Book Review: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." - opening line of Pride and Prejudice

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains." - opening line of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Mark Twain was said to have called The Book of Mormon "chloroform in print." I've read that volume and, though it seems clear to me that it is a work of fiction, didn't find it particularly dull. It's very "stream of consciousness," which is to be expected considering that Joseph Smith Jr. apparently had his face buried in a hat as he dictated most or all of it. While I never had the displeasure of being required to read Pride and Prejudice in school, I was glad to give the fresh, zombified mash-up of this classic of English literature. While I enjoyed the zombies and to a lesser extent the martial arts element, the achingly boring nineteenth century writing kept bleeding through. The original, I thought, must truly be chloroform in print.

Seth Grahame-Smith reworked Jane Austen's narrative to incorporate a shadowy version of England, one in which the dead rise up out of their graves (especially on rainy days when the earth is soft) to feast on the brains of the living. The affliction is considered a "plague" and seems to be transmitted as a virus, so although the living dead are referred to as "Satan's minions," no particularly supernatural element is apparently involved.

The zombies (which, by the way, are of the slow, shuffling variety) appear in several portions of the story and the renewed telling is shaped by discussion of martial arts training and technique, but the fundamental storyline is essentially unchanged and just as mind-numbingly slow as the original must be. It was a fun book to read for the sake of novelty, but was not by any means and engrossing read.