PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES
Written by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
“My dear girl,” said her ladyship. “I suggest you take this contest seriously. My ninjas will show you no mercy.”
This could be the strangest book I’ve ever read.
It certainly has a major knock against it from the outset…at least, as far as my own personal taste is concerned: I can’t STAND the early 19th century stylings of Jane Austen, never mind the Bronte sisters, and their assorted admirers and imitators. Everything about their over-written & over-wrought language, emotions, and calamitous soap-opera epics make me to want to hurt someone! Back in university, I nearly drove my English Lit professor to distraction by complaining about how Jane Eyre simply existed to torture my cerebral cortex and make my eyes bleed, and wish upon all men named Darcy and Heathcliff a horrible death by castration.
And yet…I read it. God help me, I read it. I laughed out loud on several occasions. In spite of encountering passages that could be patented as the new cure to insomnia, I found just as many engrossing chapters that actually managed to hook me into mini-crisis after mini-crisis. Some of the female characters in particular were nothing short of astonishing…and would no doubt have caused the actual Jane Austen to fall into a dead faint if she was ever given the chance to read about them.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is the book Jane Austen would have written, if (1) she had been alive today, and (2) she had married Quentin Tarantino…and proved that her artistic vision is as equally disturbing/fascinating/violent/pulpy as his own. Mix in that 19th century writing style, and the end result is Kill Bill…the Pre-Victorian saga! It comes complete with private ninja armies, daggers hiding under dresses, ladies of refinement engaging in duels with katanas, big men wielding big blunderbusses, rampaging zombies throughout the English countryside, and London transformed into a fortress city against the armies of Satan. There’s even some debate (framed with hilarious 19th century colonial prejudice) regarding the superiority of Japanese vs Chinese martial arts training.
What more could you possibly want from a novel? :D
I don’t think I’ll be seeking out the sequel (Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters), but I might pick up a future title (the intriguingly-titled Joan of Arc - Werewolf Hunter). Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is simply outrageous…but it was worth hacking through the weighty prose to sip its sweet milk & honey core. :-)
