illustrations by Patrick Arrasmith
(Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2010)
Trade Paperback, 287 Pages, Fiction
From the Cover: Readers will witness the birth of a heroine in Dawn of the Dreadfuls—a thrilling prequel set four years before the horrific events of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. As our story opens, the Bennet sisters are enjoying a peaceful life in the English countryside. They idle away the days reading, gardening, and daydreaming about future husbands—until a funeral at the local parish goes strangely and horribly awry. Suddenly corpses are springing from the soft earth—and only one family can stop them. As the bodies pile up, we watch Elizabeth Bennet evolve from a naïve young teenager into a savage slayer of the undead. Along the way, two men vie for her affections: Master Hawksworth is the powerful warrior who trains her to kill, while thoughtful Dr. Keckilpenny seeks to conquer the walking dead using science instead of strength. Will either man win the prize of Elizabeth’s heart? Or will their hearts be feasted upon by hordes of marauding zombies? Complete with romance, action, comedy, and an army of shambling corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls will have Jane Austen rolling in her grave—and just might inspire her to crawl out of it!
My Review: Okay, when I first heard about Quirk Books was going to be releasing a prequel to their breakaway success Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (my review is HERE) I was of two minds. This is what I said when I first heard of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls:
Now, I don’t know how I feel about this one, because up until this point, Quirk Classics has had a winning formula: you take a “stuffy” classic novel and put something unexpected in it, hence Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Now, though, they’re mixing it up and creating a new text out of something that didn’t exist before. To the best of my knowledge, there was no prequel to Pride and Prejudice and so I’m somewhat dubious as to how effective this particular one will be. I would have preferred Wuthering Heights and Werewolves or Mansfield Park and Monsters or Persuasion and Poltergeists personally.
After reading Dawn … I don’t know that I am ready to back away from that statement. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t like Dawn of the Dreadfuls, it just means that I need to reassess my position vis-à-vis what this book is.
It is not a strict mash-up in the way that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (reviewed HERE) were or like what I expect Android Karenina will be. This is a whole new animal and a number of times as I was reading I had to remind myself that this is not a mash-up.
Now, before we go any further, I need to mention that the copy of the book I got was an ARC that Quirk Books sent to me as part of their “All-Out-Worldwide-Zombie-Blog-Explosion-2010” wherein bloggers all over the interwebs are posting advanced reviews of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls on March 3, 2010.
That said and all that legal mumbo-jumbo out of the way … I loved this book for what it was. This is a really fun read. What Hockensmith has done a really good job of recreating Jane Austen’s style as well as recreating the feel of its predecessor. I bring this up because that was one of my chief concerns regarding this book was “Would it sound like an Austen novel?” Because that was the point of both Zombies and Sea Monsters: they simultaneously spoofed and honored Austen’s novels. They amplified Austen’s social comedies, heightening the absurdities of Austen’s time (class differences, social manners, etc.) with the inclusion of zombies or sea serpents.
I was worried that Dawn of the Dreadfuls, as a completely original novel, would not achieve the same level of pastiche and satire. As I said, above, my fears have been laid to rest (no pun intended) on that fact because Hockensmith does manage to do what Grahame-Smith and Winters accomplished before him.
In fact, Dawn of the Dreadfuls reminds me a lot of Simon Pegg’s 2004 self-described “Rom-Zom-Com” Shaun of the Dead. Much in the way that Shaun employs the conventions of zombie and horror films at the same time that it satirizes them and satirizing the conventions of a comedy of manners, Dawn of the Dreadfuls does that with not just zombie conventions, but the conventions of the Jane Austen-esque social comedy as well. Yes Dreadfuls is a zombie novel. And yes Dreadfuls is, technically speaking, a horror novel, but really, at the heart of it, Dreadfuls is a romantic comedy setting Elizabeth Bennet up in a series of pas de deux relationships (occurring in and amongst beheadings, dismemberings and devourings) that set the stage for her personality and quirks in Pride and Prejudice (and Zombies).
Now, for as much as I enjoyed the book—and I do always love a good and bloody horror story—I did have some issues with Dreadfuls.
First and foremost, the story that Hockensmith sets up in Dawn of the Dreadfuls is one that would benefit best from a sense of danger or peril for our main characters, i.e. the Bennet sisters. However, knowing that Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty and Lydia all show up not just Pride and Prejudice but Pride and Prejudice and Zombies along with their father and mother, and that Mr. Darcy, Mr. Bingley and Mr. Wickham are all in the future of the Bennet sisters … there was no sense of any kind of anxiety when any of the girls are in peril during the final third of the book. This is, admittedly, a problem with any prequel and not just Dreadfuls and one which, for all of Hockensmith’s other accomplishments in the book, he is unable to overcome. There absolutely is no sense of urgency and anxiety surrounding our heroines. Certainly secondary characters are in peril, but since none of them are as strongly created as the Bennets, it is hard to make any kind of connection to Master Hawksworth, Dr. Keckilpenny, Captain Cannon and Lord Lumpley and so when they are imperiled by the hordes of undead, I had a hard time caring about them.
Perhaps this speaks to Hockensmith’s abilities to create believable and sympathetic characters since the best characters in the book are in fact Austen’s creations and everyone else are cardboard cutout characters from various horror stories. And don’t even get me started on the character of Lord Lumpley—one of the most repulsive characters I have ever had the displeasure of running across in literature, to the point that when (at the risk of spoiling) he meets his inevitable end (though from an unexpected source, I will give Hockensmith that) I was just glad that he was out of the way and I didn’t have to endure his presence in the novel any more. He really is an unpleasant and distasteful character, and not even in the good You-Love-to-Hate-Them way … he is repulsive in every sense of the word.
I was also disappointed in the character of Master Hawksworth, but I’m not sure how I could discuss the problems I had with him without giving away any major plot points, so I will leave it in the realm of generalities and say that what I found so objectionable was what Hockensmith considered a tragic flaw in Hawksworth’s character was obviously a convenient way in which to remove the character from the action at a key moment. I felt it was beneath the character and insulting to my intelligence as a Reader.
However, all of these flaws that I found with the book do not diminish the overall affect of the book and the enjoyment I had in reading it. This is a really fun romp of a book, all things considered, and while I received my copy free of charge, I was ready to shell out the cover price for the book, and at the end of the day, I would not have felt cheated of my $12.95 had I needed to pay, and neither should you. This book is well worth the price of admission. (And be sure to stick around for the great post-credits-esque cameo at the end of the novel. A lot of fun in that Ferris-Bueller-walking-down-the-hall-and-shooing-the-audience-out-of-the-theater-kind-of-way.)
Now, I should mention that the book is not available in stores for another two weeks. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls will be available for purchase on Wednesday, March 24, 2010. (The link in the ISBN in the header of this post will take you to Amazon’s page for DoD where you can pre-order.) However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy the gooey, bloody zombie goodness in the meantime. First of all, get thee a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies if you haven’t already. This is definitely a situation where a knowledge of the “original” (using that word loosely) adds to the experience of the sequel/prequel.
Second: you can find Dawn of the Dreadfuls online at Quirk’s page for the book HERE
(Yes, I’m shilling shamelessly for Quirk Books, but hey, free advance review copies of good books make whores of us all.)
Until next time…
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