Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters

If you haven't seen this new series offered by Quirk Books you really must. In fact, if you haven't, you may well have been living under a rock for the last six months, but not, it would seem, a storm-tossed rock, capped by a giant, mutant octopus. Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters is billed as co-authored by Jane Austen and Ben Winters (listen closely -- can you hear Austen spinning in her grave? If they make too many more of these books, she may have to return as a villain in a sequel to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies).

Essentially, the conceit behind Quirk Books is to take a book out of copyright, like all of Austen's are, due to their age, and produce a sort of fan-fiction edited version. The first of these was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance - Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! (follow the link -- the cover is as well done as the book behind it). In this case, something like 85% of the text was retained from the original Pride and Prejudice. The rest was added by Seth Grahame-Smith, and these minimal intrusions transform the book into a horror of the return of the undead. The conceit is actually a bit brilliant, since this creates a satire that points out the deadening nature of the elaborate conventions of the nineteenth century.

As I noted in an earlier post, I prepared to read Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by rereading the original novel. I hadn't read it since I took a "Great Books" course as a college freshman. I really was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. The wit is absolutely cutting.

That said, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters is not the wonderful fun that P & P & Zombies is. There is much greater intervention in the original text, and this essentially defeats the cleverness. The shock of P & P & Zombies is the manner in which a few added sentences here and there can transform an entire novel utterly. The more that is added, the less effective the whole becomes. The raw material is also not as good. There is a reason that P & P holds the position it does. It is a masterpiece. I was just blown away by it when I read it again last year (before reading P & P & Zombies, of course). S & S is a good novel, but not as powerful.

So, what I'd suggest is reading P & P and then P & P & Zombies and then calling it a passing on this one. This does seem to be a growing genre -- see, for example, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim: Mark Twain's Classic with Crazy Zombie Goodness. And I want in. How do I get published like this?

Bilal provides a dystopic future, much in the standard sci-fi style, with one interesting twist: the Ancient Egyptian gods are still kicking around. Unfortunately, though, aside from their outward appearance and their status as immortals, there is nothing in the characterization to particularly recall these deities. In this case, I admit, I can't figure out what the fuss is about. I am an occasional reader of graphic novels -- very close in basic structure to many medieval illuminated manuscripts -- but this one left me utterly cold. The art is often praised, but I found it somewhat awkward and staged. The writing is disjointed, and the plotting more so. If you are looking for an interesting graphic novel, I'd suggest looking elsewhere.