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The Book: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
How Long It Took Me to Read It Since Publication: A Year

Once upon a time, the dead began returning back to life all over the world. In the genteel society of England sometime in the 19th Century, wise Mr. Bennett sent his five daughters to China to be taught the deadly arts to fight the scourge of dead commonly called the “unmentionables.”

Full of fantastic gore and a lot action, the devilish fun in this book is in the details. The frequent incorporation of zombie scourge in the commonplace civilized talk of the characters as they go along Austen’s original plotline makes the otherwise classic if sometimes dull original story lively, fun, completely ridiculous and laugh-out-loud fun. The zombie attacks at the elegant balls, civilized dinners, and relaxing strolls in the countryside are so fun to read you wish they happened more often and that there was less Austen in the writing and more zombies, but that would be a disservice to the amount of detail put into this “collaboration.” A favorite of mine goes thusly:

“The ride to Longbourn was altogether agreeable, save for a brief encounter with a small herd of zombie children, no doubt from Mrs. Beechman’s Home for Orphans, which had recently fallen along with the entire parish of St. Thomas. Mr. Bingley’s coachman could not help but vomit down the front of his cravat at the sight of the tiny devils grazing on sun-hardened corpses in a nearby field.”

As for our heroes, the Bennett sisters are great dealers of death, who, in an early skirmish are commanded by their father into the “Pentagram of Death”:

“Elizabeth immediately joined her four sisters, Jane, Mary, Catherine, and Lydia in the center of the dance floor. Each girl produced a dagger from her ankle and stood at the tip of an imaginary five-pointed star. From the center of the room, they began stepping outward in unison–each thrusting a razor-sharp dagger with one hand, the other hand modestly tucked into the small of her back. From a corner of the room, Mr. Darcy watched Elizabeth and her sisters worked their way outward, beheading zombie after zombie as they went.”

Thus we meet my two favorite characters, Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy, two of the deadliest zombie killers in all England. Like all other characters in this new interpretation, they keep their core personalities, and Elizabeth’s wit and headstrong spirit is accentuated by her relish in killing zombies as much as criticizing Mr. Darcy. While Darcy’s bad manners at first brings the story along, his foolish pride brings a nice bit a conflict between him and Elizabeth, all to Austen’s continued credit.

Bottom line is if you appreciate literature and currently enjoy the rise of zombies in popular culture, read this book. If you like ninjas and gore and maybe not a lot of classical literature, read this book. You’ll still like it, to the credit of both authors.