It’s not that it’s very bad, it’s just that I was fifty-odd pages in and couldn’t help constantly listing all the other books I would like to be reading instead. Ever got that feeling?
(At least up to the point where I gave up) the text is very much the one from the original P&P, only England is in the midst of a strange plague that turns people into zombies. To survive, men and women have to become experts in combat. The Bennett family gave preference to the ninja arts and Mr. Bennett even took the girls to the East for training.
The problem here is that Grahame-Smith decided not to change the storyline, but just inserted zombies and battles once in a while. I think he picked up the text, a highlighter in hand, and stated to choose the parts where he could insert an attack (walks to Meryton, end of the Assembly Ball) or a reference to e.g. katanas and Shaolin masters. It felt too artificial.
One of my New Year’s resolutions was to be more ruthless about dropping a book that’s not working for me. It will still look nice in my dedicated Jane Austen shelves, but I’ll wait for the movie with Nathalie Portman (!!). I’ll have to choose a replacement for the RIP Challenge eventually, but right now I’m happily moving on to Parrot and Olivier in America.
PS: An afterthought – although the concept didn’t bother me (and in many ways I’m an Austen purist), one thing did: the women’s dresses in the illustrations seem to vary from the 18th century all the way up to the Industrial Revolution. How about some research Mr Smiley?
6 comments
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September 14, 2010 at 11:03 am
Virgulina
The Assembly Ball was when I decided to stop reading this book, it was just too silly to stand, and I’m a fan of fantasy and paranormal but it felt forced.
September 14, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Falaise
Definitely not one of me – good decision to drop it and move on. I will be very interested to hear what you think of Parrot and Olivier in America.
September 14, 2010 at 4:30 pm
Steph
At one point I actually had two copies of this because people in my life decided this was a book I would love… I haven’t been able to bring myself to read it because every time I think of doing so, I realize I’d really rather just read the original!
September 14, 2010 at 11:08 pm
Melissa
I felt the same about this one. All I could think was that I would much rather be re-reading the real P&P.
December 2, 2010 at 3:38 pm
Boneshaker by Cherie Priest « The Sleepless Reader
[…] the Dead and that’s because it makes fun of them. After so many bad zombie movies and books (yes, P&P and Zombies, I’m looking at you!), I just can’t take them seriously – they’re slow, brainless and […]
March 3, 2012 at 2:08 am
heidenkind
I bought this book in eFormat when it was 99 cents, but I’m scared to read it. 😉 I did read Little Women and Vampires, though, and that was kind of fun. Whenever it started getting sappy someone would eat a kitten.