Take a photo of a barcode or cover
aggressive_nostalgia 's review for:
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
by Jane Austen, Seth Grahame-Smith
This was really quite a funny book. I have some qualms about it, but I know better than to bother trying to compare it to the original Pride and Prejudice. I just felt that the "ultraviolent zombie mayhem" didn't really change the framework of the story very much, like I think it was supposed to. It distracted from the focus of the original story a little bit; it changed some details, certainly, and gave half the characters something akin to multiple personality disorder, but it was more of a background element. We never find out its cause, nothing about it is ever solved; it's just....there, a plague that touches down in England and parks itself without explanation or cure. It didn't touch on enough depth to really make this book a really solid story in its own right.
Nonetheless, there were definitely some elements I did enjoy. Lady Catherine was highly amusing:
"Have your ninjas left you?"
"We never had any ninjas."
"No ninjas! I never heard such a thing! Five girls raised at home without any ninjas? How is that possible?"
The plot did get somewhat gruesome - which is to be expected, of course, but I was referring mainly to the parts not involving zombies - such as when Elizabeth cuts out and eats the heart of one of Lady Catherine's still-living ninjas. I'm not sure that was entirely necessary. I did think it was hilarious that every scene which appears in the original book as a verbal argument - Elizabeth telling off Mr. Darcy when he first proposes to her, for example - is turned into a jujitsu match involving fireplace pokers and two-foot Japanese swords.
Overall (just to summarize what I've already said, sorry), this was amusing, a quicker read than the original novel, definitely not meant to be taken as seriously as the original novel, and worth reading, although (aside from my mother, who read the have-your-ninjas-left--you passage over my shoulder and thought it was hilarious) I couldn't specifically say who I would recommend it to. There are some interesting points to make if you want to debate some of the ethics of the Bennets' zombie-lambasting, or the fate of Charlotte and Mr. Collins, or the mental side effects of the girls' heartless/ruthless side, but I'm not going to get into that here. Not a bad book, by my reckoning.
Nonetheless, there were definitely some elements I did enjoy. Lady Catherine was highly amusing:
"Have your ninjas left you?"
"We never had any ninjas."
"No ninjas! I never heard such a thing! Five girls raised at home without any ninjas? How is that possible?"
The plot did get somewhat gruesome - which is to be expected, of course, but I was referring mainly to the parts not involving zombies - such as when Elizabeth cuts out and eats the heart of one of Lady Catherine's still-living ninjas. I'm not sure that was entirely necessary. I did think it was hilarious that every scene which appears in the original book as a verbal argument - Elizabeth telling off Mr. Darcy when he first proposes to her, for example - is turned into a jujitsu match involving fireplace pokers and two-foot Japanese swords.
Overall (just to summarize what I've already said, sorry), this was amusing, a quicker read than the original novel, definitely not meant to be taken as seriously as the original novel, and worth reading, although (aside from my mother, who read the have-your-ninjas-left--you passage over my shoulder and thought it was hilarious) I couldn't specifically say who I would recommend it to. There are some interesting points to make if you want to debate some of the ethics of the Bennets' zombie-lambasting, or the fate of Charlotte and Mr. Collins, or the mental side effects of the girls' heartless/ruthless side, but I'm not going to get into that here. Not a bad book, by my reckoning.