Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Because you’re all just dying to know about it. (Heh-heh.)
Firstly, I should admit that I only skimmed the second half of the book. That should give you some idea of my opinion of it. It’s amusing enough, and I did find it somewhat satisfying to picture the Bennet sisters slaying undead monstrosities. The addition of zombies is done deftly, fitting in relatively seamlessly with Jane Austen’s writing. However, I had two major problems with the changes that were made.
The first problem I had was that Elizabeth Bennet has been made into a complete Mary Sue. She is an unbeatable fighter, pulling off moves that aren’t even physically possible, and the flaws Austen gave her to make her an interesting character just feed into her skills as a warrior. There are sections of the book which give me the impression that this is meant to be ironic, but if so, it’s not done very clearly. Mostly, I feel like this Elizabeth is an adolescent fantasy of a hot chick doing impossible martial arts moves against the pop monster of the day.
The second problem is subtler, but more pervasive. Jane Austen wrote about human character foibles, about people’s interactions and emotions. The tone she created was something like, “Look at all the silly situations people get themselves into. And now look as they sort themselves out (by the most complicated and entertaining ways possible).” I’m not sure the zombie writer understood this. Again, it felt like adolescent fantasy, this time the fantasy of someone who had been forced to read Pride and Prejudice in school and hated it, amusing himself by imagining hordes of shambling undead eating these people he’d rather not be reading about. Perhaps I’m being too harsh, but a surefire way to turn me off of re-workings of literary works is to change their overall theme.
The thing is, the parts with zombies didn’t interest me nearly as much as the parts with the characters interacting-in other words, the parts Jane Austen wrote. And this is coming from someone who’s not terribly interested in romantic storylines. (I enjoy character interactions, but I generally prefer some action/adventure to go along with them. If the story is just character relationships, especially if those relationships are romance, there’d better be something especially intriguing to hold my attention.) On the other hand, I’ve never gotten really into the current zombie craze, so maybe my own prejudices cancel each other out.
Maybe, for those people who are far more excited by zombies than I am, this would be a good book. I can see the book’s enjoyment potential, and I could feel it myself at times, but it just hit too many of my automatic dislike buttons: Mary Sues, thoughtless screwing around with the original story, gratuitous violence. Oh yes, there was plenty of gratuitous violence, and not just on the part of the zombies. This, too, felt like it could have been ironic, but didn’t quite make it there.
In conclusion, Jane Austen > zombies.
Firstly, I should admit that I only skimmed the second half of the book. That should give you some idea of my opinion of it. It’s amusing enough, and I did find it somewhat satisfying to picture the Bennet sisters slaying undead monstrosities. The addition of zombies is done deftly, fitting in relatively seamlessly with Jane Austen’s writing. However, I had two major problems with the changes that were made.
The first problem I had was that Elizabeth Bennet has been made into a complete Mary Sue. She is an unbeatable fighter, pulling off moves that aren’t even physically possible, and the flaws Austen gave her to make her an interesting character just feed into her skills as a warrior. There are sections of the book which give me the impression that this is meant to be ironic, but if so, it’s not done very clearly. Mostly, I feel like this Elizabeth is an adolescent fantasy of a hot chick doing impossible martial arts moves against the pop monster of the day.
The second problem is subtler, but more pervasive. Jane Austen wrote about human character foibles, about people’s interactions and emotions. The tone she created was something like, “Look at all the silly situations people get themselves into. And now look as they sort themselves out (by the most complicated and entertaining ways possible).” I’m not sure the zombie writer understood this. Again, it felt like adolescent fantasy, this time the fantasy of someone who had been forced to read Pride and Prejudice in school and hated it, amusing himself by imagining hordes of shambling undead eating these people he’d rather not be reading about. Perhaps I’m being too harsh, but a surefire way to turn me off of re-workings of literary works is to change their overall theme.
The thing is, the parts with zombies didn’t interest me nearly as much as the parts with the characters interacting-in other words, the parts Jane Austen wrote. And this is coming from someone who’s not terribly interested in romantic storylines. (I enjoy character interactions, but I generally prefer some action/adventure to go along with them. If the story is just character relationships, especially if those relationships are romance, there’d better be something especially intriguing to hold my attention.) On the other hand, I’ve never gotten really into the current zombie craze, so maybe my own prejudices cancel each other out.
Maybe, for those people who are far more excited by zombies than I am, this would be a good book. I can see the book’s enjoyment potential, and I could feel it myself at times, but it just hit too many of my automatic dislike buttons: Mary Sues, thoughtless screwing around with the original story, gratuitous violence. Oh yes, there was plenty of gratuitous violence, and not just on the part of the zombies. This, too, felt like it could have been ironic, but didn’t quite make it there.
In conclusion, Jane Austen > zombies.