The Last Man by Mary Shelley

 

Mary Shelley, via

Reviewed by Susanna

Published: 1826

It's about: The year is 2096. In the past few decades, England has retired the monarchy in favor of a republican government, Greece has reconquered Constantinople, and men have begun to travel long distances by hot air balloon. Now, however, plague ravages the globe, upending law and order, breaking down social barriers, and giving rise to a deadly messianic cult.

The end of the world is observed by Lionel Verney, an English historian who, by accident of fortune, is both immune to the plague and uniquely placed to document its progress. Verney's account begins as an autobiography: he spends the first third of the novel relating his and his sister Perdita's impoverished youth as orphans in the rugged countryside, his eventual friendship with the former Crown Prince of England, Adrian Windsor (who paradoxically cherishes republican beliefs); his courtship of Adrian's vivacious sister Idris; and Perdita's marriage to the brooding, tempestuous Lord Raymond.

The pastoral romance of the first third takes an abrupt, Gothic turn when a seemingly-abandoned ship drifts into an English harbor. Its lone surviving crew member lives only long enough to spread a deadly, voracious contagion to London. As England's population rapidly dies off, Adrian attempts to stave off chaos and lead the few survivors to safety across the English Channel, only to encounter warfare, accident, and further sickness.

I thought: Mary Shelley is better known for Frankenstein, but The Last Man is her lost masterpiece. At the time of its publication in 1826, the possibility of humanity's extinction was considered grotesque and almost offensive. Consequently, the novel languished in obscurity for over a century. It was only after the possibility of a nuclear holocaust was realized in the mid-twentieth century that critics began to revisit The Last Man and recognize its innovative and prescient nature. Specifically, Shelley is the first major writer to treat the theme of apocalypse as a primarily secular, scientific event, and to thoroughly explore is social repercussions. Novels like The Walking Dead and The Road, which prominently feature dwindling bands of survivors attempting to preserve some semblance of morality and civilization in the face of a dubious future, can claim The Last Man in their literary ancestry.

Nevertheless, The Last Man is a highly unique work that differs significantly from its modern descendants. Unlike the emotionally spartan works of fellow post-apocalyptic writers Cormac McCarthy, George Orwell, and Ray Bradbury; Shelley is an unabashedly emotive writer. She ably demonstrates her place in the pantheon of Romantic writers with numerous, rapturously beautiful descriptions of pastoral abundance and rugged wilderness. She is also adept at turning debates on moral philosophy between her characters into riveting, poetic exploration of psychology. These two qualities are united in Shelley's exploration of the psychological differences between Raymond who believes that

Our virtues are the quick-sands, which shew themselves at calm and low water; but let the waves arise and the winds buffet them, and the poor devil whose hope was in their durability finds them sink from under him.

While Adrian muses that

The choice is with us; let us will it, and our habitation becomes a paradise. For the will of man is omnipotent, blunting the arrows of death, soothing the bed of disease, and wiping away the tears of agony.

Shelley's skill at crafting elaborate Gothic thrills only fully comes to the fore in the latter two thirds of the novel, as she expertly conjures up bizarre and unsettling images, increasing their intensity and frequency as the horrors of the plague ramp up. They foreshadow social chaos by disturbing the orderly progress of natural events. As the survivors cross the English Channel

three other suns, alike burning and brilliant, rushed from various quarters of the heavens toward the great orb; they whirled round it. The glare of light was intense to our dazzled eyes; the sun itself seemed to join in the dance, while the sea burned like a furnace, like all Vesuvius alight, with flowing lava beneath.   

Her ability to seamlessly combine political commentary, horror, romance, and nature writing makes for a unique, complex reading experience that readers return to repeatedly. Fans of Wuthering Heights, The Road, and Edgar Allan Poe should make this lost classic a priority. 

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf!

Reading Recommendations: The Wordsworth Classics edition has an engaging introduction and notes by Pamela Bickley and the Wikipedia entry contains a detailed plot summary and character list.

Warnings: None.

Favorite excerpts:

There were few books that we dared read; few, that did not cruelly deface the painting we bestowed on our solitude, by recalling combinations and emotions never more to be experienced by us. Metaphysical disquisitions; fiction, which wandering from all reality, lost itself in self-created errors; poets of times so far gone by, that to read of them was as to read of Atlantis and Utopia....

What I'm reading next: Angle of Repose

Audiobook Review: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dreadfully Ever After by

still from the book trailer

Reviewed by Christina
[Read Megan's review of the print version here.]

Published: 2011

It's about: The story opens after Lizzie and Darcy have been married for several years.  Elizabeth can't seem to muster up much excitement about life now that she is A Gentleman's Wife; social mores bar married ladies from doing battle with Zed-words.  Just a few minutes into the book, a child dreadful attacks and bites Mr. Darcy and his wife enters into a humiliating plot to save him.  The mastermind behind said plot is Lizzie's formidable foe, Lady Catherine de Bourgh.  Can Elizabeth secure a cure for the Zombie Plague before it's too late?

I thought:  As you may know from my reviews of the original P&P&Z and its prequel, Dawn of the Dreadfuls, Dreadfully Ever After is the third and final book in the zombie mashup trilogy.  It's written by the same author of Dawn, not the same as the originator of the series, Seth Grahame-Smith, who first inserted monsters into Jane Austen's British regency-era world.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find that I liked everything about Dreadfully Ever After far better than Steve Hockensmith's previous contribution.  Honestly, everything is better in Dreadfully as compared with Dawn: pacing and plotting, character development, general originality, humor.  I just really liked this audiobook.  It kept my attention through many a mile of running; it didn't sag or become tiresome.  I even laughed!  While running!  That is quite an achievement, Mr. Hockensmith.

If you are a big P&P fan, I think I'd recommend the zombie sequel less for its undead action and more for its development of two previously minor characters:  Kitty and Mary Bennet.  Both are in their early twenties in this story, likely on their way to spinsterdom (their mother has given up matchmaking- she needs caretakers in her old age, not more married daughters abandoning her). But Kitty and Mary contribute at least as much to Darcy's rescue as Elizabeth does, and they become full-on people.  Their character trajectories made sense and amused me, even if I doubt they are very similar to anything Jane Austen herself would have devised.

Katherine Kellgren, the reader, does a fabulous job as ever.  She is hilarious.  There is one character with an extremely exaggerated Scottish brogue, and his endlessly rolled r's did get on my nerves after a while.  But not terribly so; I enjoyed mentally casting King Fergus as him, and imagining his son looking something like a dandified Young Macintosh.  Good times.

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf!

Reading Recommendations:  Read them in order for the best experience.  Even though I didn't love the first P&P&Z installment, I still think most readers would like the trilogy best in its entirety.

Warnings:  Zombie gore.

What I'm listening to next:  Matched by Ally Condie

Audiobook Review: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls by Steve Hockensmith

(a still from the book trailer)

Reviewed by Christina

Published: 2010

It's about:  Dawn of the Dreadfuls is a prequel, taking place five years before Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  It opens with a funeral, attended by the Bennets, in which the dearly departed unexpectedly rises from his coffin, heralding a rebirth of the undead in Hertfordshire.  Mr. Bennet dispenses with the zombie; he knows what to do because he fought for the Royal Army during "The Troubles" (England's very first zombie uprising) twenty or so years before.  The interrupted funeral prompts him to hire a young martial artist named Master Hawksworth to train the Bennet sisters in "the deadly arts."  Just as the girls start to show promise as zombie-slayers, a regiment comes to town and takes up residence at Netherfield Park.  Together the Bennets and the soldiers try to protect the locals and the land from the ever increasing numbers of grave-fresh "Dreadfuls" until finally they are besieged in a hideously gory climax.

I thought:  As you might remember, I very much enjoyed listening to P&P&Z back around Halloween.  So I was happy to stay in the zombified Regency universe a little longer but I was curious about what differences I'd notice in Dawn of the Dreadfuls.  As we all know, Jane Austen didn't write a prequel to Pride and Prejudice so this is pretty much fanfic.  And it's not even written by the same author who came up with the original mashup idea.

Can you tell my expectations were a little on the lower end for this one?  And rightly so.  I didn't love it.  The characters seemed a little stiff outside the real P&P story.  The story itself lagged quite a bit, and the slightly more descriptive zombie violence didn't do anything to ramp it up.  I could take or leave most of the new (non-Austen) characters.  Everything just seemed kind of shallow in Dawn of the Dreadfuls.  But maybe I'm being too hard on it.  It is just a zombie novel after all.

Still, I loved loved loved the reader, Katherine Kellgren, just as much as I did in P&P&Z.  She is SO FUNNY, you guys.  So funny.  This story would have completely fallen flat with a less talented reader.  Despite my blah attitude toward Steve Hockensmith, I maybe have to check out the last installment of the trilogy just to keep Ms. Kellgren in my life.

Verdict: In Between.  If you NEED Austen-era zombies in your life, Dawn of the Dreadfuls is pretty fun.  But in general I think you could probably skip this one and go straight to Grahame-Smith's original parody, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Warnings:  Oh, you know.  Brains and severed body parts and stuff.  Zombie gore.

What I'm listening to next:  Maybe Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dreadfully Ever After, but I haven't decided for sure yet.

Review: The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore

Reviewed by Christina

Full title: The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror

Published: 2004 (There's also a "Version 2.0" edition from 2005 that has the same text only with an bonus story tacked on to the end.)

It's about: I'm going to use the bookjacket description because it gives a better idea of the novel's style and tone than anything I could come up with:
"'Twas the night (okay, more like the week) before Christmas, and all through the tiny community of Pine cove, California, people are busy buying, wrapping, packing, and generally getting into the holiday spirit. It is the hap-hap-happiest time of the year, after all.
But not everybody is feeling the joy. Little Joshua Barker is in desperate need of a holiday miracle. No, he's not on his deathbed; no, his dog hasn't run away from home. But Josh is sure that he saw Santa take a shovel to the head, and now the seven=year-old has only one prayer: Please, Santa, come back from the dead.
But hold on! There's an angel waiting in the wings. (Wings, get it?) It's none other than the Archangel Raziel come to Earth seeking a small child with a wish that needs granting. Unfortunately, our angel's not sporting the brightest halo in the bunch, and before you can say 'Kris Kringle' he's botched his sacred mission and sent the residents of Pine Cove headlong into Christmas chaos, culminating in the most hilarious and horrifying holiday party the town has ever seen."

I thought: Remember last year when I included this book on my Top Ten Books to Read During the Holidays even though I hadn't actually read it yet? Well now I've read it. And the good news is that I don't regret putting it on that list. During the last month of the year, I relish a good strong dose of Christmas irreverence. I get so tired of everything being warm and fuzzy and special. So in its silliness and cynicism, The Stupidest Angel was the right read at the right time. I laughed, I rolled my eyes, I didn't shed a tear. It was great.

I also liked that Christopher Moore seemed to be seizing the idea that ANYTHING can happen in fiction. This book has a wacky plot that is just all over the place. There's a contagious sense of authorial joie de vivre that you don't often have in serious fiction. But it's clever and well-written enough to keep the intelligent reader interested.

I didn't go gaga over everything about it, though. I hate that certain forced feeling that I get sometimes when I'm reading books that are classified under the Humor heading. The "Wings, get it?" line in the synopsis above is a perfect example. It's a joke. It is intended to make you laugh, and that break in the fourth wall distracts and annoys me. No humorous book is ever going to be 100% successful all the time with every reader, and it makes me feel awkward to be reminded of that when I'm reading.

Still, I did laugh at a lot of Christopher Moore's jokes.

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf! I won't call it high art, but it's amusing and refreshing in sort of a dirty way.

Reading Recommendations: Check it out if Christmas makes you cranky, or if you liked Zombieland and/or Shaun of the Dead

Warnings: Guess what! Mr. Moore includes one himself! It reads: "If you're buying this book as a gift for your grandma or a kid, you should be aware that it contains cusswords as well as tasteful depictions of cannibalism and people in their forties having sex. Don't blame me. I told you."

Favorite excerpts: The opening paragraph: "Christmas crept into Pine Cove like a creeping Christmas thing: dragging garland, ribbon, and sleigh bells, oozing eggnog, reeking of pine, and threatening festive doom like a cold sore under the mistletoe."

and

"Winter denial: therein lay the key to California Schadenfreude-- the secret joy that the rest of the country feels at the misfortune of California. The country said: 'Look at them, with their fitness and their tans, their beaches and their movie stars, their Silicon Valley and silicone breasts, their orange bridge and their palm trees. God, I hate those smug, sunshiny bastards!' Because if you're up to your navel in a snowdrift in Ohio, nothing warms your heart like the sight of California on fire. If you're shoveling silt out of your basement in the Fargo flood zone, nothing brightens your day like watching a Malibu mansion tumbling down a cliff into the sea. And if a tornado just peppered the land around your Oklahoma town with random trailer trash and redneck nuggets, then you can find a quantum of solace in the fact that the earth actually opened up in the San Fernando Valley and swallowed a whole caravan of commuting SUVs."

What I'm reading next: My Evangeline by Heidi Radford Legg

Review: Dreadfully Ever After by Steve Hockensmith

Reviewed by Meagan

Published: 2011

It's about: In 2009, the Undead gained new life when Quirk Books began publishing mashup stories that combined literary classics with various mythical or otherwise unlikely creatures. The first of these combinations was entitled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Despite the truly terrible plot, the adaptation achieved astronomical levels of success including being #27 on amazon.co.uk's bestseller list and #3 on the New York Times bestseller list (at least that's what Wikipedia says :). The popularity of Elizabeth Bennet as zombie hunter prompted first a sequel entitled Pride and Prejudice: Dawn of the Dreadfuls, published in 2010, and then this newest addition as the third in the trilogy. As the novel begins, Elizabeth and Darcy have enjoyed four years of married life, but the social customs that dictate that a married woman cannot hunt zombies has Elizabeth in a bit of a blue mood. Luckily for her, Darcy promptly gets himself bitten and Elizabeth is forced to trust him to the care of Lady Catherine De Bourgh and travel to London to seek a possible cure before it's too late. Mr. Bennet, Kitty, Mary, several ninjas, a man in a dog-drawn box on wheels, and King George III all feature in the adventure.

I thought: So I'll admit that when I first heard of these Jane Austen mashups a couple years ago, I was pretty dismissive. The idea was so utterly ridiculous I couldn't even work up enough energy to be incensed about Jane's words being subjected to such treatment. I would obviously never read such trash so I shrugged my shoulders and promptly forgot about them. However, in the following months, several friends whose opinions I respect mentioned reading these collaborations and remarked on their surprise at actually enjoying them. I remained disbelieving, but enough of a seed was planted in my mind that when the opportunity arose to review the newest work, I jumped on it.

I had grand plans to read at least Pride and Prejudice and Zombies before attempting the sequel, but time and the surprisingly long waiting list at my local library put an end to them, so I just took a deep breath and jumped in. And you know what? Hilarious. As I began reading, I turned the bottom corner up on pages with passages I found particularly entertaining, but quickly found that I was marking almost every page! As a lover of all things Jane Austen, I am always looking for a satisfying continuance of Elizabeth and Darcy's story, but have yet to only find attempts that are at best mediocre and at worst so odious I literally threw the book across the room in disgust. At last! Here was a sequel that passed muster! Sure there are some problems. Why in the world would Mr. Bennet's Christian name be Oscar? And I think the author misread Mary's quelling interjections in the Austen's original work. To me they were based on a rigorously religious and devout disposition but in this novel she is portrayed as a raging feminist. Kitty does well for herself though, and I was glad to see her become her own person once removed from Lydia's obnoxiously overpowering shadow.

Of course the entire story is ridiculously implausible. Of course every character, action, and description has to be taken completely superficially. Approaching the story with any degree of seriousness will only bring you pain. But somehow the utter lack of legitimacy works for me. If I were to write a book portraying the least likely scenario of Elizabeth and Darcy's married life, I doubt it would look much different than this novel. And yet, this novel is the least noxious depiction of that life that I have ever come across.

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf or Rubbish Bin? In between. I had a ball reading this one, and have since checked out the first two in the series and have a hold on Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, but I have a feeling these are more of a one-time indulgence. Although it might be entertaining to watch people's reactions when they see this novel shoved between Jane Austen and Henry James...

Reading Recommendations: Although I didn't read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies before reading Dreadfully Ever After I think it would have helped a little if I had. There are quite a few allusions to plot lines and actions from the previous books that I could somewhat understand, but I'm sure would make much more sense with the right context.

Warnings: The violence in this book is very straightforward and no-nonsense, but there is a great deal of butchery and braining going on so if that doesn't appeal to you I'd move on to something else...

Favorite excerpts: Like I said before, there were tons of great lines, but here's a sampling of what to expect:

"They were a motley assortment, fresh next to rancid, rag-shrouded beside fashionably clothed, all united in the democracy of death."

"Dead flesh lay ahead. The kind that gets up and walks around and tries to make more dead flesh."

"When he regained consciousness, he started the process over. He stood, shuffled, fainted, stood, shuffled, found his clothes, fainted, stood, put on his trousers, fainted, put on his shirt, didn't faint, put on his waistcoat, didn't faint, put on his stockings, didn't faint, picked up his coat, fainted, stood, picked up his coat, fainted, stood,  and finally decided he could live without the coat. After much (but faintless) effort, he had on his shoes and cravat and was at last ready to leave the little tomb in which he'd be interred for so long."

What I'm reading next: Maisie Dobbs

Guest Post: Beth's Favorite Haunting Reads

Today we welcome back previous guest reviewer and my high school friend, Beth! Being a proud goth girl, she's up on all things creepy, so today she has agreed to share with us her favorite Halloweeny reads.

Hello ladies and gents of the Blue Bookcase! Elizabeth here once again to bring you the best delightfully frightful reads for Halloween! Everyone likes a good scare, and Halloween is the best time for it.

We'll start off the list with a series that actually got me hooked on two of my current loves, reading and horror.

Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark collection.
In these three small books you'll find tales of betrayed love, frightful witches and even the tale of the Texan wolf-girl. In these jaggedly illustrated books you'll learn just how frightening a scarecrow can be and why some one should always guard an open casket... For a fun night of nightmares and shadows, these books are great to read aloud with friends and kids. There's even spine tingling games and rituals!

Next on the terror list I give you Bentley Little's The Collection.
Yet again a collection of horror frightening enough to keep you up at night. This is not a book for kids, though, and I don't recommend it if you already have a fear of pillows or homicidal macaroni. The guy obsessed with the dead llama behind his bookstore isn't some one I'd get too chummy with either. Beware the places that don't make sense; those are always the worst places to let yourselves be trapped.

If you prefer your ghosties of a sweeter variety then I give to you The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. Little Nobody Owens (Bod for short) lost his family to a horrible murderer as an infant but was rescued from the same fate by a community of ghosts in the local graveyard. What more could a boy want? Living in tombs and playing with the spirits of children long dead. Given the freedom of the graveyard, Bod begins his journey to find out just who he is, and just who it is that made him that way. The author of Coraline and The Sandman books, Neil Gaiman paints a vivid and touching tale with this lovely novel of coming into your own in a graveyard.

I also give you Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Fanu. Narrated by a young Anglo-Austrian woman, we find that a mysterious and beautiful stranger is stranded at the castle in odd circumstances and becomes a guest, our narrator quickly forms a close bond with her, but is in for a terrifying surprise. Carmilla is a short and easy read, slightly erotic, as all good vampire tales are, and will give you goosebumps with its wonderful imagery of a dark castle and a frightening creature.

Lastly, but not leastly, I give you Tales of Terror and Mystery by Edgar Allan Poe. As a master of the macabre, Poe will have you shaking in your sheets with tales like The Black Cat, The Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher and the ever popular The Raven.

So my friends, I leave you with my top short reads for spooky fun. Remember gentle readers, sometimes thinking of things can bring them to life. When you close these books, and turn out the lights, try not to think of the ghoulies and ghosties and longe legged beasties lurking in the closet, under the bed and outside the window. After all, they're just stories, aren't they?