Mashups - Get Serious

With so much to read and so little time, who wants to read fluff? It took me about a year to fork over the cash for a mashup book. On a whim, I'd picked up Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters after seeing Jane Austen's letters at the  Morgan Library and Museum.

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It's been decades since I read any Austen, and Sea Monsters was a fun way to reconnect with an old friend with a twist. Retaining much of its early 19th century feel, I recognized the storyline of Sense and Sensibility (1811), and enjoyed the anachronistic Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869) style touches, and other Sea Monsters additions for the light-hearted fluff they were. Although the aquatic monster theme is absurd, it should be remembered that Austen lived during the periods of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. The threat of an invasion from the sea was uncomfortably real.

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Although it too retained the original's storyline and much of it's period feel, Jane Slayre doesn't shy from anachronism. My favourite is the stake-o-matic, Jane's mechanized stake-in-the-heart vampire dispatcher. The Bronte-based Slayre is correspondingly darker than the Austen tales, but the spin is a more amusing Shaun- than a gory Dawn of the Dead. It's the book's refusal to take itself seriously that makes the stake-o-matic and friends work.

Revisionist history can be absurd, and revisionist fictional history even more so. If you're a proponent of the concept of a multiverse of possible worlds along with with a taste for the silly, Henry VIII: Wolfman might be just what the doctor ordered. Not too heavy, in several senses of the word, this tome is an enjoyable companion when you need a pick-me-up. Historians have a variety of explanations for Henry's well-known alteration in behaviour. Wolfman is simple, there's only one. 

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As expected, Thomas More is martyred, but this time it has more to do with nasty co-workers (especially Thomas Boleyn) and enthusiastic entrepreneurship (Witchfinder and Wife). Anne becomes Queen, but this time, Henry's insistence that they're soul mates is much easier to swallow. The history books tell us that Henry was torn between his personal life and his role as king. Whatever you feel about the real man, Wolfman hammers home the terrible dilemma faced by this wolf-man. He really couldn't help himself.

One of the things I liked best about this volume is the political humour. A really Bad Guy, an emissary from Belgium (yes, Belgium); selfish and nasty nobles; Vatican meddlers seriously out of their depth; and a truly fiendish conspiracy. A light and humourous take on a deadly serious slice of history.

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♥ ♥  Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters A fun way to spend a few hours getting re-acquainted with Jane Austen and some creatures more successful than the French.


♥ ♥  Jane Slayre Light-hearted Charlotte Bronte-style vampires and friends with some bizarrely modern twists.


♥ ♥  Henry VIII: Wolfman Finally, revisionist history we can all agree upon. Henry really was a monster.

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Books mentioned

• Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
• Jane Slayre
• Henry VIII: Wolfman