I'm slowly working my way round the few Pratchett books I have left to read, and as this one had been kicking around on my shelf for about seven years now I thought it was about time I read it! It does not and cannot compare to STP's later works, especially the majority of the Discworld books, but reminds me a lot of The Colour of Magic in style and purpose. Also nice to see appearances of some things that would be important in his later books, such as Datum Universe, Small Gods, Hogswatch and Soul Cake Tuesday!

At the start:



At the end:



This book is a brilliant addition to the Discworld collection; it's absolutely stunning, and gives plenty of details on the areas of the Disc that are mentioned in passing, or haven't been visited in a while, with an update as to what's going on at the moment. Two happy afternoons were spent with the map open on the floor, one finger holding the page with the map references, happily putting A level Further Maths to use with the polar coordinates, before getting to the end and (once again) having the crushing realisation that there will be no more Discworld novels. In the back of my mind as I read through this there was a little voice going, 'I wonder how Susan is getting on?' or 'How are Polly and Mal doing?' or 'Will Uberwald move with the times, will the aristocracy get along?' and then a reminder that we will never know. And in a way, that's okay; so many stories were self-contained, have been finished, and we can use this book - and others - to rest assured that things are doing okay.

But that doesn't stop occasional visits from the onion fairy...

Okay, um... wow. Was not expecting that to pack the punch it did.



Or rather, I was really hoping it would, and I was not let down.

Having read so many YA dystopian books - some good, some not so good - it was refreshing to go back to the roots of the genre. Rather than a Girl Who Is Different From Other Girls who is able to Overthrow The Repressive Government Using Her Super Skills Of Being A Good And Moral Person, we met Joe Bloggs - who, in this instance, is called Winston Smith. He's your average, dull person, and that's what makes this book so chilling. Unlike all those YA books, its purpose is not to empower you and make you feel like You Could Be Katniss Too. We can all identify at least something with Winston, and we feel everything he does.

As well as being essentially an essay on politics and sociology, it's an essay on human nature. The things we will and will not do, the things we're afraid of, the things we're willing to fight for, and how far (in this case, there being a limit) we're willing to go for them. How easily we believe things, forget things, persuade ourselves that something is true or not true. And honestly, that is the most terrifying thing about this book.

I love Pride and Prejudice. I love retellings of Classics. So I should have loved this.

The premise is great, and let's face it - if there was a zombie apocalypse, Elizabeth Bennet would be on the front line. But this was... well, it was awful. Yes, I did read to the end, because a) I was desperately hoping it would get better and b) I was almost having fun disliking it. (Spoiler: It did not get better.) There were moments of promise, but they were few and far between, and outweighed by the frankly cringe-worthy innuendoes.

If this had been written from scratch, it might have been okay, but shoe-horning zombie scenes into a terribly abridged version of one of the most famous and well-loved English classics just felt forced and detracted from the original characters and story. I'm not the target audience, and I know that - after all, the blurb describes this as "something you'd actually want to read". Personally, I "actually want to read" Pride and Prejudice and other great books. But just because you're being tongue-in-cheek (which is really giving it too much credit) or a parody doesn't mean that it can't - or shouldn't be - good. The book was lazily written, but acknowledging that doesn't stop it from being terrible. It's only redeeming qualities (and the reason it has two stars instead of one) are that most of it was written by Jane Austen and that somehow, against all the odds, I read to the last page. Even if I was banging my head against a wall while doing so.