Cetaceous Sea Slime 

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters
Quirk Books

If you cast your minds way back to December, you'll recall that I selected Pride and Prejudice and Zombies at the D-E-S Book of the Year.  As I stated then, it definitely wasn't the best book that I had read in the past season, but it was one that I really, truly enjoyed.  I loved the idea of taking something canonical and adding utter ridiculousness to it.  The fact that it didn't really take away from Austen's story delighted me entirely and when I found out that Quirk was going to come out with another volume in the series, I thought "why the hell not?"

Sadly, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters is not as well done as its predecessor.   In addition to pillaging Austen, the author borrows from the work of H.G. Wells, introduces elements of the Gothic novel that transforms Austen's mannered romance into something entirely different, and generally injects such an over-the-top weirdness to the novel that  it was, at times, a bit distracting.

Don't get me wrong, the portrayal of Colonel Brandon as a visually abhorrent facially tentacled sea monster is vastly entertaining.  The rampaging narwhals, the man-eating jelly fish and the ever-so-elusive fang beast all make for great, bizarre, fun.  I can't believe I'm going to say this, but SS&SM isn't quite as, uh, subtle as PP&Z.  Yes, I just referred to a book of manners about zombies and ninjas as subtle.  Use that, dear reader, as a guide when deciding to embark on this particular voyage.  Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters gets three giant lobsters out of five.