It is a truth universally acknowledged...

[stubbleupdate]

...that Pride and Prejudice is one of the more adapted, aped and otherwise adopted texts in our great cultural library. I mean, there's Lost in Austen, Bridget Jones' Diary, The BBC Adaptation (bought it in Zavvi's firesale. Might watch it sometime), there's Bride and Prejudice, there's I Love You Because, there's Armstrong and Miller's take on it, etc etc.

Of course, the fact that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a novel adaptation with the insertion of a Zombie subplot should be as Bill as the hills, but it was also made into a graphic novel.
These pages are all out of sequence and not connected in any narrative. Just things that I snagged from a USA Today article.





Reading it is... slow progress. But then, I always find that reading Austen is like pushing a really full shopping trolley - it's an almighty push to get started, but once you do build up momentum it's difficult to stop.

Has anybody else picked it up?

Comments

[newnumber6]

I read the novel version and was sadly disappointed.

Same criticism I have of Austen's work normally: needs more zombies.

More seriously, I was disappointed at the "we've also all been trained in martial arts and swordsmanship" crutch, which turned the story very much into "Pride and Prejudice, except every so often a zombie attack strikes out of nowhere and they kick ass and go right back to the story."

To use a comics reference, I would have far, far preferred a "What If" approach as opposed to an Elseworlds. In Elseworlds (generally speaking, there are exceptions for both types), they make some change to the setting, but generally the same set ups and stories get told. Batman in the 1900s is still Batman, has a Catwoman, etc. In "What If", they take some specific change and then everything develops from that point.

So what PaPaZ was the Elseworlds approach. You could google the plot of the original PaPaZ and you'd know pretty well exactly how the story would go, with the only surprises being how they insert the zombies and ninja fights. But what I wanted from PaPaZ was for the zombie apocalypse to start during the plot, maybe even derail the plot completely, have the characters not know how to cope right off the bat, and certain aspects of the original story coming back (maybe compressed in time, instead of taking place over months or years they take place over a single night where the zombies are out in force, maybe since they're being forced to hole up together and so they can't avoid each other) but with nothing being guaranteed. I guess most of all I wanted the zombies to have a POINT to the story, not just being a gimmicky afterthought.

I imagine the graphic novel adaptation would be somewhat more tolerable but I can't see myself picking it up.

[stubbleupdate]

To me, it's a good idea in small doses.

The line about It was Mrs Bennet's job to find a good marriage for her daughter.s It was Mr Bennet's job to keep them alive is funny.

As a joke stretched over a whole novel it's very, very thin, especially when the subplot is just shoehorned in awkwardly.

[icon_uk]

Yeah, I think that's what's put me off reading it too. I'm not a huge fan of Jane Austen at the best of times, but throwing zombies into the mix was more of a Poochie moment than anything else.

[minervasolo.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, it almost became a wall banger when chipmunks and a raccoon made an appearance. I was already getting annoyed at the jerks in quality between Austen and the zombie author (can't remember the name, can't be arsed to look it up), but errors like that just made the gimmick a little too transparent. There were nice ideas, like Charlotte's slow change, but there was very little continuity or consistency in the added parts, and very few attempts to even vaguely integrate them into the original plot.

(sorry, rant. You have no idea how much those chipmunks pissed me off. Well, you probably do now.)

I haven't read it, but Jane and the Damned by Janet Mullany sounds like the kind of thing you wanted from PaPaZ.

[newnumber6]

I'm guessing it's some sort of "chipmunks and raccoons don't exist in England" issue? Being a North American I never even noticed, just one of those things I don't think about, but I can see how that would rankle once you ARE aware of it.

And Charlotte's change was about the only thing I found interesting about the book.

[icon_uk]

It's the like Disney's Winnie the Pooh, which throws in a beaver, a porcupine, a possum, a gopher and a turtle as natural fauna when Britain doesn't have any of them (Tigger, Kanga and Roo, are at least explained in the books as being outsiders)

[bruinsfan]

I'm willing to cut them a bit of slack, however, given that the animals in question are sentient, able to speak, and wear clothes. Clearly zoological verisimilitude was not high on the list of priorities...

[icon_uk]

True enough, but AA Milne didn't even create them, so why did Disney add the wrong continents animals in?

[sandoz_iscariot]

More seriously, I was disappointed at the "we've also all been trained in martial arts and swordsmanship" crutch, which turned the story very much into "Pride and Prejudice, except every so often a zombie attack strikes out of nowhere and they kick ass and go right back to the story."

The "also, they're ninjas" subplot was the worst part of the book--so jarring and racist and unnecessary.