be met.
Don't skip the couple of pages of Readers Discussion Guide at the end. This was a pretty clever little extra.
Testing the time-honored theory (I first heard it from late-night bad movie host Elvira, Mistress of the Dark) that everything is better with zombies or ninjas (and yes, this book has both), Seth Grahame-Smith inserts a zombie plague into Pride and Prejudice only to discover that it doesn't actually change the plot all that much.
And therein is really the true joke of this mash-up. There are zombies, and Elizabeth and her sisters are Shaolin-trained martial artists, but really, nothing much changes in the classic love story between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy.
In fact, so much of the original text remains that I found this a nice refreshing of the details of the original, which I read a few weeks ago.
There is a lot of tongue-in-cheek ridiculousness in the small details of the plague of zombies (or, more politely, "unmentionables"), not to mention the rivalry between Chinese and Japanese martial arts traditions, all handled with a kind of intentional offhand superficiality. The whole thing felt like the author is not trying all that hard, and again, this is part of the joke.
And it's a moderately amusing joke with a few very good moments and a few bits that felt like they were just tacked on because there was a quota of zombie scenes per original scenes that needed to be met.
Don't skip the couple of pages of Readers Discussion Guide at the end. This was a pretty clever little extra.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Gore