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Some background: I first read Jane Austen's novels as a teenager. We read Pride and Prejudice in English class, and a lot of the students couldn't get past the writing style and complained that they didn't understand what was going on in the story. Odd as ever in my youth, I loved it. I thought it was hilarious. It had the sort of commentary and tone I imagine Austen would have used if she were sitting next to you and talking to you behind her fan at a ball while observing the goings on in the room (like in this scene at about 5:26).

Noticing my enthusiasm for Pride and Prejudice, the teacher encouraged me to read Austen's other novels. "I always have one or two students every year who 'get' Jane Austen," she remarked.

And so I read and "got" the other five novels, and found a copy of the minor works and juvenilia (that word doesn't look right no matter how I spell it) in a used bookstore. I thought Emma Woodhouse was exasperating. I completely empathized with how Elinor Dashwood bottled up her emotions. I couldn't wait for Catherine Morland to get out of the Thorpe's clutches (or to slap Isabella). I pitied Fanny Price. I marveled that Anne Eliot never ran away from her horrible family. And someone just needs to put a pillow over Lady Susan's face until she stops struggling or else give her something for the PMS. In short, these are some of the best novels I have ever read, and I re-read several of them every year. I treated myself to a set of the Oxford Illustrated editions last year, and the copies from my original set, which have been overly well-thumbed over the years, now travel with me in my carry-on luggage.

When it comes to all the Austen spin-offs - the prequels, sequels, modern retellings, etc. - heated debate inevitably ensues among Janeites. The purists believe one should only read her original novels, and anything that tries to imitate Austen's original work is sacreligious and should be scorned and avoided. More's the pity that she only wrote the six novels and the minor works and juvenilia. A reader can get through all that in a fairly short period of time, and then what? The world looks different after a Jane Austen read, and you can take up people-watching with new relish, but you want more of her writing. Admiring imitators are willing to fill that void.

This is all leading up to say that while I love and admire the original novels, I'm not a purist. Clueless did that to me. It's a clever retelling of Emma, just as West Side Story is a clever retelling of Romeo and Juliet, just as Roxanne and The Truth About Cats and Dogs are clever retellings of Cyrano de Bergerac, and just as Wide Sargasso Sea is a clever extrapolation from Jane Eyre. However, I can't recommend all the prequels, sequels, and modern retellings of Austen's novels. Only a few, in my opinion, are worth the reading time and offer a unique spin or extrapolation on the original works. The rest tend to rely on being in some way attached to or inspired by her novels rather than on being quality reading in their own right.

To my knowledge, no one has thought to do an Austen-characters-meet-supernatural-beings story before (although Jasper Fforde came mighty close). So Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is unique in that respect.

As I started to read it, I had the impression that it was the original story with zombie bits added on here and there, and a line or two changed to suit said zombie bits. Then one of the familiar characters is "stricken" (no, I'm not tell you which one; that's cheating), which partly changes the story line, but the main events still happen as they do in the original version.

Overall, I found it...amusing. Lizzie as a knife- and sword-wielding warrior? Actually, I can picture that. Her four sisters doing the same? Not so much. Lady Catherine and her Japanese ninjas sounds like a lounge act to me. There were a few one-liners that made me laugh out loud, and I quite like the illustrations.

Not as clever as Clueless, but not as horrid as others I can't bring myself to name.

Naturally, future mash-ups are already in line at the publishing houses:

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters

Darcy's Hunger: A Vampire Re-telling of Pride and Prejudice (sigh, did we not see this coming with the Twilight virus?)

Mr. Darcy, Vampyre (see above comment)

Jane Bites Back (and again)

You can read Pride and Prometheus online for free.

What do you think of sequels, prequels, spin-offs, and the like?