Product Description

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters is expanded edition of the beloved regency romance--with thrilling all-new scenes of giant lobsters, rampaging octopi, two-headed sea serpents, and other biological monstrosities. As our story opens, the Dashwood sisters are evicted from their childhood home and sent to live on a mysterious island full of savage creatures and dark secrets. While sensible Elinor falls in love with Edward Ferrars, her romantic sister Marianne is courted by both the handsome Willoughby and the hideous man-monster Colonel Brandon. Can the Dashwood sisters triumph over meddlesome matriarchs and unscrupulous rogues to find true love? Or will they fall prey to the tentacles which are forever snapping at their heels? With many strange and wonderful illustrations throughout, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters invades the prim and proper world of Jane Austen with the outrageous mythology of Jules Verne, H.P. Lovecraft, Lost, Spongebob Squarepants, Red Lobster, and Popeye the Sailor. Let the monster mash-up begin.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1163 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-15
• Released on: 2009-09-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 344 pages

Review
The reinterpretation of Jane Austen's novel (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) will be followed with the release of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters... The books were created by US-based publishing house, Quirk Books. Jason Rekulak, the editorial director, said he pioneered the format after meeting dozens of Austen fans at a Californian sci-fi convention. He told the Independent that he was a "lifelong fan" of the works of Jules Verne, and thought it would be fun to enliven the follow-up with some rampaging giant squid and man-eating octopuses...'
--The Telegraph, 13 August 2009

The crossover between fans of Jane Austen and lovers of B-movie horror is small, but it is enough to warrant a follow-up to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. An instant classic that saw the Bennet sisters meet the undead, it sold more than half a million copies in English and was then translated into 17 languages. This follow-up literary 'mash-up' has the Dashwood girls looking for love in a watery England at the mercy of vengeful sea creatures. Forget sprained ankles in Devonshire, Ben Winters has introduced a gigantic, man-eating jellyfish and packed the poor girls off to the Pestilent Isle under the care of retired adventurer Sir John Middleton, who sports a necklace of human ears, while Colonel Brandon's sideburns are a horrific abberation. Winters lets Austen set the tone and the plot swims surprisingly faitfully in her wake. It's a very silly conceit, mixing Regency manners with a Jules Verne topography, but it is as attention-grabbing as a two-headed creature rising from the deep, while diving suits are far more becoming than frocks.
--The Guardian, 3 October 2009

Customer Reviews

Even with the multi-tentacled mayhem this is hard work.
It's a great idea on paper ,except errr it isn't ......well not really. The idea of introducing tentacled mayhem into a piece of classic literature comes across as hilarious and subversive and liable to have scholars of classic literature up in arms ( or tentacles ) which I'm all for but this book left me colder than if I had been left naked on the rocky shores of the islands where proceedings take place in the narrative.
For all the incipient promise of the idea you will struggle with this book if you are averse the flowery prose and strangled verbiage of Jane Austin's writing which I very much am. For all the technical bravado of the writing extensive contact with this book left me tired and nursing a headache that would floor a leviathan if I can keep the nautical theme running .
I have nothing against classic literature. I love some of the gothic classics and have read and enjoyed works by Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad amongst others. But this , even with the added fun of a squid faced suitor and lashings of monster mayhem is hard work. Some will clearly enjoy this mixture of the classical and the contemporary but as far as I can envisage those who enjoy fantastic /horror fiction like me will be put off by the florid prose and whimsy of Jane Austen and ( most of ) those who love Jane Austen will be aghast at the addition of sea monsters and visceral pandemonium.
As a reader I felt stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea ( nautical theme still paddling for dear life ) and though I exerted myself and saw it through to the end I cannot say it was any fun and a book with giant sea monsters that is,nt any fun is a bit like a broken pencil.......pointless*

* Filched from Blackadder .
Blackadder - The Complete Collection [DVD]

Literary anarchy!
Some of the negative reviews here seem to be because of the varying expectations of the reviewers: so I guess it's worth saying that this isn't an `introduction' to Jane Austen - this book relies completely on a fairly close acquaintance with the original. In fact it is Austen's original text, intersected and broadened by the interpenetration of the `horror'/SF/imperial adventure genre epitomised by authors like Rider Haggard, Conan Doyle (The Lost World rather than Sherlock Holmes), Jules Verne and later `B' movie spin-offs. And it's precisely the fact that this is written in Austen's measured, balanced formal prose that makes it so funny.

The text investigates the borders of genre in an insistently post-modern way, and finds them to be far more permeable than we might expect. It's not just the Austen romance, we find, that can be hijacked by early horror/SF, but that romance can completely hold its own: the shape of the genre may be bent and distorted but never eradicated completely. By mixing such seemingly-separate genres, this actually serves to draw attention to both their similarity and dissimilarity: refusing to play by genre rules serves not to make genre irrelevant but to actually re-impose its rules.

The eco-message gives this a contemporary edge that taps into C21st anxieties, but at the same time encodes the fragility beneath the ostensible confidence of Austen's own society which had witnessed the French revolution, the American revolution and was in the middle of the Napoleonic wars which take place unnamed in the background to her romances.

So overall I loved this and while it can certainly be read as light and frothy fun, it's actually quite literarily knowing and sophisticated, and requires us to simultaneously recall the original and forget it at the same time.

Great Fun
After the phenomenal success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance-now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! (Quirk Classics) comes a follow up with this new title. Sense and Sensibility was in fact Miss Austen's first published novel although the second that she wrote and has always been a favourite of mine. I must admit that I was a little bit dubious whether this would be any good, after all we don't like to see our treasured books mutilated and messed about with, but on the whole it made a great read.

When the Dashwood sisters with their mother leave their home they are found a place in the Middleton Archipelago, off the South Devon coast. Due to a mysterious happening called the Alteration sea monsters lurk in the vasty deeps waiting to prey on unsuspecting humans. Ben H Winters has interwoven his humourous horror tale with Jane Austen's classic and has come up with something that is very enjoyable to read, and hopefully may introduce newer readers to actually reading the classics. The biggest noticible difference that hits you immediately with this is that Colonel Brandon is a mutant with a tentacular face making him rather unpleasant to behold. Illustated throughout by Eugene Smith surely the publishers have another hit on their hands. More importantly though is whether love shall be found and will the reason for the Alteration be discovered. With a city under the sea and human experimentation there is something here for those who love a bit of sci-fi.