Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame Smith and Tony Lee

8/10

Jane Austen's classic Regency tale of love and honour is brought back and given a peculiar and interesting twist as Miss Elizabeth Bennett and her trusted friends (along with Mr. Darcy) find out from village gossip that the whole of England has become plagued by the living dead uprooting from the ground causing havoc and other zombies to appear from place to place, known as unmentionables or dreadfuls. Miss Bennett is known as the Defender of Longbourne, the heroine of Hertfordshire, and has killed plenty of these evil things to be awarded that title.

Even when our heroes are dealing with the likes of the undead, they never leave their manners or morals - self-respect is still certainly on the agenda even when a flesh-eating zombie comes their way and spoils their fun, social ettiquette and tea parties.

Mr. Darcy, however polite and gentlemanly, is also not one to be toyed with either as he is skilled with both sword and gun, both of which he uses to great effect. The rest of the characters refuse to be outdone though…

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a thrill ride of a graphic novel, one that Jane Austen herself couldn’t have seen coming over a hundred years earlier. Seth Grahame-Smith and Tony Lee have kept Austen's writing style and injected humour into it along with zombies, ninjas and kick-ass moves in this one-off story of survival, death and finding time for romance.

Never have Elizabeth and Darcy proved to be such a formidable pair in the face of zombie adversity. Cliff Richards has had the sole task of actually bringing the characters out in the graphic novel itself, his style is both sketchy and detailed using a mixture of ink and pencil, it is striking enough to will the reader on to the exciting story's conclusion.