Mix some Samuri hero film epics with some of the lesser versions of the wuxia movies into a little Jane Austen, sprinkle with zombies, and this is what you end up with. Entertaining on the whole, annoying in parts, it still took up my interest for the hours required to read it.

Of course, the bones of the book are the hallowed pages of Pride & Prejudice, only this time the Bennett Sisters are also sword wielding, musket toting "brides of Death", sworn to protect their honor and guard their homeland from the unmentionable hordes. Small changes to the story don't really affect it, and many of the additions made me laugh. My favorite quote is in the scene where Elizabeth first is invited to Lady Catharine De Bourgh's home. Lady Catharine is a famed swordswoman as well as Mr. Collins' overbearing patron, and she is described thusly:

"There mere stateliness of money or rank [Elizabeth] could witness without trepidation, but the presence of a woman who had slain ninety dreadfuls with nothing more than a rainsoaked envelope was an intimidating prospect indeed."

More to the point, when characters spar, they use fists, feet, and weapons as well as words.

Not every change to the original story made sense -- Mr. Collins's suicide when Charlotte succumbs to the plague was a toss in to all those P&P readers who wanted something to happen to him (I'd have preferred that if Charlotte had to be sacrificed, she could have eaten Mr. Collins. Then again, perhaps he lacked sufficient brains to be tempting.) Darcy's rudeness to Miss Bingley and Mr. Bennett's much broader insults to his wife, again, sops to the familiar reader, didn't really add to any humor. Although gratifying, that neither lady seemed in the least aware of it made the comments pointless and distracting.

Some of the preciousness in the added sections bothered me. Euphemisms like "exercise moisture" for perspiration, sexual jokes concerning the use of the word "Balls" and the phrase "English Parts", and a throw away remark that Miss Darcy sketched male nudes really seemed to stoop for humor, and came across as less clever satire and more straight to video teen sex comedy. They were out of tone with the more clever bits (and some were quite clever). It wasn't enough to add zombies and kung fu to P&P -- the authors had to add sex, too.

Most bothersome was the confusion about Japanese versus Chinese traditional fighting styles -- something easily researched on Wikipedia, for pete's sake, and familiar enough to the kind of geek who would tend toward reading this book -- really popped out as laziness on the author's part. This was such a prominent part of the book -- in fact, it informed much of the confrontations between Lady Catharine and Elizabeth -- that it merited 15 minutes of research. For example, a katana is a Japanese weapon, yet Elizabeth, proud of her Shaolin/Chinese training, uses it as her own. Yet the two fighting styles are shown as feuding, and the Chinese use straight swords (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, anyone?). Even someone with as shallow a knowledge as I have saw it as a mistake. A DUMB mistake that distracted from the rest.

The book also had a few clumsy typos (including confusing a "coy pond" with a "koi pond") that distracted me. Does Quirk Books employ no copyeditors? If they stand out to a casual reader like me, they certainly should have jumped out at any editor.

Still, the book is fun. The "reader's guide" in the back tries to play on the supposed irony of taking liberties with a serious piece of literature. The general attitude of the original -- certainly intended as comedy -- doesn't suffer from the addition of zombies. I'm curious if they will try to add clowns or ninjas into Emma next.




Hillary (USA: KY) (2010/11/11):
A very humorous take on Austen. And you never know, zombies might take over the world and this will come in handy.



neomety (Denmark) (2012/03/25):
Giving it away because it made me angry. Loved the original, but this is just a ruination of a wonderful book.