MADreads

Fanged beasts and ballasts and Ferrars, oh my!

November 16th, 2009 Molly - Central

Quirk Books’ mission is to “amuse, to bemuse, to entertain, and to inform (not necessarily in that order, but usually all at the same time).”  Even though they are a small, relatively new publishing house, several of their books have become national bestsellers, including The Worst-Case Scenario books and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  More on P&P&Z later.

I am going to tell you about Quirk’s latest in the Jane Austen spoof genre, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.  I can barely type this without rolling my eyes. How absurd is that?  Yet, how logical.  Written by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters (60 percent Austen and 40 percent Winters), the reader finds Regency England fraught with violent sea creatures ready to take over the world.  The Dashwood sisters get booted from their Norland Park home by their sad sack brother after their father has been mortally wounded by a hammerhead shark.  Mrs. Dashwood, Elinor, Marianne and young Margaret take up residence by the sea at Barton Cottage, now located off the monster infested coast of Devonshire on Pestilent Isle.  Cad Willoughby is now a treasure hunter, sweet Edward Ferrars dreams of keeping his very own lighthouse and the serious, lovesick Colonel Brandon has been plagued by a sea-witch curse that leaves his face covered with tentacles rather than whiskers.  The original cast of characters is amped up a bit and the settings, beyond seaworthy.  Instead of traveling to London, the older Dashwood sisters spend time at the fashionable domed Sub-Marine Station Beta and the servants must don float devices.

Now, there are Jane Austen purists out there who are aghast at this kind of mockery and to that I say, “La-di-da.”  The text seamlessly incorporates the sea stuff and doesn’t replace but rather accentuates what was already there.   That takes a lot of skill!  When Elinor realizes that Lucy Steele is secretly engaged to her own true love?  All there.  Plus a fanged water beast.  The painful scene when Marianne spies Willoughby with another woman and he ignores her?  All there.  Plus some lobsters.  Uncomfortable visit with Elinor, Lucy Steele and Edward where Elinor knows Edward is secretly engaged to Lucy but Edward doesn’t know Elinor knows?  All there.  Plus a servant who gets eaten alive by an anglerfish.  It’s funny!  I spent a lot of my youth on the water in row boats and canoes, baiting hooks and practicing my casting, and have thrown back my fair share of gnarly-looking bullheads with their tiny, needle-shaped teeth.  The fanged beast isn’t much of a stretch.  It all seemed plausible to me.  In a ridiculous kind of way, of course.

I liked this better than Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which was funny, too, but not as well-integrated.  In that work, Seth Grahame-Smith wrote 15 percent of the final text; the rest was Austen.  The ultraviolent zombie mayhem, while hilarious, wasn’t as much of its own story and I was left wondering how we got to the stage where the Bennett girls were trained into a zombie-fighting army.  I never thought I would say this, but I needed more zombies.  Others must have sensed this, too, as there will be a prequel published after the New Year: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls.  I can only imagine the illustrations.

Entry Filed under: Fantasy, Recreational Fiction