What the heck is this thing?!

Our library has labelled it Mystery. Which most likely means Fforde is typically a mystery writer. Because I can’t say there’s much of a mystery involved in this book, though there is a crime. I guess. Yet I can’t call it an alternate history either. Or science fiction. I would call it fantasy if I had to, but a fantasy reader would typically be disappointed by it. Then again, I can only assume a mystery reader would be completely confused!!

Then again again, I was completely confused!!

Just when you think you’ve got the world and the story figured out, it’d take a 90 or 180 degree turn. And not necessarily in a horizontal direction either. And to label it bizarre might make you think it was bizarre in a cool and interesting fashion. It’s not.

It’s just not.

So the premise? Okay, it’s 1985 for starters. Which normally wouldn’t be a problem for me, but it was just one more thing I had to keep reminding myself of. And it’s the UK. Erm, I think. Well, I guess not, really, since Wales is its own country. But, anyway, something resembling the UK. And it’s an alternate history, in that people are really obsessed with literature. By which is meant classic British literature for the most part, I think. Shakespeare is really big. And there are a couple of really cool points around this part of the premise. Shakespeare animatronic coin-op machines. The original manuscript of Jane Eyre being on display and a page turned every couple of days, so regulars can read it… verrry slowly. I liked that idea. It may even be true. And then there was a Rocky Horror Picture Show version of.. was it Richard III? Very big on audience participation.

So then to add to this premise, there’s a ChronoCorps, which does time travelly-fixy-uppy stuff. The main character’s Dad is one of those guys. And she ends up dabbling in it herself, of course. He tends to retroactively fit things into the time stream. So that bananas were genetically created and then planted back in the past. And things like that.

Do I need to even mention the blimps and the dodos? Probably not. Steampunk and alternative history readers won’t be at all phased by those. And, really, minor point. And nothing to do with anything.

And the bad guy is like immortal or a wizard or something I don’t even.

AND THEN! The main char’s uncle is a crackpot mad scientist, but the lovable sort, you know, and he invents something to let you go into books and change the story. And if you change the story on the original manuscript OHNOES!

 
If this all sounds awesome to you, more power to you, go ahead and read it. If you’re just confused, then, believe me, reading it won’t make you less confused.

Aside from all of that, the story was not, I believe, very well-written. I was halfway through the book and I felt like we were still at the setting-up-the-story phase. Sometimes there’s be odd bits of text that.. well, I thought the main char was also narrating part of it, but how could she know what was going on? She sort of guessed things she wasn’t there for. And then when it came to the big climax, I was confused. Granted my mind was also wandering because I was bored.

And then I can also quibble that in one chapter there were two misuses of the word ‘onto’. And then later on there was the reverse problem with ‘near by’.

As for the characters themselves, I felt the main character was pretty detached from her emotions. Colleagues are killed and she doesn’t seem to really feel anything. She has conversations with a man she claims to love, but they’re all very analytical conversations. She’s even pretty detached and third person narraty when she’s giving a report to her superiors about something that went down. I mean, narraty in a pseudo-literary sort of way, not a detailed-police-report kind of way.

Apparently there are more books about this main character, whose name is Thursday Next, which totally reminds me..

The names in here are stupid! And none more stupid than Jack Schitt.

Before I close, I probably shouldn’t neglect the Crimean War. Which is still going on. But I know nothing about the real Crimean War. Except there was one. So. Yea.

In summation, not the worst thing I’ve ever read, but possibly the most uneven hodgepodge thing I’ve ever read. And I will not be reading another thing about Thursday Next. And probably not another Jasper Fforde either.

My Thoughts
Far from the flying visit to Egypt which encompassed the last couple of chapters of Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos, Egypt is the main setting for this book. Theodosia and her mother have set out on an archaeological expedition to discover the temple of Thutmose III before someone else can locate and get the credit for it. In addition to this, Theo has brought along some of the powerful Egyptian artifacts she’s come into possession of through the course of the series, with the intention of returning them to their rightful guardians.

The journey into Egypt is full of period detail, most of which seems reasonably historically accurate based on my own limited knowledge of Egyptian-British history and some quick internet research. Theodosia finds herself in the midst of some political unrest, with the Egyptian Nationalist party protesting and agitating for the British colonial rule to end. This is of limited interest to her, as her own tasks occupy her thoughts and provide her with plenty to worry about.

Because Theo’s mother is not ‘in the know’ with respect to her involvement with various secret societies and ancient magics, the book’s plot develops along parallel lines even moreso than in previous installments, where Theo’s time with her parents was more incidental. So part of the time we spend with Mrs. Throckmorton on the “dig”. Her lack of interest in following any sort of procedure or, apparently, any archaeological methods is rather more Tomb Raider than not — not atypical for the period, not unforeshadowed, but surprising to the reader and also to Theodosia herself. This is also the first time we really see Theodosia spend any extended time with one of her parents, and I was left with an uneasy feeling from the interactions with her mother.

But that may just be par for the course: I get an uneasy feeling when Theodosia deals with almost any adult in this series, including her parents, something which continues through this volume. Whether or not this is purposeful on the part of LaFevers I’m not sure, but the only adult character I’ve been able to accept at face value is Theodosia’s grandmother. All the others seem to have their own hidden agenda with the potential of turning out to be traitorous evildoers at any moment.

Her child-companions do not present this problem, and Theo acquires a new one very early on in this book, the Egyptian donkey boy Gadji whom she ‘hires’ as a servant. I admit that I spent the first third of the book bracing myself for either Theo’s brother or her street-urchin friend Sticky Will to pop out of nowhere and it was a relief when they did not. Gadji is necessarily less developed than either of those two boys, but his arrival is handled well and his participation is not heavy handed.

The book does an excellent job in forwarding the ongoing plot with new revelations and clues while also providing a story which wraps up by the final chapter. I certainly wouldn’t recommend jumping into the series on this book, but the point is you probably could. There are also quite a few nice little bits sprinkled in (Habiba, for one — I could have stood to see more of her) and one or two things that I thought could have used more explanation (the wedjadeen’s insistence upon a male pharaoh — since we know there is precedent otherwise). But overall it was a strong installment; the decision to change the setting was wise, as the middle of a continuing series can bog down and this kept things from feeling stale.

In Short
As we become more embroiled in the ongoing plot, the Theodosia series continues to improve from its so-so beginnings. This entry in the series shifts its setting from London to Egypt, meaning that a number of recurring characters do not appear — a wise choice on the part of LaFevers, who resisted what must have been a real temptation to have one or two of them pop up to lend a hand. It’s unclear if the new characters introduced here will have a continuing role in the series, but they were interesting enough that I can hope for their return. We also get a more revealing glimpse of Theodosia’s mother, which felt as if it might be setting up for conflict later on. The introduction of new players in the game and the new setting helps build this volume to a satisfying conclusion while still driving the whole of the series toward a climax that feels as if it must come relatively soon.

eARC was provided by netGalley. Theodosia and the Last Pharaoh will be available in April, 2011.

My Thoughts
I had a tough time finding full-length books with the word ‘Halloween’ in the title. There were lots of picture books and lots of early reader books, but to my great surprise, there were pretty much no adult books (with the exception of Agatha Christie’s Halloween Party) and even more shocking, no YA books either! Children’s chapter books supplied a few, including this one. I was attracted by the star-studded author list and the promise of stories from said authors which I probably hadn’t read.

I was disappointed to discover that quite a few of the tales in this book are actually just chapters pulled bodily from longer works – “The Baddest Witch in the World, “A Halloween to Remember”, “The Witch’s Eye”, “The Ghost in the Attic”. As a taste of the books they serve well, but they’re clearly just parts of a longer story which isn’t present in this book.

The remaining stories varied in setting and quality. The worst of the lot, the nearly incomprehensible “Witch Girl”, is the story of a family traveling to a new home who encounter a ‘young girl’ who claims to be a witch and to be entrapped by witches. After the previous story, which featured a five year old Ramona Quimby, I was primed to assume that a ‘young girl’ was probably ten or less years in age. Imagine my surprise when one of the adult(?) male characters in the story abruptly announced his intention to marry the ‘young girl’ he’d met a mere ten minutes prior. I certainly hope she wasn’t actually ten! The rest of the story was poorly plotted with no real sense of danger or… anything. It was just blah.

Of the others, the two which stood out in my mind are Madeleine L’Engle’s “Poor Little Saturday”, a weird little tale which seems to involve magic, but which also felt a bit to me like an hallucination on the part of the narrator; and Paul Fleischman’s “The Man of Influence”, about a sculptor who accepts a commission from a man who may not actually be a man.

In Short
Newbery-winning authors, however much I may disagree with the taste of the selection committee, are usually good writers. Certainly this book, which is about 20 years old and seemed to focus on writers with well-established careers, has plenty of good stories in it. But a large number of them were simply book excerpts, and none of them seemed to be ‘new’. As something to read aloud to a class it may be good, but otherwise I’d recommend reading the actual full-length books by these authors rather than this compilation. In the end, the only thing I really took away was an intense urge to reread all of the Ramona books.

Even without a maniacal scarecrow, a Sunnydale Halloween is a truly horrific happening. There are enough zombies and vampires about, ready to party hearty and eat some brains, to keep the Slayer and her friends up all night.

And then the rain starts to fall…

Review:
I’ve had my eye on Halloween Rain for a while, and this month’s theme provided me with the perfect chance to read it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t anything to get excited about.

The story is set in the first season, after the episode “The Pack,” since former principal Mr. Flutie (eaten by some hyena-possessed students in that episode) is dead and buried. Itâ€s also Halloween, which is a problem, as Buffy was not in Sunnydale for Halloween of her tenth-grade year. I mean, I didnâ€t conduct an exhaustive search for confirmation that she transferred in the spring, but Iâ€m pretty sure that is the case.

Anyway, thereâ€s apparently a legend in town that says to stay away from scarecrows on rainy Halloweens, because they come alive. After hearing about this from Willow and Xander, a memory niggles at Giles until he works out a connection between scarecrows and Samhain, who is referred to as “the dark lord,” the spirit of Halloween,” and “the pumpkin king.” While Buffy is off fighting a slew of zombies in the graveyard, Giles prepares a bunch of symbols and wards and stuff to fight Samhain. Thereâ€s a battle in a field, a barn burns down with Samhain trapped inside, and Buffy wins. The end. Yawn.

The humdrum nature of the plot is really nothing new for a Buffy media tie-in novel; usually the main draw of these is how well the writers capture the characters†voices. Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder went on to write many more Buffy books, but Iâ€m sure this was their first, as itâ€s only the second of the series, published in 1997 (before the season two episode “Halloween” established that demons are actually not very interested in the holiday). As a result, their success with the characters is hit or miss.

A lot of Buffyâ€s dialogue is cheesy and her thoughts rather vapid. Like this one, for example:

If she didnâ€t start hanging with her friends more, they might adopt a new Slayer as their bud. Or not, since there werenâ€t any others.

On the other hand, the Xander/Willow dynamic is conveyed pretty well, and there is one brief, simple exchange that wouldâ€ve been fully at home in the show.

“It gets worse,” Willow said, and tugged on Xanderâ€s hand.

“I hate worse,” Xander grumbled.

The authors also seem to have a fondness for the phrase “clone that thought,” since itâ€s used at least three times.

I can forgive a lame plot if the characters are written well, but Halloween Rain is a success in neither category.

Update: I have since rewatched the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “The Witch,” in which Buffy tries out for the cheerleading squad. As K points out, typically this would be held in the fall and, lo, a sign at the event specifies the year as 1996. Sooooo…. maybe season one is meant to span an entire school year after all.

For poor Theodosia, however, surprises abound. She spends most of her time at the Museum of Legends and Antiquities in London. There, all the artifacts that her parents dig up around the world are put on display and studied. But what her parents can’t see—and what Theodosia can—is the curses and black magic still attached to the ancient pieces. And it’s up to Theo to keep it all under control. Quite a task for an eleven-year-old girl!

Then Theo’s mother brings home the Heart of Egypt—a legendary amulet belonging to an ancient tomb. Theodosia’s skills will certainly be put to the test, for the curse attached to it is so vile and so black, it threatens to bring down the entire British Empire! Theodosia will have to call upon everything she’s ever learned in order to prevent the rising chaos from destroying her country—and herself!

Review:
Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos is like a sandwich. You might assume I mean that it starts and ends strong but has a disappointing middle, but I actually mean just the opposite.

1906, London. Theodosia Throckmorton, age eleven, is cleverer than most. Her parents work at the Museum of Legends and Antiquities, specializing in Egyptian artifacts. Theodosia claims many of these items are cursed, though no one else ever notices this fact, and describes the spell preparations she uses to nullify the curses before they do any damage. For a while, I regarded her as an unreliable narrator because I couldn’t tell whether we were supposed to believe that this was all true or if it was all an elaborate game of make-believe devised by an intelligent, lonely girl; many of her spells involve rather mundane ingredients like bits of string, after all.

When confirmation of the existence of curses as well as Theodosia’s talent for detecting them comes from adults in The Brotherhood of the Chosen Keepers, I began to enjoy the story much more. She gets involved with the Brotherhood after tracking men whom she suspects of having stolen the valuable artifact the Heart of Egypt from her parents’ museum. It turns out that this artifact brings a curse upon the nation responsible for removing it from its tomb and that Germans facilitated its removal by Theodosia’s mother in order to bring chaos upon Britain. To forestall plagues, famine, and the like it must be returned to its original resting place. The whole middle section, in which Theodosia enlists the aid of her little brother and a pickpocket named Sticky Will to get back the Heart of Egypt is pretty entertaining, if improbable.

Alas, things take a turn for the ridiculous when the leader of The Brotherhood asks the eleven-year-old Theodosia to convince her parents to take her to Egypt so that she can put the Heart of Egypt back where it belongs. And she can’t tell them what’s up or have any backup, since all the other Brotherhood agents are injured or elsewhere. Nevermind that a group of murderous Germans wants it back or anything. The final few chapters are pretty tiresome, full of scenes of evading the bad guys and Theodosia reminding readers over and over of her assigned task. Everything wraps up exactly as one would expect, of course.

Another thing that bothered me a lot at first was the writing. A superfluous mention of “frocks and pinafores” gave off the distinctive aroma of “someone trying really hard to sound British,” so I checked and, yes, LaFevers is an American. After a while it ceased to bother me as much, but every time Theodosia said “smashing” I did cringe a bit inside.

I went from being dubious, to being pleased, to being rather bored throughout the course of this story. There are currently two more books in the series, with a fourth due out next spring, and at first I thought I wouldn’t bother with them, then I thought I would, and now I am not sure. There’s definitely a lot of potential here, but the execution is uneven. Perhaps what is needed is for Theodosia to have a team to work with; those parts were much more interesting than when she was alone. Now that she’s become an honorary member of the Brotherhood and grown closer to her brother, such an outcome seems possible. I suppose this means I’ve convinced myself to read at least one more and see how it goes.

Interestingly, when I read that she was the daughter of the museum’s curator, I thought that meant her mother was curator. I’m not sure why I thought that, but I was definitely surprised when it turned out to be her father. I shouldn’t have been. I knew it was 1906.

This book pretty quickly lost my interest. Theodosia was sneaking around the museum and I didn’t care. It’s not that I don’t like her. I do rather like her. It was more interesting when she was interacting with people. Except even that didn’t help after a certain point.

She has a brother, who I can’t even remember was older or younger. I thought older, but then he acted younger. Maybe they’re even twins. I don’t know. And she meets up with an orphan, street urchin, pickpocket. Because every London in the early 1900s has to have at least one. They made things mildly more interesting, for a time. Until she ditched them entirely.

I was nearly done with the book. More than 2/3rds of the way through, not quite to 3/4ths when it shocked me by announcing Part 2. Part 2? Really? Just because she was headed for a ship doesn’t mean you needed to split the book in half.

Speaking of the ship.. the Rosetta Maru? Nothing other than the name seemed remotely Japanese about it. It’s not the only weird name in the book, most of which seemed to have chosen or created for humor value. I don’t see what’s funny about Rosetta Maru. It’s just jarring.

To get closer to the realm of nitpicking, there’s one scene where Theodosia begs the use of an envelope. And then she seals it. How? Had glue on the envelopes been invented yet? (Wikipedia says barely, perhaps 10 years before.) Was it at all ladylike to be sticking her tongue out to lick it? Because she definitely didn’t ask the guy for a damp sponge to do the job. Don’t go being all vague and hand-wavey. I was paying attention!

In general, though, while I did like the main character, I found the whole thing rather dull. Maybe if I was closer to the target age of the books I wouldn’t. Maybe if I was a boy reading it I wouldn’t. I don’t know. It was a lot of action. Action I didn’t care about.

Apparently Theodosia has doubts about the loyalty of her parents (to her, to Britain), but I didn’t really believe she really doubted all that much. So I didn’t get a feel for any of the angst she was (and wasn’t) doing about it. And, surprise, guys she thought of one way turned out to not be who she thought they were.

It’s rather a shame I didn’t like it more, because it reminded me of Lloyd Alexander’s Vesper Holly series. A historical series about a girl who goes on adventures. Only his is funnier, and more interesting, and just better.

So I won’t be reading the next books in the series. No interest in doing so whatsoever.

My Thoughts
Though this series may have been mentioned to me before, I truly discovered it for the first time while standing in line at the bookstore vendor at the NH Library Association conference in May. There it was, lying on the table, looking very much like an adventure book with a female lead. Further perusal of the table revealed it wasn’t just a book, but a series, and unfortunately book 1 was not there for sale. Impulse buy thwarted!

The first book, Serpents of Chaos, was shortly acquired. The book introduces Theodosia Throckmorton, an intelligent girl with an unusual magical gift: not only can she sense and see curses that have been placed on people and objects, but she’s quite adept at figuring out how to remove them, as well. This is fortunate, because her father is the head curator at the Museum of Legends and Antiquities and her mother is an archaeologist. As a result, she finds herself constantly surrounded by objects infested with ancient Egyptian magic. Mostly hostile. And her parents haven’t the slightest idea.

During the course of the book, Theodosia finds that she isn’t the only person aware of the magical properties of these objects. We’re introduced to two warring factions — the evil Serpents of Chaos, and the seemingly good Brotherhood of the Chosen Keepers. I say seemingly because I just feel like in the end they’ll turn out to be evil too, or at least have an agenda that doesn’t quite mesh with hers.

In any case, the book itself was fine. The plot ended up a bit thin, mainly because of the need to introduce all of the characters — quite a bit of time was spent going back and forth between locations and providing information about what one expects will be the main settings of the series. Understandable, though perhaps not as seamlessly done as it could have been. And the settings themselves are marvelous; I love London, and the author did evoke a good feel for it as Theodosia walks (or is otherwise transported) from place to place.

Unfortunately, I didn’t come away with nearly as much engagement with the characters. The villains are as yet cardboard, and I still harbor too many suspicions of the Good Guy adults to feel safe to have any attachment to them. Theodosia’s two child companions, Sticky Will (Street Urchin and Thief with a Heart of Gold) and her brother Henry (Pesty Brother and Schoolboy) are not developed enough to transcend their stereotypical backgrounds. Mr. and Mrs. Throckmorton do not fare much better, being very uneven — they seem almost aggressively uninterested in anything Theo has to say to the point where it strains credulity; one would expect that most academics would at least be mildly interested in a child of their own who seemed so interested in their work. Theo’s grandmother showed some hints of promise, but she was not on camera enough to be certain. So that leaves Theo herself as the only person to receive enough depth to emerge from this book as a round character, one with motivations and interests which the reader has explored in detail. And perhaps that is enough, for a first book, but I rather wish it had been at least two.

On the other hand, the book was well-paced, and in spite of the constant scene shifts, the book manages to hang together as a whole, rather than feeling like several separate adventures shoved together. And it’s good enough for me to check out the second book, which should provide me with enough data to decide if I’m ultimately going to like the whole series or not.

In Short
Theodosia is interesting, smart and determined. It’s a shame that she couldn’t have a female child companion (by the end of the book it’s looking like her primary assistants will be two male children), or that the other female characters weren’t a bit more memorable or well developed, but one can’t have everything. This book mainly serves to set up what one assumes will be the central conflict of the series going forward and to introduce characters, but is not bad for all that. The idea is a good one and the pre-WWI British setting is a nice departure. This series has a good amount of potential to which it will hopefully live up.

So the hardest thing in reading this was I didn’t know where the original left off and the zombies began. It was easy to tell that anything relating to the zombies was new. All references in martial arts, new. Silly little changes like Crypts and Coffins (the original game I can’t immediately name) and Kiss Me Deer (that one I can name, but don’t know how to play), obviously new.

The characters, essentially the same as the original, I’m sure. The general plot, I’m sure the same. When Elizabeth goes from place to place to place, I’m pretty sure she did so in the original. When people get married, again, reasonably sure that was the same.

But other things, when the two ideas seem to intersect, or seem a little unreal, I’m not sure. Are the stupid innuendo jokes about balls in the original? How much puking was Elizabeth’s mom doing? Did Darcy seriously cripple that guy? Wickham, was it? I find it rather unlikely he was traveling around on a bed in the original, but.. how do I know?

And still other things, I know they were new, but I wonder what they were replacing in the original. In specific, Charlotte (was it?) gets stricken with the zombie disease and gets herself quickly married to some guy, Collins? Lots of C names. Very annoying. And then she continues to partake of society while she slowly turns into a zombie. And he doesn’t seem to notice. No one seems to notice except Elizabeth. And then the C guy commits suicide.

So in the original, was she pregnant before she got married? Did she die in childbirth? Did he then kill himself?

Is any of that guessing correct? No idea.

As you can tell, I had a real problem with names. People had first names, and they had surnames, and there were several Miss Bennetts, of course. Which I may not have even just spelled correctly. But then they might also be called ‘the Longbourne ladies’ and it was just very hard for me at first to tell anyone apart or keep anyone straight. So it was especially hard for me to get into it at the beginning, and to keep going. About the halfway mark, it wasn’t as hard to keep going. I guess I finally got into the story. Or.. some story. I don’t even know.

My favorite character? Elizabeth’s father. Until there’s a reference to him boffing a bunch of women. Which I suspect was added. But, again, no real idea if I’m right or not.

Okay, so the zombies themselves. They’re zombies. And you know what, I’m not really into zombies. Or zombie movies. The new vampires they’re not. So in the spirit of zombie movies, there’s gore, there’s unrealistic fight scenes, and there’s attempts at humor.

At the end of the book, there’s a discussion guide. Here’s a question not in the discussion guide:

* Elizabeth and her sisters feel pity for the zombies, embarassment when a friend is turning into one, and even spare the life of a zombie infant. Ninjas, on the other hand, Elizabeth disembowels and kills for no reason at all except to prove her competence as a fighter. Do you think this dichotomy is due to racism, classism, or something else?

The book draws in Japanese and Chinese references, as all the zombie fighters have gone to the Orient to train. One woman in particular, Catherine(?), thinks her Japanese training far superior. Elizabeth is pretty biased towards her own Chinese training.

Why then, does Elizabeth, with her Shaolin training, fight with a katana?

Why does one of the houses have nice Japanese gardens and whatnot, and a ‘coy pond’?

My answer? I think the author (no, not Jane Austen, the other one) has watched too many zombie and martial arts films, and doesn’t quite know what he’s talking about.

One final thought: too much vomit and other bodily fluids. They’re not funny. Not even the first time. Especially not in quantity. Author has also been watching too much SNL.

Long story short, this would’ve made a better short story. Or a direct-to-video movie.

Don’t read it. Seriously. Consider this my holiday gift to you. I have just saved you several hours of time that you can put to better use.

So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy.

What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield. Can Elizabeth vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry? Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you’d actually want to read.

Review:
The plot of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is generally well known. Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy meet, do not get along, form incomplete and incorrect notions of each other, see the error of their ways, and eventually end up living happily ever after. To this scenario, add some zombies, toilet humor, and a whole lot of innuendo and you have Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Except that’s not entirely true, because somehow by adding more, Seth Grahame-Smith has robbed the original of nearly every bit of charm it possesses.

The version I read was the deluxe heirloom edition, which, in evident response to criticism about insufficient zombie presence, includes “new words, lines, paragraphs, and all-new scenes of ultraviolent mayhem throughout.” The black-and-white illustrations of the original edition have also been replaced by color paintings. Judging by what I’ve seen of the former, this is a vast improvement, even though Elizabeth looks to be wearing the same white gown throughout the entire novel. In the preface, Grahame-Smith describes how he came to be involved in the project (he was unfamiliar with the novel until the idea was suggested, and this definitely shows) as well as how he wrote it by obtaining an electronic copy of Austen’s novel and inserting his own text (appropriately colored red), vowing to change at least one thing on every page. Sometimes the changes are indeed just a word here or there, and sometimes entire excursions to a nearby village to fend off some “manky dreadfuls” are shoehorned in between two paragraphs. Not content to merely add text, Grahame-Smith seems to delight in removing it, as well. Among the casualties are many of the cleverest examples of Austen’s snark, especially those that reveal character, like when Austen writes of Mr. Bingley’s sisters that they “indulged their mirth for some time at the expense of their dear friend’s vulgar relations.”

To fit the story, the characters have changed as well. Some—like Jane and Mr. Collins—manage to emerge essentially unaltered, but the leads are very different. Elizabeth is bloodthirsty, quick to consider violence as a response to dishonor, and at one point yanks out the still-beating heart of a ninja she has just defeated and takes a bite. Ew! Darcy not only has zombie-fighting prowess, he’s now a lecherous git. He’s scandalously rude to Miss Bingley, whose transparent advances he fended off in the original with implacable politeness, and often makes lewd remarks, like, “On the contrary, I find that balls are much more enjoyable when they cease to remain private.” Again I say, “Ew!” I used to adore this couple and now I don’t like either of them! Other crass (and needless) adjustments find both Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Gardiner engaged in extramarital affairs, Mrs. Bennet afflicted with recurring bouts of nerve-induced vomiting, and Wickham grievously injured seemingly for no other purpose than to allow for repeated references to his newfound incontinence.

By and large, the zombie encounters are boring and pointless. In this regard, I think Grahame-Smith might actually have been better served by altering the story even further. If the undead menace had progressed to such an extent that our protagonists were forced to undertake a final climactic battle, for example, then their presence might’ve been leading up to something. As it is, the biggest effect the zombies have on the plot is in providing explanations for the sudden departure of Bingley’s party after the Netherfield ball and Charlotte Lucas’ acceptance of a marriage proposal from Mr. Collins. Grahame-Smith invents a number of “dear friends” of the Bennets to serve as zombie fodder, but these passages—like the Christmas visit from an entire zombified family—are so embarrassingly banal I truly hope nobody reading this book without foreknowledge of the original thinks Austen’s work contained anything similar.

To sum up: this is exceedingly awful. Grahame-Smith butchers the characters of Pride and Prejudice more effectively than a horde of zombies ever could. I would almost go so far as to say that I outright hated it, but every so often, an untouched bit of Austen would shine through the muck and make me smile for an instant. Now I’m going to try very hard to forget I ever read this.

My Thoughts
When this book first came out, I resolved not to read it. The original Pride and Prejudice is my favorite book of all time, coming as close as any book has to my idea of perfection: lots of witty, interesting characters saying pithy things to one another and a happy ending to boot. I love it well enough to hate the vast majority of sequels Iâ€ve tried, because they simply couldnâ€t live up to the original, or they took liberties to which I objected.

At any rate, my resolve weakened against PPZ. The author had kept a great deal of the original text, and the juxtaposition of zombies with the social machinations of the original might be, as one of Austenâ€s characters would put it, exceedingly diverting.

The premise is this: about a half-century before our story opens, zombies suddenly began appearing to menace the living. They are witless creatures, not impossible to destroy or even to distract, but doggedly determined in their quest for brains. Zombies seem to have two sources: the already dead may rise again, and the living may be infected by exposure (such as being bitten). In response to this, the army has mobilized, and also the general citizenry has begun to train and arm itself. Even women have received some training, including women of quite high station. The opening of a new economic door to women has seemed to have an effect on society: crudeness and innuendo is more common and there is a great deal more violence.

Itâ€s clear from reading that the author has put at least a little thought into how this situation might change polite society. Unfortunately, in many cases it seems to have been very little. Itâ€s hard to tell whether this is meant to be a “serious” retelling of the story or if itâ€s just meant to be a silly parody. Different rules apply in the latter case, but just enough effort has been made to maintain the integrity of the plot and story that the argument falls flat — this is not the literary equivalent of Scary Movie. And that makes it all the more galling in the cases where it’s abundantly clear that something has been inserted only because Grahame-Smith just couldn’t resist and not because it made sense in either the original or the re-imagining.

I get the sense, too, that the author didnâ€t have a great deal of respect for(or understanding of?) some of the original characters. In several places, Austenâ€s original text is included, but the speaker (or writer) is not the same as the original book – and yet theyâ€re using the exact same phrasing. This is just sheer laziness on the part of the author. The work is almost bookended by the two of the most egregious examples of this: first, where Caroline Bingley takes over some of Darcy’s lines in an early exchange with Elizabeth, and then at the end, where a letter originally sent by Mr. Collins is penned instead by Colonel Fitzwilliam. In neither case are either pair of characters in any way similar and so the reassignment of words is out of character even within the context of this new book.

Similar problems arise when Austen’s text is revised for no apparent purpose beyond dumbing it down for the modern reader, something which happens at multiple points. A single example here will suffice to illustrate the danger of this.

Original:
“No. It would have been strange if they had. But I make no doubt, they often talk of it between themselves. Well, if they can be easy with an estate that is not lawfully their own, so much the better. I should be ashamed of having one that was only entailed on me.”

Zombies:
“No; it would have been strange if they had; but I make no doubt, they often talk of it between themselves. Well, if they can be easy with an estate that is not lawfully their own, so much the better. I should be ashamed of putting an old woman out of her home.”

In the original text, we refer back to Mrs. Bennett’s refusal to admit that the entailment of her husband’s estate makes sense or is legitimate. Further, we have a joke: of course the entailment is pefectly legal, that is the entire problem. In the Zombie version, even though there is no zombie-related information conveyed here, the text is altered: the joke is removed and the reader is not reminded that Mrs. Bennett is ridiculous or of the inheritance situation, but instead is apparently meant to feel bad for her.

There are examples of this sort of careless editing all through the text, toning down the snarkiness of the dialogue and the narrator in some sort of misguided quest to make it more simple. In many cases, these changes cause anachronisms to creep in.

In addition to these changes, there are still more points of fail.

The illustrations: These are just awful. The clothing, which is not particularly mentioned in the text as being different in most cases, is just odd looking. Not at all correct for the time period or even sensible allowing adaptations for fighting and training.

The “Oriental” stuff: I’m not even sure where to begin with all of this. Lady Catherine with ninjas is, I’m sure, the vision that made the insertion of all of this stuff irresistible. And I wouldn’t object to it all overmuch (I leave it to someone else to complain about the potential Racefail aspects of it) were there not such a big deal made about Chinese training versus Japanese training. Because even to my non-expert eyes, it was clear to me that the author was making a distinction he was not prepared to follow through with: Chinese-trained Elizabeth fights with a Japanese sword, there are random bits of Chinese culture at Darcy’s supposedly Japan-inspired home, and so forth. If the author was actually Jane Austen, one might suppose these cross-contaminations were a subtle jibe, but unfortunately, based on the rest of the book, Grahame-Smith is incapable of such a thing.

In Short
This was actually a very clever idea, and I think it could have been very good, with just a bit more effort expended on research and editing. Unfortunately, as it stands, this was definitely a failure, as a parody (not enough liberty was taken) and as a true rewrite (it was too slap-dash and sloppy). I don’t quite regret reading it, but I definitely won’t ever be reading it again, nor will I be picking up the next book, even though it’s to have a different author.