2009 book 70

Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
I was really excited and bemused on first hearing about this book, which puts zombies into P&P, and was looking forward to reading it . . . then I saw an excerpt online that just seemed silly and wasn't so sure. However, the first chapter totally converted me--Grahame-Smith does a great job of integrating the zombies into the story--it's not just like a paragraph inserted here and there, but instead zombies are inserted into everything! Like the first chapter ends with "The business of Mr. Bennett's life was to keep his daughters alive. The business of Mrs. Bennett's was to get them married." It's very funny. Oh, also there are ninjas.

I did have some minor beefs--due to a printing error, I was missing a 30 page chunk in whcih one character apparently becomes a zombie, and I'm dying to know the circumstances! Also, Grahame-Smith does have a little too loose of a hand over the majority of the story--he loses most of its subtlety, has way too many innuendos involving balls, and some of his changes to the end are pretty needless. Still, it was a very entertaining read, and I loved seeing the Bennett girls as total badasses. B+.