Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
and Zombies???
That’s right, author Seth Grahame-Smith has taken a classic literary novel of romance and humor and turned it into literary hybrid horror novel.
Smith gives top billing to Jane Austen on the cover of the book because as he admits in an interview he retained 85% of the original text of the story, but endowed the Bennet sisters with martial art skills to deal with the shambling undead.
I first heard about this mashup-novel when I was listening to Mike Mennenga and Mike Stackpole on their Dragon Page Podcast. I’m a fan of zombie novels and movies and couldn’t help but smile and think how frikkin clever this is.
Although Mike and Mike had not read the book, they admitted it is probably pretty good as it ranks very high in Amazon, but they think much of that has to do with the novelty of it. In addition, they panned the process of taking a classic novel available in the public domain, and turning it into some sort mashup hybrid. While they think this sort writing may produce a couple of good, fun to read books, ultimately, however, it will churn out a heap of crappy ones as well.
I agree, but it does sound like a lot of fun though doesn’t it? Just imagine the spin you could put on a story like Othello?
When I started looking into Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, it was fun reading how many people enjoyed this modified classic, never having even considered touching a classic beforehand. It was equally fun seeing the literary crowd howling in outrage over this “abomination”.
My daughter has the patience and zeal to read the old classics and is a HUGE Jane Austen fan. I sent her a couple of links about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies thinking she might come down on the side of the outraged crowd – but was interested to hear her opinion.
To my surprise she was receptive of it thinking it’s “very cool” and would get a copy once she finished with her finals in a couple of weeks.
The original version of Pride and Prejudice is classic regency chick lit – which I would never read, but being a Zed-head, I think I’ll get a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and take a chance. Who knows, I might even like it…
