BOOK: The Meowmorphosis (2011)

by benmweilertNo Comments
The MeowmorphosisYear: 2011Author: Coleridge Cook and Franz KafkaLength: 208 pages The Quirk Classics have been an amusing experiment of mashing together a public domain classic and a vastly different genre to create something new. Most people know about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and my favorite from the set was definitely Android Karenina. The only one I hadn't read yet was The Meowmorphosis, an adaptation that uses Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis as its base. Unfortunately, the fundamental aspect of the Quirk Classics mashups doesn't work with such a bizarre novella like The Metamorphosis. Part of what makes the other books in this series click is how the original text remains mostly unchanged in a way that the addition of zombies or sea monsters enhances the narrative. With the primary change in this book being that the main character changes into an enormous fluffy kitten instead of a cockroach, it's hard to keep most of the original text intact and still benefit from...
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BOOK: Android Karenina (2010)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Android Karenina Year: 2010 Author: Ben H. Winters and Leo Tolstoy Length: 541 pages Despite struggling through both Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, I was pleased to find the most lengthy of these “monster classics,” Android Karenina, was a fast and engaging read. If anything, it proves to me that I can’t grasp Jane Austen’s writing style nearly as smoothly as I can Leo Tolstoy’s. Part of the ease of reading Android Karenina probably came from knowing the original plot ahead of time a little better than I did for Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. And yet, the real reason is more visceral than that. What Android Karenina’s predecessors attempted was to take two vastly different genres and mash them together in the hope that the combination would interest readers. Where Android Karenina succeeds where the others have failed is that the addition of the steampunk/science fiction genre enhances the story. Adding zombies or sea monsters...
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