IT READS: PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES (2009) SETH GRAHAME-SMITH

As a little back story to this feature – I use to be a very avid book reader before I got entangled in the world of blogging and just started reading blogs all day. I even had / have a book review site that I wrote on occasionally that I haven’t updated since January of 2013.  The other day I opened the bureau to get something out of it and I noticed the STACK of unread books I have sitting there and got nostalgic for the smell and feel of printed material and thought to myself, “You know what? I’m going to read a fucking book!” And, since I know Zoë is such a fan of book reading I told her about my new dedication and she was all “YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYA YOU CHOP!!!!” and we discussed posting about it / them out here. Then we discussed my book review site and how I want to turn it down and we thought maybe we could put some of them out here on Zuts, not only to build her library but also to not just throw away all of that fucking typing I did.

So, today we present another installment of IT READS: and we’ll go with the entertaining and pretty hilarious PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES

P.S. This was actually written a few years ago so those of you familiar with my style my find this a little different. And – look at that naming convention!

***

It’s been awhile since I read this, but since I just finished the trilogy, i wanted to have the whole group out here. This is, of course, the “mash-up” that started the new genre. I remember seeing it on the shelves somewhere, i think Barnes and Noble, and thinking, hmmmm, interesting. Then my friend’s wife was reading it and he told me she thoroughly enjoyed it, so i picked it and – it was pretty, pretty GOOD! Of course, the concept here is taking Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” and inserting organ eating zombies (called Dreadfuls or in proper English the Sorry Stricken {one never uses the word Zombie in polite society}), ninjas, training in the Deadly Arts, all among the harrowing Victorian English countryside where class and money are everything. The poor (no money or endowments) Bennets live in a rustic, quaint manor, the griping forlorn mother, the inept and weary father, and five sisters, the key lead Elizabeth – she is the focal point of the plot. She has suitors yes, and one is Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, pompous and rich, a class above! nephew to the matriarch of the land, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Dreadful slayer of historic renown, wealthy beyond means. When Lizzy captures Darcy’s heart, the class difference creates unbearable discomfort (the actual pride and prejudice) and a volley of differences ensue, along with brain eating sons of Satan.

This book is good, very funny, very well done – something worth reading. What I think, to me, sets this as my least favorite in the trilogy (that being still very good), is that we have to deal with the actual Austen writing style, and not the fun satire we get with “recreating the Regency England style” in the other two, which were not “co-written”. I can only imagine that I would become one of the living dead if i had to sit through reading the original P and P, it seems so heavy handed. And boring beyond means. Thankfully the dead have risen and the throwing stars are flying in here, because this makes good, gut eating fun of the original.

if you didn’t know, they are making this into a movie, I think with Keira Knightley as Lizzy and Grahame-Smith went on to write another best selling mash-up “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” which is also being turned into a film. This guy’s got a hot hand!