Customer Reviews

Jane Slayre: The Literary Classic with a Bloodsucking Twist

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

One of the most recent changes to the genre is to take a modern classic and put a spin upon it. Here within this offering Sherri has paid homage to this tale and taken a serious bite out of the stuffiness within for the current audience. Beautifully constructed, carefully managed, the author not only embellishes the story but adds a whole new twist of flavours for a new exciting fusion. Add to the mix a strong female lead, some great one liners and of course a tale to savour in much the same way as a fine wine.

While it's one of the better monster-mashes of newer times, it's still not really something extraordinary. It's good fun to read on a very long road-trip or on the plane, but there's really not all that much to recommend it for much else. It's a good joke and that's about it. If you love the original Jane Eyre, give it a read, but don't expect it to have the quirky tenacity or bravado of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

I am not really into horror type books so when I bought this book, I did so with a lot of trepidation. The book followed well with the original writing but with such a wonderful and interesting twist. I highly recommend to those of us who love the classics and would love to evolve them into something more. I even had a few laugh out loud moments!! I will be reading more from Sherri Browning Erwin. I see a very bright future ahead for her!! Well worth the buy!!

The 19th century undead butt-kicking begun with "Pride & Prejudice and Zombies" and continuing on that theme is "Jane Slayre", which features (in chronological order) vampires, zombies and werewolves. Some are critical of this shameless genre mixture, others love it.

Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed "Jane Slayre". Sherri Browning Erwin has taken Charlotte Brontė's original text but removed the tedious babble and added undead and modernised the vocabulary a bit, which I only noticed on a few jarring occasions. I was impressed by how closely the first chapter was to the original book and how cleverly she had made the Reed family into vampires, or - as it says throughout the book - vampyres, and had a good giggle at the fact the stiff servant Abbot had been turned into a zombie!

The book follows young Jane Slayre, a poor, unconnected orphan, living with her vampiric relatives at Gateshead. When she's finally taken away to Lowood school, everything seems great for a while, but there are some "special students" that sends her slayer senses tingling ... (Why Mr Brocklehurst has been re-named Mr Bokorhurst, when everything else is so close to the original, does get explained eventually.)

Adult Jane advertises, goes to Thornfield and meets the Master, with whom she falls in love (bet you never expected there were vampires afoot that dreary afternoon in Hay Lane!), but there's a problem - and it's not just because Jane suspects one or more of the house party guests to be a vampyre. It turns out there's a madwoman werewolf in the attic ...

For me, this is one of the best "Jane Eyre" sequel/rip-off I've read so far, because it does stick to the original story (the undead aside) and is fairly in keeping with the characters. Maybe because it's meant to be a bit of a laugh rather than a really serious story, it's easier to forgive some character personality errors, because hey, the original book didn't have vampires to contend with. Maybe.

Jane is turned into a 19th century Buffy, more or less. St John Rivers was probably the character I had most problems with, because I just didn't feel he was icy enough, and he even admits to fancying Jane (so, so wrong). Rochester - no qualms there at all that I can remember, surprisingly.

The thing that most bugged me was that while some of the incessant waffle has been removed to make a much sleeker and less eye-rolling read, some of the really nice and enjoyable bits have been removed as well. Did they really have to cut the proposal for pace? There were some other bits too, which left me wanting. Other bits were added instead, involving undead having their hearts staked or heads chopped off and some of those worked okay with the rest of the narrative, but others failed and were just disappointing "yeah whatever" scenes.

There were a number of occasions where I had to reach for the original to double-check if something was actually in there or if it had been an additions. In most cases, they were in there but I hadn't really noticed them before.

On the whole, though, I really enjoyed this book. It's a quirky take on a classic and keeps with it reasonably well, considering the addition of a number of creatures of the night. I like quirky things, and I love "Jane Eyre", so for me, it really worked. For others, it might not. Either way, maybe "Jane Slayre" can help bring more people in to the classics and maybe get an interest in reading the original. If that happens, great. If they don't, they've still read "Jane Eyre". And I bet they bloody enjoyed it too.

I didn't like this spin on Jane Eyre at all. It was a speed read and I couldn't wait to get to the end so I could throw it away.

I will not be reading any zombie, vampire books at all in the future.