Review: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a novel idea that combines two really awesome things: Jane Austen and zombies. It's a really great idea that has sold Grahame-Smith a lot of books and added to the current zombie and Jane Austen fads. If you really love zombies and Jane Austen, then this is a good book for you. On the other hand, once you get past the novelty of the combination, the book as a whole is shallow and Grahame-Smith doesn't add anything particularly meaningful.

The Good: Zombies! The action starts right away and it's a light-hearted spoof that can be fun to read so long as you don't take it too seriously. The illustrations are also great, in that satisfying zombie-gore sort of way.

The Bad: If you've already read Pride and Prejudice, there isn't a whole lot that is new. 85 percent of the original text is still there. It gets pretty predictable when the zombies are going to appear, pretty much whenever the plot of the original gets slow. Then, towards the end, ninjas appear in the plot too. Hammering the random zombie attack note gets a little old as a plot device, so lets add some ninjas!

Bottom Line: I enjoyed Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It was a fun afternoon's read. But I didn't take it seriously and the gimmick of adding zombies gets a little predictable and old without adding much to the actual plot.