Pride and Prejudice and Chipmunks. Part 2
I read on, slowly and painfully, regularly turning away to do just about anything else but read on... and got to the end.
It got worse. There's boring. There's boring and stupid. And then there's boring and stupid and ignorant bordering on offensive (which side of the border being a matter of opinion).
It's hard to illustrate boring, so let's go a little with stupid...
"... after a moment a second chipmunk scurried across the road with equal alacrity. It was followed in short order by a pair of weasels, then a skunk, then a fox and her pups. More creatures followed, and in ever increasing numbers; as if Noah himself beckoned, offering refuge from some unseen flood."
The glaring errors are Disney - chipmunks and skunks in the UK, foxes with pups not cubs... A large number of panic-stricken creatures running from zombies as if there was a forest fire. So let's stay with Disney, because Chip and Dale teach me that chipmunks climb trees. So do squirrels. When there's a predator in the woods the squirrels run up trees. If a zombie was capable of climbing a tree, which seems doubtful in this book, the squirrel would simply hop to the next tree, and the next. Why would a chipmunk run away from a predator on the ground and into the open if it can climb trees?
A writer can get away with stupid errors and dumb world-building if they're writing a page-turner... but it helps to make a book a page turner if you cut as much unnecessary stupid and dumb as possible.
Next up, probably the most vividly described bit of zombie mayhem, where some chewy zombie goodness actually happens...
"She kicked open the door and sprang atop the coach. From here Elizabeth could appreciate the full measure of their predicament, for rather than one hundred unmentionables, she now perceived no less than twice that number. The coachman's leg was in the possession of several zombies, who were quite close to getting their teeth on his ankle. Seeing no alternative, Elizabeth brought her sword down upon his thigh -- amputating the leg, but saving the man. She picked him up with one arm and lowered him into the coach, where he fainted as blood poured forth from his new stump. Sadly, this action prevented her from saving the second musket man, who had been pulled from hi perch. He screamed as the dreadfuls held him down and began to tear organs from his living belly and feast upon them. The zombies next turned their attention to the terrified horses. Elizabeth knew that she and the present party were all doomed to slow deaths if the horses should fall into Satan's hands, so she sprang skyward, firing her musket as she flew through the air, her bullets penetrating the heads of several unmentionables. She landed on her feet beside one of the horses, and with her sword began cutting down the attackers with all the grace of Aphrodite, and all the ruthlessness of Herod."
A little later the writer discovers the name 'Brown Bess' and uses that interchangeably with musket and the Brown Bess was indeed a military musket used during this period. It is not a musket that fires multiple 'bullets' without needing to be reloaded. Both servants, the middle-class Bennets and the super-rich Darcy carry Brown Bess muskets... in an age where the rich man's servants would more likely have fowling pieces, and he himself a finely made one-off (or a set, with matching powder horns). Amputating a man's leg with a single sword cut will not have saved him since she then allows him to bleed out. The two hundred zombies are clawing at the coachman's leg without paying attention to the horses until it becomes plot-worthy. If they don't want the horses until they've finished with the people, why do they not swarm Elizabeth and the coach before turning their attention? Why are the zombie hordes constantly referred to as being Satan's horde? Pride and Prejudice is set in the early 19th century not the 17th. Where the heck have 200 zombies come from, and how do they not overwhelm a single woman with a musket and sword, however high she can jump? Instead she drives them back, 'leaps into the driver's box', cracks the whip, and drives the horses forward... presumably through the regrouping zombies.
And yes, I have considered that it is meant to be funny... but if so it lacks any comic beats or timing thereof. There are sad bits of double entendre (over fingering and balls mostly) but they're pale ghosts of humour for a culture that's loved such lines since Chaucer.
Elizabeth makes a statement that she has travelled to the 'darkest reaches' of the Orient (aka China) twice it being 'frightfully long and fraught with bears'... and in case you'd thought it was metaphorical, she later repeats that she and Darcy will take their children to be trained via an overland journey.
Although why after fifty-five years anyone is still going abroad to learn rather than establishing training at any number of boarding schools... even if you allow that oriental martial arts make any sense in fighting shambling monsters who're demonstrably easy to trap (and there are men making money catching and delivering them to burning ground).
By page 200 the writer himself has tired of the zombies and they don't pop up again until the end of the book... where Darcy and Jane battle some who're crawling on the ground biting cauliflower heads (because they look like brains...)
Indeed, the level of zombie mayhem in the whole book made me think of Plants Vs Zombies a lot.
It got worse. There's boring. There's boring and stupid. And then there's boring and stupid and ignorant bordering on offensive (which side of the border being a matter of opinion).
It's hard to illustrate boring, so let's go a little with stupid...
"... after a moment a second chipmunk scurried across the road with equal alacrity. It was followed in short order by a pair of weasels, then a skunk, then a fox and her pups. More creatures followed, and in ever increasing numbers; as if Noah himself beckoned, offering refuge from some unseen flood."
The glaring errors are Disney - chipmunks and skunks in the UK, foxes with pups not cubs... A large number of panic-stricken creatures running from zombies as if there was a forest fire. So let's stay with Disney, because Chip and Dale teach me that chipmunks climb trees. So do squirrels. When there's a predator in the woods the squirrels run up trees. If a zombie was capable of climbing a tree, which seems doubtful in this book, the squirrel would simply hop to the next tree, and the next. Why would a chipmunk run away from a predator on the ground and into the open if it can climb trees?
A writer can get away with stupid errors and dumb world-building if they're writing a page-turner... but it helps to make a book a page turner if you cut as much unnecessary stupid and dumb as possible.
Next up, probably the most vividly described bit of zombie mayhem, where some chewy zombie goodness actually happens...
"She kicked open the door and sprang atop the coach. From here Elizabeth could appreciate the full measure of their predicament, for rather than one hundred unmentionables, she now perceived no less than twice that number. The coachman's leg was in the possession of several zombies, who were quite close to getting their teeth on his ankle. Seeing no alternative, Elizabeth brought her sword down upon his thigh -- amputating the leg, but saving the man. She picked him up with one arm and lowered him into the coach, where he fainted as blood poured forth from his new stump. Sadly, this action prevented her from saving the second musket man, who had been pulled from hi perch. He screamed as the dreadfuls held him down and began to tear organs from his living belly and feast upon them. The zombies next turned their attention to the terrified horses. Elizabeth knew that she and the present party were all doomed to slow deaths if the horses should fall into Satan's hands, so she sprang skyward, firing her musket as she flew through the air, her bullets penetrating the heads of several unmentionables. She landed on her feet beside one of the horses, and with her sword began cutting down the attackers with all the grace of Aphrodite, and all the ruthlessness of Herod."
A little later the writer discovers the name 'Brown Bess' and uses that interchangeably with musket and the Brown Bess was indeed a military musket used during this period. It is not a musket that fires multiple 'bullets' without needing to be reloaded. Both servants, the middle-class Bennets and the super-rich Darcy carry Brown Bess muskets... in an age where the rich man's servants would more likely have fowling pieces, and he himself a finely made one-off (or a set, with matching powder horns). Amputating a man's leg with a single sword cut will not have saved him since she then allows him to bleed out. The two hundred zombies are clawing at the coachman's leg without paying attention to the horses until it becomes plot-worthy. If they don't want the horses until they've finished with the people, why do they not swarm Elizabeth and the coach before turning their attention? Why are the zombie hordes constantly referred to as being Satan's horde? Pride and Prejudice is set in the early 19th century not the 17th. Where the heck have 200 zombies come from, and how do they not overwhelm a single woman with a musket and sword, however high she can jump? Instead she drives them back, 'leaps into the driver's box', cracks the whip, and drives the horses forward... presumably through the regrouping zombies.
And yes, I have considered that it is meant to be funny... but if so it lacks any comic beats or timing thereof. There are sad bits of double entendre (over fingering and balls mostly) but they're pale ghosts of humour for a culture that's loved such lines since Chaucer.
Elizabeth makes a statement that she has travelled to the 'darkest reaches' of the Orient (aka China) twice it being 'frightfully long and fraught with bears'... and in case you'd thought it was metaphorical, she later repeats that she and Darcy will take their children to be trained via an overland journey.
Although why after fifty-five years anyone is still going abroad to learn rather than establishing training at any number of boarding schools... even if you allow that oriental martial arts make any sense in fighting shambling monsters who're demonstrably easy to trap (and there are men making money catching and delivering them to burning ground).
By page 200 the writer himself has tired of the zombies and they don't pop up again until the end of the book... where Darcy and Jane battle some who're crawling on the ground biting cauliflower heads (because they look like brains...)
Indeed, the level of zombie mayhem in the whole book made me think of Plants Vs Zombies a lot.