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: #2542 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.

Jane Austen's Classic mixed with Deep Sea Monster Mayhem...
Following on from the instant cult success of the tongue-in-cheek adaptation of Jane Austen's classic novel with `Pride And Prejudice And Zombies' (with adaptations by Seth Grahame-Smith), came Philadelphia-based publishing house, Quirk Classics' second such literary adaptation, this time with `Sense And Sensibility And Sea Monsters'.

Utilising this newly fangled concept of carving up a classic piece of literature to make way for a more B-Movie-esque style of writing, Quirk editorial director Jason Rekulak struck absolute gold, with an eager audience ready to lap up the next Quirk instalment into this imaginative new genre.

`Pride And Prejudice And Zombies' was received incredibly well right from the start of its initial release. However, it became apparent to the publishers that the fanbase for these surreal re-workings wanted a higher percentage of new (monster laden) text. Whereby `Zombies' incorporated a mere fifteen percent of new text, `Sea Monsters' ladled in a massive forty odd percent of fishy frolics into the mix.

For those who don't already know the classic story by Jane Austen, here it is in a nutshell:

The whole story sets off with the unfortunate death of a Mr. Dashwood, whereby he leaves the entirety of the family estate to his only son and child from his first wife, John Dashwood. John is convinced by his greedy wife Fanny to rid their newly acquired property of its current occupants - his three half-sisters (Elinor, Marianne and Margaret) as well as his recently widowed step-mother. The Dashwood women soon take up residence with Mrs Dashwood's wealthy and eccentric cousin Sir John Middleton. Whist adjusting themselves to their new lifestyles, the two sisters, Elinor and Marianne, find themselves experiencing both joyful romance and utter heartbreak. Love and lasting happiness is eventually achieved for both sisters after they each find equilibrium between the two contrasting characteristics that are so predominant between the two sisters; Elinor guided by her sense (logic) and Marianne who in turn is guided by her sensibility (emotion).

With this overall storyline already in place, all of the basic elements and characters are kept completely intact with Ben H. Winter's mashed-up reworking. However, the surreal inclusion of his `aquatic imaginings' of often Lovecraftian proportions to the entirety of the storyline, brings a whole new angle (and dare I say `life') to the tale.

Instead of simply being too long in his years, Colonel Brandon is now not only a gentleman of fine wealth and good manners, but now he has been inflicted with a mass of tentacles that adorn his otherwise human face (as well as other regions). Throughout the novel Winters plays with the original text of the tale in similar such ways, as well as introducing his sea monster attacks during the moments when the character's emotions are at breaking point. This doubled-up approach of mirroring the emotional peril with a B-movie monster attack at each point in the tale, delivers a thoroughly entertaining but doubly surreal element to the book. On so many occasions, Winters valiantly tackles the character's altogether important dialogue with a gigantic aquatic attack at exactly the same moment. Hats off to the man, for each and every time he juggles these two dramatic elements with nothing short of an imaginative and truly inspired flare.

The novel as a whole runs smoothly throughout, with the light-hearted alterations never taking themselves too seriously. As the tale builds towards its traumatic finale, the inclusion of the `Captain Barbossa' style pirate `Dreadbeard', is brilliantly comical. With so much emotional turmoil crashing down on the characters, Winters throws in a litany of sea monster mayhem in these final chapters, bringing the aquatic menace to gigantic proportions.

The cunning change of setting from London to the underwater city of Sub-Marine Station Beta, created a whole new opportunity for Winters to weave in his chaotic deep sea devilry. Whilst Elinor and Marianne are suffering their individual emotional heartbreaks all those leagues under the sea, Margaret in turn is dealing with a much darker Lovcraftian-esque affair.

All in all this imaginative reworking has managed to successfully inject some satirical b-movie mayhem to a previously untouched classic. Ok, so the whole concept behind these re-workings will certainly not be to everyone's taste. But Quirk Classics have really found themselves a niche market to exploit, that as long as it never takes any of what it is doing too seriously (which is highly unlikely), then it has a rich new ground to sow many seeds of sheer imagination.

`Sense And Sensibility And Sea Monsters' is a brilliant way to spend a number of hours chuckling at imagination run riot. The re-working's not designed to be ripped apart, nor indeed analysed for its overall impact on the emotional ordeals of Elinor and Marianne. Instead, it's exactly what the title proclaims. Nothing more and nothing less. And I for one bore a huge grin throughout each and every one of the 340 tentacle infested pages.

The book also contains fourteen black and white illustrations interspersed throughout the novel, usually of the more dramatic (and therefore sea monster heavy) moments. A `Reader's Discussion Guide' is also included at the end of the book that includes ten purely tongue-in-cheek questions that could be used as discussion points on the novel's content. There is also a quick excerpt from `Pride And Prejudice And Zombies' over the last four pages of the book.

The final icing on the cake is the excellent cover artwork painted by Lars Leetaru that appears on the front of the book. This one painting truly captures the essence of what the Quirk re-workings are all about.