Dawn of the Dreadfuls

Dawn of the Dreadfuls Steve Hockensmith

So, I liked Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I tried Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and didn't get more than 30 pages into it* and overall, I'm more than a little burned out on all of these mashups. The joke's old and it really only worked as a novelty.

But... this isn't a mashup, it's the prequel to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and, dare I say it, even better.

Because Hockensmith isn't shoehorning an alternate plot into an exsisting literary work, he's not constrained by one and so it just works so much better than the mashups..

We start at the church, for a funeral, only the corpse doesn't stay dead for the entire service. Mr. Bennett, one of the only people in Meryton to understand what this means, starts training his daughters in the ways of the warrior. Mrs. Bennett is just concerned about their marriage prospects if they engage in such unladylike behavoirs.

Jane is being foisted onto the lecherous Lord Lumpley. Elizabeth is torn between her martial arts instructor and the scientist who comes to study the zombies.

The zed word gets thrown about rather frequently, unlike in PPZ, and sometimes I disagreed with a character action (not so much of a 'no! don't do that!' but more of a 'dude, Jane would NEVER! Even if there were zombies all over the place!') BUT, overall, I really like what he did the characters and his thoughts about what they'd be like several years younger. I also loved the background information we got-- not only on the previous zombie wars and information about the zombies and how England reacted and what was going on there, but also about the original story. If you ever wondered why all five Bennett girls were out at once or why Netherfield was empty in the first place... well... here's one possible explanation.

Overall, super fun.

*Although that may have been my mood at the time instead of the book.

Book Provided by... my local library

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Little Women SMACK-DOWN pt II

After my Little Women mash-up post on Friday, I got the following press release. It makes me wish I were going to be in New York!

MONSTER THROWDOWN:
A discussion of vampires, werewolves and Louisa May Alcott

moderated by Pulitzer Prize winner John Matteson

on May 6^th at Symphony Space

Lynn Messina, coauthor of Little Vampire Women (HarperTeen), and Porter Grand, coauthor of Little Women and Werewolves (Random House), sit down with John Matteson, author of Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father (W.W. Norton), which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Biography on May 6 at 7:00 p.m. at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater at Symphony Space (2537 Broadway at 95th Street).

The evening will be introduced by Ron Hogan, of Beatrice.com, the well-known literary blog, which is presenting the event. The discussion will explore their mash-ups of Alcott’s classic, Little Women. Both authors will address the challenges they faced reworking the text. Alcott’s own work, published under various pseudonyms, included many sensational elements such as spies, murderers, drug addicts and mummies, and Matteson will explore whether inserting vampires and werewolves into the beloved story would be truly anathema to the author.

In writing Little Vampire Women, Messina insists that she was just following Alcott’s lead. Messina says, “I found the inspiration for the book in chapter eleven, when malaprop-prone Amy calls her Aunt March ‘a regular samphire.’ ‘She means vampire,’ corrects Jo. I was absolutely stunned to see the word vampire in Little Women. I knew vampires weren’t a modern creation, but it still surprised me to realize that they were mainstream enough in the 1860s that Louisa May would drop it into a book.”

Grand, on Little Women and Werewolves says, “Bronson Alcott, Louisa May’s father, was a staunch vegetarian who forbade his family to eat meat and preached ‘without a flesh diet, there would be no blood-shedding war.’ The family obliged Bronson in this, as in all things, but once Louisa May’s writing put her in a position of financial comfort, she ate a great deal of meat. It is quite fitting then, that carnivorous werewolves have been added to the very novel which had put her in the situation to eat all the meat she craved.”

John Matteson says, "With a teenage daughter in the house, I have been alternately intrigued and scandalized by the vampires-in-literature craze. But Louisa May Alcott herself loved writing thrilling tales, and I think it's nice for people to know that Alcott fans can enjoy something more lurid and exciting than the proper folding of pocket handkerchiefs."

The event will be held at Peter Norton Symphony Space’s Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater on May 6 at 7:00 p.m. Symphony Space is located at 2537 Broadway (at 95th Street). Tickets are $10 and available through SymphonySpace.org.

Lynn Messina is the author of four novels, including the best-selling Fashionistas, which has been translated into 15 languages and is in development as a feature film. She attended Washington University in St. Louis, where she studied English Literature. She lives in New York City.

Porter Grand, a Cleveland native, holds an AS in liberal arts, a Bachelors degree and a Doctoral in Theology. She has worked, among other jobs, as a waitress, bartender, carnival barker, go-go dancer, shampoo girl, welfare caseworker and Reference Librarian, and now writes daily in her Huntsburg, Ohio, farmhouse.

John Matteson is a Professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of The City University of New York. He is author of Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father (W.W. Norton), which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. He is currently at work on a biography of Margaret Fuller, also to be published by Norton.

Little Women SMACK-DOWN

There are 2 literary mash-ups of Little Women coming on May 4th.

From HarperTeen (a division of HarperCollins) comes Little Vampire Women

From DelRay (a division of Random House) comes Little Women and Werewolves.

Who will win? The readers? Or are we the losers?

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Jane Austen meets Pirates of the Carribean

Quirk Books (those lovable scamps with the bitchy marketing team that brought you the fantabulous Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) is back, this time with Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.

Entertainment Weekly had a nice interview with the non-Austen member of the author team that revealed the following:

Well, our monster-to-Austen ratio is higher than in the last book, about 60-40 (that’s 60 Austen, 40 me). That’s proportionally more monsters, swordfights, and submarines.

So, less Austen, more mutant lobsters. This could awesome, or craptacular. It also loses a lot of the gimmick/hilarity/shock value of their first offering, but I'm still interested in reading it. Just not as obsessed as I was to see the first one.

h/t to fellow librarian David who passed this on to me!