Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”

So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield. Can Elizabeth vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry?

DNF at 21%

I’d first like to address that I understand most people don’t like DNF reviews because the person didn’t actually finish the book, but I feel like explaining WHY I DNF’d the book is important. So if you don’t like it, don’t read it. You’ve been warned.

I really tried with this one but I could not force myself to read another page! I’ve never read “Pride & Prejudice” and I don’t intend to, period dramas and romances aren’t really my thing. Well if I don’t like any of those things then why try reading this, right? There are 2 reasons I even bothered to read this book:

I usually try to read a book before seeing its movie.
What isn’t improved by the adding of zombies?

Well Exhibit A would be “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”, that’s how you DON’T improve something by adding zombies.

From what I managed to read I thought the plot was slow, tedious, and filled with nothing but talk of attending balls and finding a man to marry. Of course there were zombies but only for a few sentences here and there. They were by no means the central plot point, as they should have been.

Like I said I never read “Pride and Prejudice” but from what I can tell this book reads exactly the same with zombies making an appearance in the occasional paragraph. What was the point of the zombies then, I ask? What! I wanted some zombie related violence and gore, that of which, was not delivered at all.

Everything I read was boring, as I already stated all anyone cared about was romance and some not-so-interesting drama. Nobody seemed to care that zombies were plaguing England, EATING people. So sure, travel the zombie-infested countryside in an attempt to woo yourself a gentleman and secure yourself a marriage. Because that’s SO SMART.

I also found the writing itself to be extremely long-winded and I found nothing enjoyable about it.

I thought they were all, for the most part, dull and uninteresting with the slight exception of Elizabeth Bennett. She was actually very feisty and quite badass, I liked her rebellious attitude and even though we rarely say her engage any undead she still could hold her own against them.

Other than that though, no one was particularly interesting.

The concept of the book was great but it fell awfully short for me, so much that I couldn’t even finish it.

Overall I liked the parts that ACTUALLY HAD zombies but they were brief, infrequent, and not described in nearly enough detail. I think I’ll go watch the movie instead where I actually might get some of the badassdom I was expecting.