After a long hiatus, I return to my happy hunting grounds of reading. I think I finally got over my nothing-sounds-good-for-reading hump, so I’m back to reviewing, at least temporarily. I have the awesome Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to thank for my return, that and two very lovely Borders birthday gift cards.
A huge fan of Jane Austen’s original, I both looked forward to and dreaded reading this quirky version. Grahame-Smith keeps Austen’s text and adds his own scenes and dialogue to it, so that the Bennet girls are still looking for (or avoiding) husbands, but have the added advantage of years of Chinese martial arts to lure men and and eradicate zombies. The amended premise is that 50 years before the start of the novel, a pestilence entered England (it’s never entirely clear whether the epidemic is world-wide), causing people to die and become brain-eating zombies. Anyone bitten or scratched by a zombie then deteriorates into one themselves, while hoping their loved ones will take pity on them via decapitation before the transformation takes full effect. The Bennet girls were taken to China twice by their father to be taught martial arts, in order to become some of the best zombie assassins in the nation. The younger girls are still boy-crazy, silly things, and the elder two, Jane and Elizabeth, still have the boys chasing after them. Mr. Darcy, too, is a great master of the Japanese martial arts, and another great zombie killer (Mr. Bingley stays his same bumbling, lovable self).
The martial arts addition does make Elizabeth even more serious than she was in Austen’s version, with her threatening to decapitate anyone who acts against her family, and also performing self-mutilation when she finds she is wrong about Darcy. To an extent it’s funny, but I think Grahame-Smith took things a bit too far on that end. Another characterization I wonder about is Jane, who is taught the deadly arts, but still manages to keep her same sweet innocence. I suppose it’s possible, but with Lizzie’s crazy-serious-deadliness, I wonder how true to form it is. The same goes for the two youngest Bennets, who, even after years of strict training, won’t listen to their elder sisters’ admonitions about the men of the regiment (who are, of course, there to destroy zombies).
Bennet characterizations aside, Grahame-Smith does well with seamlessly weaving in his own B-story line to the main plot. The novel is kept mostly in tact, with only the addition of a few zombie attacks (and one dear friend who turns into a zombie herself). For that, I am grateful. The zombie additions are deliciously hilarious and adventurous, adding action to a sometimes slow-paced story, but the heart of the book stays the same, and that’s what made it so great in the first place. In fact, the additions just prove how great the original is. Silly as the zombies are, the original story shines through, proving that love will endure, even with the undead wreaking havoc.
Rating: 8.5 out of 10 stars
Quixoticirony 
Addi said,
14 September 2009 at 12:56 pm
Great review! I must concur! There was a bit too much mention of vomiting for my taste, but overall, I enjoyed it.
quixoticirony said,
14 September 2009 at 1:01 pm
Haha, yes, there was that . . .