Book Review #52 Dreadfully Ever After

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dreadfully Ever After
by Steve Hockensmith

Genre: Mash-Up / Zombie / Regency / Romance / Jane Austen
Ages: 14 and up

Elizabeth Darcy is unsatisfied with married life. She loves her husband deeply, but she misses the joy of slaying Unmentionables. She misses the excitement and danger and the near-death experiences. All of these things are just around the corner, just not the way she wants.

When Darcy is bitten by a Dreadful, Elizabeth has no choice but to turn to Lady Catherine for aid. With the dubious help of a mysterious ninja and two of her sillier sisters, she sets out to steal a secret cure that the government has been working on.

This book is horrid, terrible, insane, ridiculous and Dreadful with a capital D. It was truly quite awful and I enjoyed every word. True, it is also disgusting and disturbed, but that is part of the fun. I am sure Jane Austen would be horrified if she could read this book. The shades of Pemberley are most thoroughly polluted.

I enjoyed the original Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but I did not like Dawn of the Dreadfuls much at all, so I was not sure what to expect from this one. I needn't have worried, it made me alternately laugh and gasp at the impudence of the author.

Poor Darcy had a lot to deal with in this one. A gaping bite wound, a sudden love of raw meat, crazy relatives, and lots and lots of the undead. I liked the scene when he first attempted to get out of bed after being bitten, fainting between every article of clothing.

I loved Kitty and Nezu. The fact that Nezu was a ninja made him a fun and different character. It was fun to see inside the minds and conversations of ninjas when before they had always been silent and expendable. Kitty was just as silly as she ever was, but she had a certain amount of depth to her that made her character more interesting. The two of them were complete opposites, and it was fun watching how they seemed to instinctively understand each other in ways no one else ever had.

Mary was brilliant, still preachy and annoying, but brilliant. She saw straight to the heart of the problem immediately and set out to do something about it. (Rather more effectively than even Elizabeth.) She has many adventures with a limbless man who is hauled around in a box, any guesses as to who that is?

I recommend this book to readers who like a bit of silliness in their lives and don't take classics too seriously.

Content Ratings:

 I give this a 1.10 in language for brief, mild language.

This book gets a 2.10 in sexuality for some mild references and innuendos, as well as a half-hearted attempt at seduction.

I give this a 7.10 for lots and lots of violence. I did not give it a higher number because the violence is not particularly realistic.