Pride and Prejudice and Zombies / by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

[Kim Allen Scott]

One of the more interesting, and to some, frightening aspects of our mad dash to digitize everything is the fact that text is no longer static.  The fluidity with which text can be altered, converted, cut, pasted, and rearranged is certainly something to consider for anyone who thinks that e-book readers will continue the practice of deep reading among humankind.  Without a fixed text original, there is simply no telling how your reading experience has been altered and shaped by those who formatted the tale into zeros and ones.

So much for pondering the negative side of the issue.  The fun side is the possibilities of easily producing literary mash-ups like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an entertaining little story that combines Jane Austen’s classic romance with Seth Grahame-Smith’s “bone crunching zombie mayhem.”  Elizabeth Bennet is a headstrong young upper-class woman who is initially put off by the imperious manner of Mr. Darcy, but learns towards the end of the tale he is really a caring a loving gentleman.  That much of the story you already know.  What you will find in this book is how romance can evolve against a background of wandering undead searching for human prey, and how England has learned to deal with a plague that reanimates corpses and, once they bite, converts the living into joining their deadly horde.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and found contemplating a zombie apocalypse so much more fun than thinking about the death of the printed book.