supercheesegirl

I started this book on Friday morning, got 50 pages into it, and hated it enough that I didn't think I would finish. All the things that were fun and sassy about Pride & Prejudice & Zombies felt annoying and forced in S & S & SM. In P & P & Z, Grahame-Smith seemed to really care about the characters and the story and wove the zombies in beautifully, and the end result is a book that will attract new readers to Austen. Winters, however, doesn't seem to have any respect or love for Austen; unlike Grahame-Smith, Winters seems to start from thinking Austen is boring and in need of livening up. He turns Austen's rich characters into caricatures of themselves, and he slaps sea beasts into the story at random. He also takes a lot more liberties with the original text. Overall his version of this novel feels like a childish dig at the English teacher who forced him to read Austen. Sorry, but that's really not the way to approach a classic and well-loved text like this. (Although if he'd done it to Emma, I'd have a little more sympathy--she's far more deserving of an octopus attack than the Dashwood sisters.)

The above paragraph is what I posted on goodreads on Friday. I did, however, return to the book, and skimmed and skipped around until I got to the end, mostly just to see what Winters did with it. I have to say, I kind of loved that Lucy Steele was a sea witch who devoured Robert Ferrars after she married him. That was almost excellent. But just about everything else got on my nerves. Winters really hates these characters--Elinor's gaping neck wound, Marianne's bout with malaria AND yellow fever? Not to mention all the awful things that happen to the minor characters. This guy just wants to play God and wreak marine destruction. And he didn't really get the Palmers, based on what he did with their story (although Mr. Palmer will always and forever be House MD in my head). Overall, yeah, still not down with this adaptation.