Pride, Prejudice, and ZOMBIES!
So I've been on a reading kick lately, and I fiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnallly finished Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, after having it for...two and a half months? I got it while David was here in August... anyway! I don't know why it took so long to finish it, I like it just fine, and the concept just rocked my socks, since P&P is my favorite book, and I love the zombies. I guess because it was just P&P with new zombiebits added in, it took off the urgency to finish.
Anyway, despite the promising premise, I gotta admit, I was kind of disappointed.
I gotta admit, I expected something pretty different. At first, I thought it would be a re-telling of P&P, with zombies, not an "expanded edition", as the summary on the back calls it. But even after realizing that, I was still excited to get into it. And it's not like it was a total loss, or a total failure. I mean, it's impossible for me to hate Pride and Prejudice itself; even in such an altered, silly form, it's an enjoyable read. I just didn't really feel like the newly-added zombiebits actually added that much.
Sure, they changed situations and circumstances, and added a few silly fight scenes, but ultimately it didn't much alter the story that they told, and I guess I was just looking for something more different. A different ending, or a different perspective on a story I love. But crossing out a few words, changing them here and there, adding a few paragraphs every now and then, and inserting a few cheap ball jokes? A bit of a let down ^^; Even the few significant things they did change, like Wickham's crippling, and Collins' suicide, were less amusing than they should have been, and a bit out of place. They didn't really mesh well with the characters' personalities and, in Wickham's case, their behavior afterward. Which makes sense, I suppose, if the author didn't want to alter the original story that much, but even so, it just doesn't really work. If you're gonna alter certain parts of the story, at least make sure that you can make them work with what you leave in.
Maybe I'm being too harsh, since it is what it set out to be: an "expanded edition", but ultimately it left me with the impression of a lazy author. Like, this guy got a really good idea for a book, but didn't want to write it all himself, so he just edited the original Pride and Prejudice. I think it would have been a lot better if he'd re-written it all from scratch. Kind of a waste ^^;
Anyway, despite the promising premise, I gotta admit, I was kind of disappointed.
I gotta admit, I expected something pretty different. At first, I thought it would be a re-telling of P&P, with zombies, not an "expanded edition", as the summary on the back calls it. But even after realizing that, I was still excited to get into it. And it's not like it was a total loss, or a total failure. I mean, it's impossible for me to hate Pride and Prejudice itself; even in such an altered, silly form, it's an enjoyable read. I just didn't really feel like the newly-added zombiebits actually added that much.
Sure, they changed situations and circumstances, and added a few silly fight scenes, but ultimately it didn't much alter the story that they told, and I guess I was just looking for something more different. A different ending, or a different perspective on a story I love. But crossing out a few words, changing them here and there, adding a few paragraphs every now and then, and inserting a few cheap ball jokes? A bit of a let down ^^; Even the few significant things they did change, like Wickham's crippling, and Collins' suicide, were less amusing than they should have been, and a bit out of place. They didn't really mesh well with the characters' personalities and, in Wickham's case, their behavior afterward. Which makes sense, I suppose, if the author didn't want to alter the original story that much, but even so, it just doesn't really work. If you're gonna alter certain parts of the story, at least make sure that you can make them work with what you leave in.
Maybe I'm being too harsh, since it is what it set out to be: an "expanded edition", but ultimately it left me with the impression of a lazy author. Like, this guy got a really good idea for a book, but didn't want to write it all himself, so he just edited the original Pride and Prejudice. I think it would have been a lot better if he'd re-written it all from scratch. Kind of a waste ^^;