Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Graphic NovelPublisher: Del Rey
Release Date: May 4, 2010
Price: $14.99
Creator(s): Story by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. Adapted by Tony Lee. Illustrated by Cliff Richards.
Format: 172 pgs.; Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-34552-068-5
Age Rating: Teen/Adult
ICv2 Rating: 4 Stars out of 5
Graphic it is, in the form of ultra-violence against the living dead. The story is a bizarre pastiche of Austen’s original novel with the more modern concept of zombies overrunning the world. The blend sounds like a ghastly concept, and it is, which is what makes it interesting. The idea that part of the world is trying to live very normal upper-class lives while the rest is busy fighting zombies is strange, surreal and oddly powerful.
The story makes no pretense of explaining the zombie plague. The reader will have to suspend disbelief and go along for the ride. For some readers, the Jane Austen characters will be equally inexplicable. A few anachronisms must also be ignored, mostly involving China and Japan. There are also a few errors... for example, you simply cannot fire two quick shots from a single-shot, muzzle-loading musket, as happens in a key scene.
Tony Lee has a lot of experience doing adaptations, and has done a good job with this. Cliff Richards, former Buffy artist, has a knack for blending beauty and horror. The blending of Jane Austen dialogue with Buffy-style zombie-fighting is oddly riveting.
The graphic nature of the violence will limit this to adults and older teens, but younger readers would find the non-zombie parts of the story boring anyway.
--Nick Smith: Librarian Technician, Community Services, for the Pasadena Public Library in California.
