The full title of this book is “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls”. It is, of course, the prequel to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which was written by Seth Grahame-Smith. This is an original story, using some of Jane Austen’s characters from “Pride and Prejudice”. The Bennet sisters have not yet begun their training as warriors, and the reader gets to watch them transition from somewhat silly girls to extremely serious and deadly warrior women. Well, except for Lydia and Kitty, who manage to become adept warriors while still remaining quite silly and giggly.

It begins with a funeral, where the guest of honor becomes a lot more lively than expected. Mr. Bennet, recognizes immediately that the curse of the Dreadfuls has returned. (The word “zombie” is considered to be impolite, so, most of the characters refer to the decaying, roaming undead as “dreadfuls”.) This realization causes him to turn Mrs. Bennet’s greenhouse into the dojo it was supposed to be, so he can begin training his daughters in the ways of the warrior. Needless to say, the Bennet sisters are surprised by this unexpected course of events.

This story has all the wit of a Jane Austen novel, and all the horror and gore of a good zombie movie. Mrs. Bennet is mortified that her daughters are becoming warriors. She is certain that they will never find husbands now, and that the family will be “ruined”. Mr. Bennet is at his sarcastic best, and he doesn’t hold much back. Jane is sweet and sensitive, and has a habit of looking down and blushing whenever she feels like too much attention is being paid to her. Lizzy is brilliant and truly has the heart of a warrior. Mary is stoic, and Kitty and Lydia are just as frivolous as you would expect them to be. Hockensmith mixes in some original characters that are quirky and fascinating, each in their own way. It’s a very nice mix, indeed.

Even the zombies are interesting! They aren’t slow moving, and have quite the capacity for problem solving. One, towards the end, even manages to speak a word. You can likely guess what that word is! The descriptions of the fights between the heros and the zombies are action packed, and disgusting, and wonderful.

Of course, any book even loosely based on a work by Austin must contain some “love interests”. The sisters gain a teacher, called “The Master”, who takes over their training, and lives in the greenhouse, um, dojo.

Master Hawksworth is dark, handsome, and athletic enough to make Jane blush and Lydia and Kitty smirk and giggle to each other in secret. Lizzy notices herself thinking about him often, and is uncomfortable about her feelings for him. Her sisters joke that he is smitten with Lizzy, but she simply can’t see it. Regardless, the two of them smolder when they are around each other.

Later, Lizzy meets the somewhat mad Dr. Keckilpenny, who is studying the dreadfuls, hoping to find a way to communicate with them. He’s bright, and amusing, and his hair is always disheveled in very becoming manner. Lizzy enjoys talking with him, and preventing his death by the very dreadfuls that he seeks out. Almost too late, she realizes that he thinks of her as more than a friend.

Which of these two eligible single men will Lizzy end up with? You will have to read the book to see. Jane isn’t without suitors either. Lord Lumpley, a large and lecherous man, has become smitten with Jane. This delights Mrs. Bennet, who cannot wait to see Jane married off to someone so well to do. Jane blushes when she is around him, and refuses to believe the stories about things Lord Lumpley has done, and who he has done it with. There is also a young officer, Lt. Tindall, who cannot keep his eyes off Jane.

Mrs. Bennet meets up with a long lost love, who now, due to some recent changes, travels with his own small entourage. I’ll leave you to read about exactly why that is. Most of what happens between Mrs. Bennet and Captain Cannon is implied, but it doesn’t leave much to the imagination.

Check out this awesome book trailer for “Dawn of the Dreadfuls”:

Want more? Here is a little taste:

Chapter 1
by Steve Hockensmith,
Author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls

Walking out in the middle of a funeral would be, of course, bad form. So attempting to walk out on one’s own was beyond the pale.

When the service began, Mr. Ford was as well behaved as any corpse could be expected to be. In fact, he lay stretched out on the bier looking almost as stiff and expressionless in death as he had in life, and Oscar Bennet, gazing upon his not-so-dearly departed neighbor, could but think to himself, You lucky sod.

It was Mr. Bennet who longed to escape the church then, and the black oblivion of death seemed infinitely preferable to the torments he was suffering. At the pulpit, the Reverend Mr. Cummings was reading (and reading and reading and reading) from the Book of Common Prayer with all the verve and passion of a man mumbling in his sleep, while the pews were filled with statues — the good people of Meryton, Hertfordshire, competing to see who could remain motionless the longest while wearing the most somber look of solemnity.

This contest had long since been forfeited by one party in particular: Mr. Bennet’s. Mrs. Bennet couldn’t resist sharing her (insufficiently) whispered appraisal of the casket’s handles and plaque. (“Brass? For shame! Why, Mrs. Morrison had gold last week, and her people don’t have two guineas to rub together.”) Lydia and Kitty, the youngest of the Bennets’ five daughters, were ever erupting into titters for reasons known only to themselves. Meanwhile, the middle daughter, fourteen-year-old Mary, insisted on loudly shushing her giggling sisters no matter how many times her reproaches were ignored, for she considered herself second only to the Reverend Mr. Cummings — and perhaps Christ Himself — as Meryton’s foremost arbiter of virtue.

At least the Bennets’ eldest, Jane, was as serene and sweet countenanced as ever, even if her dress was a trifle heavy on décolletage for a funeral. (“Display, my dear, display!” Mrs. Bennet had harped at her that morning. “Lord Lumpley might be there!”) And, of course, Mr. Bennet knew he need fear no embarrassment from Elizabeth, second to Jane in age and beauty but first in spirit and wit. He leaned forward to look down the pew at her, his favorite — and found her gaping at the front of the church, a look of horror on her face.

Mr. Bennet followed her line of sight. What he saw was a luxury, hard won and now so easily taken for granted: a man about to be buried with his head still on his shoulders.

That head, though — wasn’t there more of a loll to the left to it now? Weren’t the lips drawn more taut, and the eyelids less so? In fact, weren’t those eyes even now beginning to —

Yes. Yes, they were.

Mr. Bennet felt an icy cold inside him where there should have been fire, and his tingling fingers fumbled for the hilt of a sword that wasn’t there.

Mr. Ford sat up and opened his eyes.

The first person to leap into action was Mrs. Bennet. Unfortunately, the action she leapt to was shrieking loud enough to wake the dead (presuming any in the vicinity were still sleeping) and wrapping herself around her husband with force sufficient to snap a man with less back-bone in two.

“Get a hold of yourself, woman!” Mr. Bennet said.

She merely maintained her hold on him, though, her redoubled howls sparking Kitty and Lydia to similar hysterics.

At the front of the church, Mrs. Ford staggered to her feet and started toward the bier.

“Martin!” she cried. “Martin, my beloved, you’re alive!”

“I think not, Madam!” Mr. Bennet called out (while placing a firm hand over his wife’s mouth).”If someone would restrain the lady, please!” Most of the congregation was busy screeching or fleeing or both at once, yet a few hardy souls managed to grab Mrs. Ford before she could shower her newly returned husband with kisses.

“Thank you!” Mr. Bennet said. He spent the next moments trying to disentangle himself from his wife’s clutches. When he found he couldn’t, he simply stepped sideways into the aisle, dragging her with him.

“I will be walking that way, Mrs. Bennet.” He jerked his head at Mr. Ford, who was struggling to haul himself out of his casket. “If you choose to join me, so be it.”

Mrs. Bennet let go and, after carefully checking to make sure Jane was still behind her, swooned backward into her eldest daughter’s arms.

“Get her out of here,” Mr. Bennet told Jane. “Lydia and Kitty, as well.”

He turned his attention then to the next two girls down the pew: Elizabeth and Mary. The latter was deep in conversation with her younger sisters.

“The dreadfuls have returned!” Kitty screamed.

“Calm yourself, sister,” Mary said, her voice dead. She was either keeping a cool head or had retreated into catatonia, it was hard to tell which. “We should not be hasty in our judgments.”

“Hasty? Hasty?” Lydia pointed at the very undead Mr. Ford. “He’s sitting up in his coffin!”

Mary stared back at her blankly. “We don’t know he’s a dreadful, though.

But Elizabeth did know. Mr. Bennet could see it in her eyes — because now she was staring at him.

She didn’t grasp the whole truth of it. How could she, when he’d been forced to keep it from her for so long? Yet this much would be obvious to a clear-thinking, level-headed girl like her: The dreadfuls had returned, and there was more to be done about it than scream. More her father intended to do.

What she couldn’t have guessed — couldn’t have possibly dreamed — was that she herself would be part of the doing.

“Elizabeth,” Mr. Bennet said. “Mary. If you would come with me, please.”

And he turned away and started toward the altar. Toward the zombie.

The above is an excerpt from the book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls by Steve Hockensmith. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Copyright © 2010 Steve Hockensmith, author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls

Danielle Trussoni was definately “Daddy’s Little Girl”. She was named after him, physically resembled him, and adored him. Her parents split up when Danielle was young. While Danielle’s mother kept her other siblings, Danielle chose to live with her father.

The two were very close, and this allowed Danielle to notice that there were some very odd things about her father. Dan was haunted by his experiences in Vietnam. He would tell stories about his experiences over there, and end up lost in thought, oblivious to his surroundings. Danielle simply accepted her father as he was, and basically took care of him until he was “back”. In many ways, she had become the adult in their family.

When she grew up, she was able to sift through her memories from childhood and re-examine them with the eyes of an adult. She remembered pictures her father showed her from when he was in Vietnam. Some were brutal, and frightening. Was the skull she found in the basement real? Why did her father have it?

This memoir is an extremely personal look at how her family was affected by her father’s experiences in Vietnam. The book jumps in chronology, juxtaposing Trussoni’s childhood memories with her adult experiences as she searched for answers about what really happened.

She discovers that her father was once what was called a “Tunnel Rat” in Vietnam, one of the most dangerous and psychologically damaging jobs a soldier could have. After doing a lot of research on Vietnam, and what American soldiers went through in regards to it, Danielle embarks on a trip. She visits Vietnam herself, and takes a guided tour of the same tunnels that her father crawled through years before. Her experience going into one of these dark, small, dirty tunnels following a tour guide is terrifying and stressful. There is something about being in the dark, underground, in an enclosed space that is unnerving all on it’s own. She can only imagine what her father may have felt as a soldier, who knew that these tunnels held traps, and enemies, both of whom could kill him in an instant.

There are a lot of families who watched loved ones head off to war, and return home as a completely different, and damaged, person. This book focuses on a father who was in Vietnam, however, I am certain that soldiers who have been in other wars come back dramatically different too. I think a lot of people will read this book, and recognize some of the behaviors and patterns seen in Trussoni’s family in their own.

I chose to read this book for a few reasons. My father was in the military around the time of Vietnam. I haven’t any idea what he may, or may not have experienced, or where, exactly in the world he may have served. However, it is clear that my father is different from many other fathers, and I can see some similarities between how he behaves, and how Trussoni’s father behaved. This is a book that daughters of soldiers will understand.

I also wanted to read this book because I think it was part of a group that once was on MySpace called “The Memorist’s Collective”, or something close to that. Long ago, I entered a contest that they held, where the winner would get their memoir published by a major publishing house. I didn’t win the contest, but I did get the opportunity to read some excellent submissions and excerpts from other people’s memoirs. As a result, I now really enjoy reading memoirs, and finding out about other people’s lives from their unique and personal writings.

There were four authors organizing the group, and Trussoni was one of them (unless I am completely mistaken). I have reviewed the books of two of the other members so far: I Am Not Myself These Days: A Memoir by Josh Kilmer Purcell, and Queen of the Oddballs by Hillary Carlip. Each book is unique, touching, fabulous, and extremely personal. I intend to seek out the last book from this group sometime soon.

J.C. Hutchins just had this book published by a major publisher.  This is a remarkable feat because the book started out as a podcast.  Hutchins podcasted the book in weekly installments, it grew in popularity, and now it is published in book form (I read it on the Amazon Kindle app on my iPod Touch.  This book is the first in a series as the original manuscript was broken up into several smaller novels.  It is obvious that the story goes on when you reach the last sentence of the book.

The book opens up dramatically with a four year old having assassinated the president of the United States.  Then seven people are kidnapped.  There is John, the musician; Dr. Mike, the psychologist about to go on Larry King; Michael, the marine; Father Thomas, the priest; Kilroy 2.0, a notorious computer hacker; Jay who works for the U.N.; and Jack, a geneticist.  They are taken to this top secret facility where they find out they are beta clones and must stop the Alpha from killing more people.

I couldn’t listen to the original podcasted novel, but enjoyed it quite a bit in print form.  It eventually turns into a real page- turner.  The most interesting character in my opinion is John, a musician, kind of the black sheep who hasn’t really done much with his life, but is as smart as the others. For some reason he seems to stand out to me as the main character even though the seven clones are supposed to be equals in terms of character development.  Kilroy 2.0 is a fun character as the nerdy computer hacker who laughs maniacally and believes in the vast conspiracy network.  I really enjoyed the parts in the book where the seven clones work together to solve a piece of the puzzle that has been placed before them.  Overall I would have to say it is a fun read.

Stephen King has written some long books in his career, most notably The Stand.  At over 1000 pages and 35 hours long for the audiobook (which I listened to), Under the Dome can join those ranks.  I’ve been listening to this book since December and last night I finally finished it.  Like most Stephen King books it doesn’t start picking up the pace until three quarters of the way through it. The beginning is all set up and with a whole town full of characters as are in this book there is a lot to set up.

As you can guess from the title, a mysterious glass dome has completely covered the Maine town of Chester’s Mill.  The dome is completely clear and when it falls, a man giving flying lessons to a woman in a Cessna-like plane crash into it killing them both foreshadowing a bigger and more devastating plane crash outside of the dome later in the story.  Birds line the edges of the dome where they have flown into it and have been crushed to death.  The dome goes several miles into the air and deep under the ground.  It also has an effect on people where the touch it for the first time they feel a big electric shock and then every time they touch it after that they are fine.  If someone has a pacemaker or a hearing aid they are dead on contact with the dome.

The hero of the story is Dale Barbara or “Barbie” for short.  He was a sergeant  in Iraq who got a job as a short order cook at the local eating establishment Sweet Briar Rose.  He got in a fight with the town hoodlums including Junior Renny, Mel Searls, and  Carl Thibodeaux (spelling may not be right as I listened to the book and didn’t read the pages) in a bar parking lot. Barbie was leaving town on foot after the fight when the dome fell and he was trapped in town.  Meanwhile Junior  has these horrible migraines caused by a brain tumor and he murders two young girls in this house and they become his “girlfriends”.  Junior’s father James Renny is the major villain in the story. Big Jim Renny is a used car salesman and the town’s second selectman.  He has also been involved in a huge national Meth ring.  The police chief Randolph is worthless and cowers to Renny letting Renny basically run the town as a dictator when the dome falls.  Renny hires his son Junior and the other thugs involved in the fight with Barbie as police officers and this is the beginning of Chester’s Mill becoming a police state with much similarity to Nazi Germany.

The book then turns in the direction of a good and evil story under the dome with the good side being Dale Barbara and his friends including Julia Schumway, head of the newspaper, and Rusty Everett, the medical assistant, who becomes main doctor when the doctor dies.  The bad side is the new police force, Big Jim Renny, and his cronies involved in the Meth ring before the dome fell.

I found this book to be an entertaining and interesting character study of a trapped town.  Several themes stood out for me such as the corruption of power, how easily people can side with the Big Jim to the point where people are wearing blue handkerchiefs tied to their arms as armbands, and then when we find out the origins of the dome the theme shifts to shameful things everybody has done sometime in their lives.

At the end of the book is an author’s note where Stephen King says that he first started writing this book in 1976 and could only get about 70 pages into it.  He went back to it again in 2006 and started over from scratch, but keeping the same opening idea that he had way back then.  I thought that was really interesting.  The reader Raul Esparza did a really good job of capturing the personalities of the many different characters in this book.

This is the first time I’ve put together a review of a book without reading it all the way through. And, as a general rule, I’ll slog it out with just about any book if I get far enough into it. In the case of Breaking The Sound Barrier, I managed to get about a third of the way through. And then I had to stop. I just kept thinking to myself, “Why was this book even made? What exactly is its purpose?” Penned by “Democracy Now!” host/reporter/producer Amy Goodman, Breaking The Sound Barrier is (apparently) a collection of news stories that were covered by “Democracy Now!” between 2006 and 2009. At least, that’s what I think it is. The book never seems to make it clear. Broken down into sections with bleak headers such as “WAR,” “TORTURE” and “GLOBAL ECONOMIC MELTDOWN,” the reader is subjected to one depressing article after another. I understand that a great deal of what happens in the world is tragic. And that most of that tragedy goes unreported by the world’s corporate news machines. And for that reason, it’s good to know that operations like “Democracy Now!” are out there, fighting the good fight. But again, I have to wonder, “Why was this book made?” Turning to a random page finds an article about a father who’s gone on a nationwide anti-war protest after his son (a U.S. soldier) was killed in the Middle East (page 17). Another random turn finds an article about psychologists working in government-sponsored torture programs. And it goes on, and on. All of the stories contained in Breaking The Sound Barrier are around three pages long. And I’m sure they’re archived on the Internet. So why was it necessary to compile them in book form? Who felt that anyone would want to read all ot these miserable stories, back to back? I’ll admit, part of my disappointment in this book comes from my own misunderstanding of its contents. I thought it was going to be historical or autobiographical in nature. I’d find a story about Goodman’s history, and the evolution of “Democracy Now!’ to be an interesting read. Or perhaps some essays/editorials on the state of modern media, from the viewpoint of someone who’s doing things at a grassroots level. Instead, I got WAR and TORTURE. I realize it’s my own fault for not cracking the book open and giving it a more thorough preview at the bookstore. But nowhere on the book’s front or back covers does it ever state what it is exactly that’s inside. I have subscribed to the “Democracy Now” podcast in the past, and may do so again in the future. And I’d recommend it to anyone looking for an alternative to mainstream news reporting. Just stick to the podcast/radio show/web versions and skip this book.