Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

I finished reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies a few weeks ago. I enjoyed it, although I am not quite ready to start a jane Austen or contemporary horror reading marathon. I have to admit that adding zombies to Regency England did improve the book.

I hadn't looked at or even thought much about Pride and Prejudice since we read it in High School English class. At that time, I was very impressed with jane Austen's writing style, however I wasn't really grabbed by the narrative.
Some plot elements made absolute no sense to me at the time;

I couldn't imagine why a large military force assembled in Hertfordshire.Were they expecting a Spanish invasion of the home counties?

Why were so many officers so interested in the Bennett sisters? I think they were prettier than most local young women, but egads they were a boring lot.

How did Wickham the cad got off way too easy (beyond being stuck with Lydia)

How long can anyone read so many pages about a brace of shallow sisters talking about the next ball, egged on by their endless chattering mother? No wonder why Mr. Bennett was so tuned out all the time.

Adding a shot of zombie mayhem resolved these dilemmas nicely,I thank Jane's posthumous co-author for that.

The British army is garrisoned in Hertfordshire to battle the zombies that have infested the region(naturally!).

The sisters' mastery of the deadly shoalin arts,along with their striking good looks would make them irresistible to any man, no doubt. The officers are fascinated with the Shoalin martial arts since the more proper women in England tend to take up Japanese Ninja training. Elizabeth gets several opportunities to show the superiority of her skills, both against zombies and ninjas.

Wickham finds his end as an incontinent quadriplegic, and he’s still stuck with the brain-dead younger sister.

Battles with brain-eating zombies nicely break up the mannered bourgeoisie conversations.

As a bonus, the novel also explains the British enthusiasm for cauliflower; you can use your cauliflower patch as bait to attract brain-famished zombies!

The contemporary author really did a wonderful job of twisting and tweaking Austin's language to smash zombies and ninja violence into the plot line.


My only negative comment is that the zombie motif staled well before the end of the novel.

All said, I give Pride and Prejudice and Zombies three and one half stars * * * 1/2 out of five. Three stars for Jane and one half star for Seth.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.