Juxtaposition is a timeless literary trick. Placing negative and positive in opposition, creating muscular parallel sentences, or they as teach you in art school, aiming for the “strident” application of opposites is the hallmark of a master.
Poorly executed juxtaposition, on the other hand, is worse than passionate activity with inanimate objects. In literary form, it leaves one lifeless and limp.
The question of this review is, thus, whether the prequel to Pride and Predjudice and Zombies, the most successful literary mash-up of 2009, is DOA or a whole new trick. Or put another way, will Dawn of the Dreadfuls make you puke or pant for more?
Let us waffle for a moment.
On the one hand, we find the work to be the intellectual equivalent of a deviant fetish. On the the other hand, we find that very prurience appealing. It is written in a way that builds just enough dread to make you either kneel at prayer or beg for something really bad.
There is something, we dunno, positively dirty about this book.
So far.
In the spirit of full disclosure (and dreading a deadline here) we have not yet finished the work. Should you need to sate that passion immediately click right here.
Hiya: We’re back again with an abbreviated yet complete review of this new work.
We know, one, fun and done.
Sadly we do not refer to the first time one smashes the putrid flesh out of a zombie, but instead to the short yet sublime experience most readers will have with the zombie mash-up genre. While titilated by the first book, they perhaps might not pick up this fine prequel.
We dread the thought, because in many ways it is better.
Morsel One: This book is easier to read that than the original Zombies smash as it avoids the bountiful yet breathy prose of Ms. Austen. It reads a little more like a movie, which, after all is a pure delight for the following reason: the chicks kick some serious ass. The skirts are lifted here and nothing is safe.
Morsel Two: The dreadfuls are even more disgusting. How delish.
Morsel Three: The cover of the book makes it look like the little one has experienced womanhood. Is this appropriate? We believe the answer lies in the original gist of the Victorians. “Victorian Woman” is penultimate euphemism for passions long repressed. If Ms.Austen were to rise from her grave tomorrow we believe she would scream like a banshee in ecstasy that her deepest passions have been co-opted by another writer. A man, no less.
Pray tell, does this mean Jane would feel jaded?
No. She would find Mr. Hockensmith. Kill him. Eat him. Then leverage the movie rights.
Which would obscure the fact that Mr. Hockensmith has created an entirely new work here, unlike the original franchise (which is pure mash, if that is a term).
It would be soooo unfair.
Then again, so is Hollywood.
