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

Did you read Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, and think: “That was good, but, it just needs something,”? If so, then you are in luck! Right now, (for an unlimited time), you can read Pride and Prejudice, the classic by Austen, with extra added zombies! What could be better than that?

Seth Grahame-Smith has taken the very same classic you know and love, and imagined what it would be like if the story was set in a “universe” where zombies existed. All the characters you know from Austen’s book are there, in the same relationships you would expect. Jane falls for Mr. Bingley, who falls just as hard for her. Lizzy hates, then loves, then hates, then loves Darcy, who has equally mixed emotions for Lizzy. Some of the other Bennet sisters are just as frivolous and silly as usual, and the last one, Mary, is just as severe. Readers get all the wit and social commentary that no one other than Austen can write, and it still takes place in England around 1811 or so.

The differences, that Grahame-Smith adds, are delightful… if you like books involving zombies. The Bennet sisters are now trained warriors, experts at dispatching “the unmentionables”. People are wary of “the strange plague”. They have learned how to fight and kill the zombies, what to do with the corpses, and how to determine if their friends and neighbors might be turning into an undead. The soldiers are in town not because of a war, but in an effort to protect people from the swarms of zombies that seem to be everywhere. It’s something like a “bizarro world” of Austen’s famous book.

The first sentence reads:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”

This was all I needed to know I was going to love this book!

Grahame-Smith didn’t hold back on the horror aspects that every good zombie story should have. There are epic battles, and some truly disgusting and disquieting scenes interposed with the parts of the story that Austen wrote. You also get a bit of what every reader of the original Pride and Prejudice wanted : Lizzy has a few moments where she seriously considers the pros and cons of killing off her annoying younger sisters, and her embarrassing mother, rather than suffer their incessant prattling on one minute more.

Included in several places in this book are wonderful drawings, that resemble wood block prints. Each drawing shows a scene from the book where somebody is fighting zombies, about to fight zombies, or fighting each other.

If you liked the book World War Z , and are looking for another great read involving zombies, this is the book for you!

Zombies spawned from cell phones, what could be cooler than that? The action starts almost immediately, and is violent, bloody, and fast. Before you know it, the zombies are everywhere. I couldn’t put this book down.

The story line is a simple one. Clayton Riddell is coming back home from an interview, which went well. He stops for a moment and gets in line to buy an ice cream. Then, all hell breaks loose. People go from normal to psychotic in seconds flat. No one sees it coming. All Clayton can figure out, at first, is that everyone who has gone crazy and homicidal had a cell phone. The people are still alive, but are suddenly acting more like zombies. They aren’t the slow, stupid, lurching zombies, either. No, they are fast, as in the remake of “Dawn of the Dead” kind of fast. Perhaps because they are still alive?

From there, the story is about survival. What do you do, when surrounded by what is basically a pack of zombies? Where do you go? Clayton must make some quick decisions. Cell isn’t simply about avoiding death by fast moving monsters. It also touches on what happens to people’s minds when they are dropped into this horrific situation. Who do you trust? How can you tell who is safe, and who is going to become violent? How do you figure out what caused this, so it doesn’t happen to you? Makes for a tense story. King excels in mixing psychological and physical horror. Just when his characters think they have things figured out, the zombies change. They act differently, and seem to be getting “smarter”.

Then there’s the moral dilemma. Is it right to kill off these zombies, in order to save not only yourself, but also the other, still unaffected, “normal” humans who are left? I mean, they are still people, right? They are alive, aren’t they? Or, have they stopped being “people” once they lost their minds and got all bloodthirsty? Staggering.

The only thing I didn’t absolutely love about this book was the ending. King doesn’t simply tell you if a particularly important action by the main character worked, or if it didn’t work. The book ends just as Clayton is doing the action. I was kind of mad, because I wanted to know for certain one way or the other. Instead, King has left it unclear. Either he wanted the readers to decide for themselves what should happen next, or, he is leaving room for a sequel to this story. I’m hoping for a sequel, but not exactly holding my breath.

The back of the book says that Stephen King does not own a cell phone. Neither do I. I hate them. I hate when people use them while driving, as they swerve into my lane and almost hit my car. I hate when people come into my retail job, ask me to find them something, and can’t manage to stop their conversation on the cell phone long enough for me to figure out what exactly it is they are looking for. I hate that they force me to be rude, and interrupt their conversation just to provide the help they asked me for in the first place. I hate the T.M.I people, who shout “too much information” across stores and restaurants, because the person on the other end of the cell phone has a bad connection, or is in a noisy place, forcing us all to hear about someone’s surgery, or the night someone drank too much. But mostly, I hate that we have become a nation of people who feel the need to isolate ourselves from the possibilities of having a random conversation with other passing humans. People now seem to feel like they must be constantly connected to this security blanket that “wireless” provides. It sickens me when I see a room full of people out somewhere for a night, all chatting away… to people who aren’t even in the room, instead of with someone who is actually standing next to us. Perhaps, King felt some of the same things I do, and that’s what inspired this book.

If you are a Stephen King fan, you will love this book. It’s just that special. If you are a fan of zombies, and like stories that include them, don’t pass this one up! If you hate, hate, hate cell phones, as much as I do, you will get sadistic pleasure from this book. I highly recommend it.

Max Brooks, creator of The Zombie Survival Guide, brings you World War Z. These are the stories of the survivors of the war between all of humanity and the walking undead. Details are given about how to survive, (including what armor and newly created weapons worked well, and also, what did not work at all), how different countries dealt with this new kind of war, (some failed spectacularly, some were better off), and how individual people responded to the economic, social, and cultural changes brought about as a result of The Zombie War. Brooks even goes so far as to report back on what happened to the environment, how different animals were affected, and the new psychological disorders people developed after the dead started rising and trying to eat people. The book is done in a series of narrative interviews, which is a little different from how The Guide was presented.

This book was so good, it gave me nightmares! Even better, it wasn’t the “I will never sleep again” kind of nightmares, it was more like the “I am in the middle of a Zombie movie! What do I do next?” kind of nightmares. I was very impressed. The book will be available September 12. Fans of the Zombie genre will not want to miss out on this one!