Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

             


 

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains."

So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy.
What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead.
Can she vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry? Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you'd actually want to read
This book,  of course is a New York Time's Best seller..so I'm not not one of the first to blog about and I sure hope I'm not the last. It seems that you either hate these books or you love them. I think that the idea of re-writing the classics is genius. I 100% support the new trend and am enjoying reading them as they come out, so bring 'em on!
I have never read a classic all the way through within such a short period of time, and Yes I do consider myself as reading the classic even with the Zombie addition. It is my understanding that Seth Grahame Smith  left almost all of the original wording and just added his to it for the monster twist. In the original I always got the fact that their mother was a bit overbearing and incredibly pushy and greedy when it came to marrying off her girls. But in this rendition it seemed to make her even more so. ( I even at one point was wishing  that she got turned into an umentionable). The father who I liked very much in the original turned into more of a fighter who trained his girls to kill first and ask questions later. He still keeps some of his kind-heartedness especially when the proposals eventually start rolling in, but there are moments when his Sensei side shows truest. Next the girls for the most part keep their personalities but it really gets funny when Elizabeth daydreams of cutting off their heads instead of listening to their girlish prattle. Not to mention when she argues with Darcy it turns into an all out battle instead of just the usual war of words. And if that is not enough to keep you amused, I found hidden jems with lines such as
"My dearest sister, now be serious. I want to talk very seriously let me know every thing that I am to know, without delay. Will you tell me how long you have loved him?"
" It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing the way his trousers clung to those most English parts."pg 305

There are awesome pictures throughout the book that add to the humor and enjoyment, you should read this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_and_Prejudice_and_Zombies
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1374989/
Thank you to Quirkbooks for the review copy Quirkbooks


And for the most brilliant audiobook version, a must listen: you can listen to an excerpt here:
http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B002V8KMNY&qid=1303356043&sr=1-1

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