Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters

I love Austen's narrator's voice. In all her novels, I enjoy the gentle irony she writes with as she describes her characters, with all their quirks and eccentricities; their faults and failings. She always stops just short of mocking her characters, and allows you to laugh with her at their pride, selfishness and sillyness.

Winters does not bother stopping short of mockery. He leaps right over the line, heads straight past sillyness and ends up firmly in the territory of the ridiculous.

The "Alteration", an unexplained but often hypothesised about event in history, has caused sea creatures and humans to be at war. It's eat-or-be-eaten! Thus a pleasant beachside party of "tiki dances, crawfish fries and bonfires", swiftly becomes a show more situation of life and death, as a jellyfish "twice the size of the largest man present", "demonstrating itself to be faster than any creature lacking legs or other apparent means of locomotion ought naturally to be", advance on the party with the intent of consuming whomever it can catch. All the families enjoy a variety of seafood at every meal, and travel by sea has become dangerous indeed! Even a pleasant ramble renders one in danger of attack by giant octopus, if you are unfortunate enough to stumble into the brook!

This book follows the general plot and characterisation of Sense and Sensibility, while adding sea witches, pirates, and a fellow suffering from a cruel affliction, the addition of "a set of long squishy tentacles protruding grotesquely from his face". The difficulties of life in the "altered" Britain has also caused the characters to become adept at defending themselves from murderous sea creatures: says Marianne, "Margaret, we will walk here at least two hours, and if we are set upon by any sort of man-beast with lobster claws, I shall swiftly butcher it with this pickaxe I brought for that purpose".

Winters has also added a bit of steampunk (Victorian science fiction) to the book, by introducing Sub-Marine Station Beta, an undersea city ("the greatest engineering triumph of human history since the Roman aqueducts") where the fashionable set enjoy "undersea pleasure gardens and aquatic exhibition halls".

Did I enjoy this book? Yes I did, but I found that I had to read it in small doses. You have to enjoy silliness to enjoy this book, and occasionally the ridiculous factor got a little too high for me. If you enjoy Austen, it's worth a try. show less

Do Not Waste Your Time. While at first I thought this could be an interesting and amusing mash-up of Steampunk tropes and Austen's cynical yet understanding story, it was just an excuse to be...stupid.

Ben Winters did an amazing thing when he wrote this particular mash-up. He managed to turn Elinor Dashwood, one of the more admirable of Austen's characters, into a spineless, obtuse, and brain-dead spinster in a bonnet. Elinor's turn for accepting the realities of life, her ability to acutely assess the characters of those around her, and her awareness of herself and others was surgically removed so that assorted gruesome deaths, characters who are introduced so they can be killed off, and nifty tech seen only so we can watch it blow up show more can be introduced. By the time I was a third into the book, I'd determined Winters not only hated Austen with a deep passion and undertook this project because he needed beer and condom money, but he might not be very keen on the female of the species. The venom practically makes the pages sticky.

Extremely disappointing to anyone who either likes sea monster stories or who has the least little liking for the Austen original. Mr. Winters should be forbidden access to bookstores, computer keyboards, pencils, and chocolate for life. show less

It's really hard to appropriately review this book. There is just too much crazy here! Much like I found with "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," there is just so much bizarre that it works. I love the originals and thus you'd think I'd find these offensive, or at least too weird to enjoy, but I don't.Somehow, the author managed to seamlessly weave sea monsters into it. I can't like what he did to Brandon, precisely, since Colonel Brandon is my favorite character but he made up for it, both for Brandon and to others.So, despite being ridiculous beyond ridiculous, I thoroughly enjoyed this story.

I was so very excited when this book went on sale on Tuesday. I ran to the store, got my copy, and started reading as soon as I got home. Sense & Sensibility is one of my favorite books and I wondered if the addition of sea monsters would alter my view.

I'm happy to report it didn't. I'm not rating this book as high as the original but that's just because I don't really think of this as the same book and I will admit to being extremely partial to the original. It's fresh and fun but the original it's not, which is a good thing in this case.

The story is much the same. Mr. Dashwood dies; Mrs. Dashwood, Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret move to the Devonshire coast; Marianne falls for Willoughby; Willoughby leaves Marianne; Elinor and Marianne show more go to London; a meeting with Willoughby goes bad; Marianne is heartbroken; Elinor suffers heartbreak silently; Marianne get sick and recovers; Elinor reunites with her love; Marianne finds love and a life she never imagined for herself. Oh, yes, don't forget the letter writing --- there's a lot of it.

Sea monsters, yep, there's a lot of them too in the new version. Mr. Dashwood is eaten by a shark; Mrs. Dashwood kills a sea monster on the way to the Devonshire coast; Willoughby, the treasure hunter, saves Marianne from a huge octopus; Elinor escapes the fang beast; Elinor and Marianne visit Sub-Marine Station Beta (AKA London); Sub-Marine Station Beta is attacked by sea monsters; Colonel Brandon is part sea monster thanks to a curse by a sea witch (descriptions are amusing and somewhat disgusting); a lot of talk about underwater gear and, of course, fish stories. Also, there is an interesting explanation for the sea monsters --- the Alteration which no one knows the cause of.

After reading it, I have to say that I truly enjoyed it. I also think this can be a love it or hate it book. If you're not willing for liberties to be taken with the original text then you might want to skip it. Me, I like parodies and found the characters and situations with the addition of sea monsters to be entertaining. Enjoy it for what it is. show less

This is another book in the classic/horror mashup genre. Previously I have read the ones based on Pride and Prejudice infused with zombies and really liked them for the good mix between the humor of Jane Austen and the absurd horror of zombies. That is the reason I figured I would like this one as well.
This book is based on Sense and Sensibility, which isn’t a Jane Austen book I really enjoyed. A bit too long with too much of a soap series feel. And the infusion with sea monsters didn’t help it one bit.
In the book, all water life has become hostile to mankind. We are still in England in the nineteenth century, but with some steampunk, such as a underwater domed city where the families spend winter. I felt the horror part and the show more original story weren’t really mixed well but existed next to each other. A bit disappointing and perhaps better as a stand alone story about sea monsters. show less

I loved this book. When I first started it I wasn't really sure where it was going to go, but since I've already read S&S w/o Sea Monsters a hundred times, and will 100 more, I gave it a shot. I eased into the pages (kindle style) fairly slowly, but the farther I got, the more I appreciated the amazing combination of Austenian social convention and incredible dry humor. The changes to the characters and the settings made me laugh out loud more often than not - I especially loved Colonel Brandon, and the recurring references to him - and I really appreciated what Winters did to make the plot stay cohesive and authentic while at the same time changing nearly everything.

Oh, and there are pirates. And an orangutan.

It was awesome.

In Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, Ben H. Winters reworks Jane Austen's classic novel into a tale with monsters, steampunk elements, and a touch of H.P. Lovecraft. The basic plot follows that of Austen's novel, focusing on the Dashwood sisters, but they find themselves living in England after the Alteration, when all the life of the sea has grown hostile to humanity and giant mutations of common sea creatures stalk the ocean and the shore. Some of Winters' more interesting additions include Sub-Marine Station Beta, a giant undersea domed city in which British scientists work to tame the newly-aggressive denizens of the deep while the more cosmopolitan members of English society enjoy a higher standard of living than those on show more land. The city evokes aspects of Jules Verne and Eugene Smith's interior illustration is magnificent. Recalling H.P. Lovecraft, one of the Dashwood sisters finds herself attracted to a mystery on the island on which the family vacations and begins chanting in a strange, guttural language. She joins a group living in caves that worship "a pantheon of cruel and hidden monster-gods called the K'yaloh. The K'yaloh were an ancient race, older than man, older than beast, older than the Alteration, older than time itself. They laid in slumber, waiting for the day of waking. When they woke, all that we know would be destroyed" (pg. 331). These elements notwithstanding, Winter's Austen-pastiche retains less of the original compared to Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Due to that, it seems a parody of itself. Fans of the first Quirk Classics book will likely enjoy this, but it newcomers may not want to read this one first. show less