The Latest Mashup

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters...

It's true, and it's due out this Tuesday, September 15, 2009. Buy your copy at Amazon or your favorite retailer. There's a trailer for it located here.

And Entertainment Weekly did a review of it. You can find the entire article here.

(Reviewed by Lisa Schwarzbaum)

Had Jane Austen observed waterborne horrors like giant octopi and monstrous jellyfish — not to mention the Devonshire Fang-Beast — there's no doubt she would have written prettily about them. As it is, the land-based 19th-century lady stuck to what she knew when writing Sense and Sensibility, leaving Brooklyn-based 21st-century wordsmith Ben H. Winters to provide the fish-tailed portion of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.

And here we have a whale of a problem. It may be a truth universally acknowledged that a publisher in possession of a hit with the hipster mash-up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies must be in want of a follow-up, pronto. But that doesn't mean the great Jane's novels can be grafted to any high-low premise, or her wry elegance improved by naughty-rude adjustments. Can it be that in the rush to turn a charming book novelty into a renewable resource, the whole Austen-and-monsters series has already jumped the shark? The second project strays much further from the original text than the first did. It's made goofier by the intrusion of a Jules Verne-inspired plot detour during which the Dashwood sisters descend to Sub-Marine Station Beta on the ocean floor. For no real payoff, courteous Colonel Brandon is now a gentleman with squishy tentacles dangling from his face. And suave Willoughby is now accompanied by a defecating pet orangutan.

There are plenty of menaces — androids, bugs, people who text while driving — still available for book packagers to mingle with other Austen masterpieces, but I'll second Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice when he says, ''You have delighted us long enough.'' B–

Lizzy Bennett...Comicbook Heroine?

Find the original Examiner article here.

Marvel has taken Pride and Prejudice and made a pretty good comic book
Marvel Comics’ adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic doesn’t detour off a mediocre route. The novel, since published in 1813, has inspired four silver screen films and five separate television broadcasts as well as multiple theatrical adaptations. Each one has maintained sincerity to Jane Austen’s story but attempted an innovative effort towards visualization. Since released on April 1 the four issues responsibly adhere to the book’s favored plot. Apart from maintaining the classic’s margins, the literary-warden duties peak the innovative viewpoint for the entire reading experience.

Jane Austen offered, from chapter to chapter, the personalities of her characters to render a mix toned composition. Marvel’s Pride & Prejudice translates a monotone rendition. The inane nature of Mrs. Bennett becomes tediously typical. Mr. Bennett’s sarcasm loses poignancy and agreeability. Mr. Bingley and Mr. Hurst join all four daughters, excluding Lydia, as connotations of flat, archetypical personas.

Marvel Comics deserves a nod for undertaking the adaptation. “Pride and Prejudice” was caught in print between post-Colonial and pre-Victorian eras. Austen’s writing style is not extremely ‘ye’ but certainly ‘olde’. Credit is demanded for translation from a follow-up novel of Austen’s caliber to a different literary medium.

Pride & Prejudice will be released as a five-issue series. Issue #4 is due to be released on Aug. 12. Current releases can be found in comic stores around the DC Metro area.

Paranormal Austen

In the romance market, particularly, paranormals are on fire. It makes sense, then, that these werewolves and monsters that go bump in the night would find their way into the pages of our beloved Jane Austen.

First, it was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith, a zombie novel that’s done amazingly well.

The next movement rides on the coattails of the Twilight empire’s success and takes a nip (pun intended!) at the vampire genre with Michael Thomas Ford’s Jane Bites Back.

The novel presents an undead Jane Austen, frustrated by nearly 200 years of writer's block and 116 rejections of an unpublished novel she finished just before turning into a vampire; she's becoming increasingly irritated that the rest of the world seems to be getting rich and famous off of her works and her life. The two follow-up books will be derived from the first. Waters said Ford, the author of many books for young readers and adults, is likely to publish this under a pseudonym; pub date still undecided.
Stay tuned!