Book One: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

After reading this book by Seth Grahame-Smith, I feel like zombies ate my brain. It was really hard for me to muster up the courage to start reading the desecration of a most beloved novel. I was afraid it would be bad. And it was.

Having read Pride and Prejudice at least twenty times myself, I knew which parts were written by Grahame-Smith. I give him credit for his parts, as he is not that bad of a writer (and no where near Twilight writing status). However, his writing style clashed horribly with that of Austen's. Had he taken the time to write the novel in his own words, it would have flowed better. I do not know why he kept Jane Austen's words as he did...it reminded me of those people in classes who tried to make a quote their own by using a thesaurus to change the word, but not the meaning.

Pride and Prejudice was extremely butchered. There were times where I felt lost because I knew what was coming next, but it seemed like it was skipped over completely or moved forward a bit. There were quite a few places where Grahame-Smith zombie-fied something, only for a couple paragraphs down for it to be about what it originally was, making the passage further confusing.

That said, I know I should have read another zombie book first, where I did not have preconception about the plot. It's a lot like reading the book then going to watch the movie, which, it turns out, has nothing to do with the book. Actually, had this book been like this, I would probably have been more inclined to like it. It was more like going to watch the movie, only to find they've done a poor job at getting the point across and losing something at the end.

This was my first time reading anything about zombies and I've already warned my sister she should not being going into this as blindly as I did. (Not to mention the second night of reading it gave me night mares about Zombies, something my true crime has never done.) If I ever come across a book Grahame-Smith has written by himself, depending on the subject of course, I would be more inclined to read it than not.

All in all, I would say if you love Pride and Prejudice, don't read it and if you love zombies and never have, do. It's a good way of getting a classic read by an audience that otherwise would look the other way. Personally, I had to force myself to finish it (kind of like reading that had to be done for school) and I have no plans to read Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters until my book collection has been exhausted.