The classic monster mash ups in fiction trend that began with Pride & Prejudice & Zombies appears to be going strong enough to relaunch itself for the new year. Most of these are set for spring and summer,with a few peeking out already to add some extra chills to the later winter months.
While we will be getting some terrifying new twists on childhood/young adult favorites(not only is there a Little Women and Werewolves expected this spring but Little Vampire Women as well!) along with a prequel to P&P&Z,there are some original takes on famous faces in history joining in the scare tactics,too.
The quality of this material is yet to be determined but for fans of historical fiction and the horror fantasy genre,these titles seem to be offering two great things that may taste great together. Whether the flavor will be peanut butter and jelly goodness or peanut butter and pickle chips strangeness,at least one or two of them should be worth the sampling:
QUEEN VICTORIA,DEMON HUNTER
This new novel by A.E. Moorat(the pen name of author Andrew Holmes)has the newly crowned lady monarch taking her battles to more than one front as zombies and demons become as big a threat to England as her political enemies are.
In addition to those woes,there is Prince Albert,the man in her life whose love for her is a strong distraction from the duties of the throne and necessary beheadings of hideous creatures. What's a young queen to do,indeed? Not the typical version seen of Queen Victoria but something tells me that she certainly had the mettle to face down the forces of darkness there:
JANE BITES BACK
Beloved author Jane Austen joins the ranks of the undead in Michael Thomas Ford's long awaited novel. The premise here is that Jane was turned by Lord Byron back in the day and now lives in a small college town,running a bookstore and watching others make a fortune off of her works.
Jane tries to get a new book published and is about to succeed when several romance interests crop up to put her literary career off track again. I have to admit this does sound like fun and hopefully,if Our Dear Jane was still with us,she would employ that notorious sense of humor of hers and simply smirk at the modern day obsession with romantic remixes:
ABRAHAM LINCOLN,VAMPIRE HUNTER
Seth Grahame-Smith,who gave us P&P&Z,has a stake up his sleeve for Lincoln,whose secret war on vampires is revealed in this discovered "journal" and brought out into the light of day.
Lincoln is given a Blade type of warrior persona here,starting his quest to destroy all bloodsuckers as a means of avenging his mother's premature demise from a vampire assault. While we never heard of any direct action on any of the Civil War battlefields from him,Honest Abe was a pretty tall and tough guy that one could easily see throwing down on the undead just as good as Wesley Snipes did in any of the Blade movies:
Many more of these genre remixes are sure to follow,perhaps reaching out to readers of all ages as the trend rolls on. Plenty of the scariest stories ever written were aimed at children after all(take a look at the original versions of Cinderella,Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood to see what I mean for yourself)and twisting some of those timeless tales around to blend the horror factor in is truly child's play.
I could be on the wrong track with this,but on the other hand,they are going after Little Women already. No matter how far this new literary hybrid takes us,it will be interesting to see if our childlike sense of the weird and wonderful can be kept alive this way:
I've avoided the zombie ones thus far but I may still pick up the others. I like the idea of these and how they bring attention back to the classics.
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