Showing posts with label novel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label novel. Show all posts

Thursday, May 19, 2011

The Thrilling Conclusion - Dreadfully Ever After

"Dreadfully Ever After" is the final book in the trilogy of "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies". The original book - heretoafter referred to as PPZ - was credited to co-authors Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, who can be said to have pioneered the genre within Quirk Classics, which followed up with "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters" and "Android Karenena".

This novel - DEA - was written by the same man who wrote the PPZ prequel, "Dawn of the Dreadfuls" (DD), and I daresay it is the best of the lot. The author, Steve Hockensmith, captured the language and the feel of a Victorian-era novel, as well as that of a pulpy adventure/zombie novel. The language is amusing an the characters well drawn.

I find this is the best of the three because, while PPZ was amusing, it was simply a retelling of the original PP, but with zombies - and that was great. DD was a prequel, so naturally had to set up certain things to take place in PPZ with love interests you sort of knew wouldn't go anywhere. DEA, however, was a wholly new creation and was by far the most fun, with exciting new characters - and heartbreaking characters deaths - and genuinely felt like a Victorian adventure novel that just happened to have the Bennets in it - which I appreciated the most.

The book was thrilling, hilarious and smart and I highly recommend it to anyone.

Monday, June 7, 2010

NaNoWriMo

So I've decided to undertake the Na(itional)No(vel)Wri(ting)Mo(nth) competition. The idea is to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November - which is only 1,667 words a day. One of the reasons I'm telling you 5 people who actually (occasionally) read this mess of a blog is because now that I have, it will be too embarrassing for me to give up and will force me to finish it. I hope.
I will be posting samples of the work once I get underway on November 1st, and anyone with any ideas about WHAT I should write about are completely welcome in the comments section below.
Should it be steampunk? Noir? Realism? Gritty contemporary realism? Magic realism? Fantasy? Narrative non-fiction? Help me figure this mess out!