I’ve mentioned, off and on, in my blog that I’m not really a classics person.   This actually made my English degree really difficult, because the majority of what we had to read, were classics.  I remember cheating with Moby Dick and watching the movie instead, because the book was so boring.    In my defense, I was a stupid teenager.   I have since read many of the books that I disparaged in the late 90s and enjoyed them immensely, however the experience has left a bad taste in my mouth and I keep thinking that I’m not a classics person.

The exception to this lies in Jane Austen.   When I was 12 my best friend bought me this huge book for my birthday that was a compilation of Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Northanger Abby, and I’ve loved Jane Austen ever since.  Because of this, when I first saw Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in the book store, I was intrigued.   It passed my read test, when the first page left me chuckling, and I begged for the book for Christmas.  My husband bought it for me, and I didn’t put it down for the rest of holiday vacation. I laughed all the way through;  it was brilliant!

What I like most about this book is that it’s two essential components are so completely at odds that they shouldn’t work together so well.  However, I was amazed at how seamlessly Seth Grahame-Smith added zombies into such a well known classic;  it was like Pride and Prejudice has always taken place in a world beset with zombies, that it was always supposed to be a zombie story.  Not only that, but the zombies add a large does of humor that kept me chuckling throughout, when the original novel was so serious and composed.

It’s not often when someone re-does a novel, or adds to a story, that they improve upon it, in my opinion.  The ‘sequel’ to Gone With the Wind comes to mind: it took novel full of fire and tension, with an unhappy ending, and turned it into your typical historical romance where everyone lives happily ever after.  Normally I like that kinda thing, but in this case, yuck!    Anyway,  I often find fan fiction to be kinda cheesy.  This novel, however, I feel fairly safe in saying, improved on the original and opened it up to an entirely new audience by making it more desirable to read.

It is because of this that I’m really looking forward to reading Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters,  Abraham Linclon: Vampire Hunter and the other regency adventure/horror novels which have popped up since the popularity of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.