Jane Austin and Zombies?

Jane Austin fans might want to look away. An old classic has a new face. Or judging by it's cover, has it lost its face?

My 19 year-old daughter showed me Pride and Prejudice and Zombies last week. Her generation has a macabre fascination with zombies, it seems. But seeing modern day culture meshed with classic regency romance puts a new spin on revitalizing the classics.

It's still the same book written by Jane Austin, just expanded by Seth Grahame-Smith. When I did a search for Pride and Prejudice on Amazon, this book even showed up first before the classic.

Here's the blurb:
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains." So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Can she vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry? Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you'd actually want to read.

I have to say, I felt a twinge of offense on the last line. I happen to love this classic, without the zombies, thank you. But, I am intrigued and somewhat impressed by the idea. And if it introduces teens and young adults to the real classics, perhaps there's something here worth redeeming.