Zombie Slash

I should have posted a review of the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies prequel, Dawn of the Dreadfuls months ago. It was a wholly enjoyable book and I started reading it when it was released in March. For the delay, I cite personal reasons, although I think most Pride and Prejudice fans would agree. The problem: There is no Mr. Darcy.

Of course there isn’t. This is a prequel set before the characters are introduced to Mr. Favorite Literary Crush. But when I figured out he wasn’t in this book, I put it down and cried for a few months. Then took a deep breath, brought the book to the beach and loved it.

Of course I loved it. It’s funny zombie fiction. And it’s set in Regency England, where zombies aren’t just deadly, they’re an insult to good manners. The tight-lipped repulsion just leaps off the page.

Although it carries the same branding, P&P&Z: Dawn of the Dreadfuls is a very different sort of book from P&P&Z. Rather than a literary mash-up of Seth Grahame-Smith’s zombies and Jane Austen’s prose, the book is original fiction by Steve Hockensmith. I had never read his other books and, although it appears that he’s a newcomer to zombie-fic, his humorous historical fiction has received much praise. Hockensmith’s writing is accessible and engaging, bringing a lightness to the P&P&Z franchise that should make it attractive to those turned off by Jane Austen’s profuse punctuation and pontification.

Dawn of the Dreadfuls begins at a funeral, when the body rudely awakens and reminds Hertfordshire of the dormant zombie plague it ought not to mention. As the undead continue to stumble from their graves, Mr. Bennet is forced to train his five daughters to be ninja warriors like himself — with the help of the handsome, strapping Master Hawksworth. Despite the dearth of Mr. Darcy, Hockensmith creates plenty of male characters to match up with Austen’s swarm of females, each of them flawed in ways that thankfully allow the ladies to kick lots of zombie butt.

Unlike in P&P&Z, the zombies are not an after-thought — or perhaps a never-thought on the part of co-author Austen (a point that I suppose is debatable). The zombies in Dawn of the Dreadfuls are plentiful and, as in most zombie books, the horde size increases with the page number. The black and white engravings also help to bump up the zombie-quotient, although I would rate the gore in this book as slightly less than in P&P&Z.

Overall, P&P&Z: Dawn of the Dreadfuls is a fresh, fun zombie book: a historical rom-zom-com with ninjas too. I give it 4.5 brains out of 5.

Related Posts:
P&P&Z: Dawn of the Dreadfuls Book Trailer & Author Interview
Pride & Prejudice & Zombies Was Pretty Good

Zombie FUBAR is a forthcoming comic anthology of World War II zombie stories expected in Fall 2010. Considering the awesome World War II zombie art already featured on the website, this is going to be a spectacular read.

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Every year The Washington Post’s style section hosts a diorama competition. The primary rule: All characters must be Peeps. Pop culture and puns are strongly encouraged.

One of the semifinalists this year: “Peeps and Prejudice and Zombies” (no. 18) — awesome!

No zombies were found in this year’s winner. However, I might be willing to consider the main character in semifinalist “A Peep into Dr. Frankenstein’s Lab: Master It Lives!” (no. 27) undead.

The book trailer for the P&P&Z prequel, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls came out recently and it’s all kinds of awesome. I personally hadn’t decided whether or not to check out the book — this just might just have won me over.

EW.com has a great interview with Dawn of the Dreadfuls author Steve Hockensmith, who discusses the mixed critical reaction to the first Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith):

You see the lovahs and you see the hatahs. And yeah, there were definitely some haters out there, and I’m sure they’re still there. It’s something that I can totally understand, it’s not something I look askance at, at all. Somebody having a cynical reaction when they find out that something that really means a lot to them, their beloved ex, is about to be lovingly satirized. I can understand how people can be a little defensive about things that they feel are near and dear to their hearts, but I would say, having thrown all that out there, that I think a lot of those people were actually won over when they read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Not all of them. I would hope, actually, that some of the folks that weren’t won over, would actually respond better to my book, because it isn’t a mash-up. [From EW.com]

Hockensmith makes an excellent point: Most of the hatas were not fans of Jane Austen, and therefore hated the prose. Or, they were huge Austen fans, and hated zombies. If someone isn’t open to both aspects of the mash-up, it’s lost. Dawn of the Dreadfuls is a new thing entirely: Historical zombie fiction. Oh yes.

Needless to say, we’re totally psyched that Natalie Portman will produce and star in the upcoming Pride and Prejudice and Zombies film.

Here’s a quick Six-Degrees to Jane Austen: Natalie Portman played Queen Amidala in Star Wars, Episode I, in which Kiera Knightly played Sabe, who dressed as the queen. Kiera Knighly also played Elizabeth Bennet (the lead character) in the 2005 movie version of Pride and Prejudice. Not to mention, Natalie Portman totally kicks ass. Perfect casting, right?

Update, 12/3/09, 12:50PM: Our suspicions that this report was a little shady are confirmed. Author Seth Grahame-Smith confirms that the rumor is false and the adaptation of P&P&Z is to be a feature film. Either way, we are still hoping for some parody of the BBC miniseries — possibly the infamous lake scene? [The original post follows.]

According to reports based on the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Twitter feed, the zombie-romance-classic mashup will be adapted into a 6-part miniseries. As P&P&Z fans, we can’t wait to see this Regency-ninja-zombie thing done right!

The miniseries will evidently be produced by Deadline Productions, which seems relatively legit. We are, however, calling the report unconfirmed, since we’re unsure of the Twitter page’s authenticity. But IMDB and P&P&Z author Seth Grahame-Smith have mentioned a P&P&Z adaptation, and the Twitter page does have some pretty great concept art (as seen on the left of this post) — so, we’re going to go ahead and celebrate.

Anyone who is a fan of P+P-Z (i.e., the original Pride and Prejudice) knows that the most beloved adaptation is the 6-part 1995 Pride and Prejudice BBC miniseries starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle.

This begs the question of whether the miniseries will be produced as a parody of the much-loved BBC miniseries. We say, bring on the critical disdain!

Related: Check out our review of P&P&Z and our other P&P&Z-related posts.

If you dug the awesome art in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, you’ll be raving about the full color prints in the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Deluxe Edition, coming this October.

The deluxe edition will be hardcover, with 15 color prints of oil paintings commissioned for the book. Not only that, but it will have 30% MORE ZOMBIES, with new zombie mayhem added by author Seth Grahame-Smith.

As a preview of what’s coming, Irreference has released two prints, which you can print and use as you please.

We’re preordering now. Expect Regency England-themed zombie Halloween costumes.

Tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day, that special day of the year when you can just walk into a comic book store and walk out with free comics. Legally, that is.

There are some fantastic-looking comics among this year’s free offerings, such as Attack Of The Alterna-Zombies!, which features Jesus Hates Zombies. FEARNet has a preview of several pages of Jesus Hates Zombies — here’s a nice snippet with Jesus, Abraham Lincoln and a zombie horde:

We can’t wait to get our hands on some of these on Saturday — thanks Free Comic Book Day crew!

The biggest problem with Breathers, a great new zombie book released last month, could be that no one knows what genre it belongs to. It’s about zombies, but it’s not exactly a horror book. It has romance, but it’s no love story. It’s a dark comedy, sure, but it’s more than that. Some reviews are calling Breathers a Rom-Zom-Com, short for a zombie romantic comedy, but even that seems like a stretch.

Breathers is contemporary, humorous and sophisticated. If it weren’t for the zombies, this book would be on the shelf next to Nick Hornby’s latest and Fight Club. Why? Because I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the genre it belongs to is the poorly understood male ennui: A bored man struggles through a depressing existence, eventually learning how to take back his own life. Except the main character is a zombie, so he’s actually taking back his undeath.

And there’s no mistaking it — Breathers is definitely a zombie book. The story is told in first-person by Andy, a rotting corpse that lives in his parents’ wine cellar after reanimating, wandering out of the mortuary and getting locked up with the other itinerant undead at the SPCA. Between dull days and nights of watching bad television while drinking expensive wine and shampoo, Andy commiserates with other zombies at Undead Anonymous. Hilarity and poignancy ensue.

Breathers is cool and fresh new fiction. It’s the kind of zombie book you could loan to your mother. As long as your mother is okay with a little violence, irreverence and necrophilia — assuming it’s necrophilia if both parties are dead. Or undead. Whatever.

I’m giving Breathers five brains, then subtracting a half brain because, like zombies, the book starts off a tad slow but will get you in the end.

Further reading: Breathers has a pretty cool web page, Undead Anonymous, which has some good literature on coping with undeath.

It’s hard to make zombies kid-friendly, but this animated version of It Was a Dark and Silly Night, a comic written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Gahan Wilson does the trick. The animation is adapted from a story in the comic series Little Lit, edited by Art Spiegelman.

And sure, the zombies in the story are really just reanimated corpses and they’re more interested in dancing than brains, but it’s a great demonstration of the potential of zombies in all facets of pop culture. Zombies can now be seen in everything from romance to reality TV to kids’ fiction. Here at Zombie Slash, we can’t wait to see what genres zombies will invade next.