Jane Slayre - ISBNLookup.com

Publishers Weekly - Library Journal

Another entry in the growing genre of horror mashups (ranging from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter), this volume takes Brontë's classic and turns the Reed family into vampires, Jane Eyre's classmates at Lowood into zombies, and Bertha Rochester into something far more dangerous than a madwoman. While Jane herself remains much the same, the supernatural additions prove highly amusing, turning the gothic elements of the original up to eleven while preserving the story's post-Victorian coming-of-age conventions. Despite her whimsical and irreverent modifications, Erwin displays great affection for Brontë and her characters; the undeniable spark between Erwin's Jane and Rochester is made all the more delightful by Jane's plucky fearlessness in the face of evil. With the possible exception of purists, fans of Jane Eyre will find much to love, with moments of laugh-out-loud hilarity; horror fans unfamiliar with the original will also be pleased, though they'll miss out on some of the comic nuance.
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The Barnes & Noble Review

A favorite game of authors from Shakespeare to Christopher Moore is to steal a plot and transform it in their own image. Think of Hamlet: Shakespeare picked up a play about a revengeful prince?and made the poor bloke fat, short of breath, and unable to make up his mind. Hamlet's girth may well reflect that of Shakespeare's lead actor rather than the Bard's own, but the prince's pesky habit of over-thinking things is reflective, I would argue, of the fact there was only one wicked uncle and five long acts to get rid of him. In short: Hamlet's famous uncertainty stemmed, at least partially, from a problem in the original plot the playwright needed to solve.

Jane Slayre, Sherri Browning Erwin's mash-up of Jane Eyre, splices Charlotte Brontë's novel with her own, leading to dual authorship on the title page. The novel doesn't obviously reflect contemporary society, given that Erwin's Jane grows up in a family of vampyres (those terrible Reeds) and finds herself at the zombie-ridden Lowood School, where destroying zombies is a skill more vital than stitching long seams. But this is no simple mockery of the original novel, along the lines of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Brontë's paranormal touch, in which Jane hears Rochester calling her name, is transformed here into a more exotic brand of magic. By giving Jane the ability to defend herself against vampyres and zombies, Erwin upends the rampant sentimentality of the original novel. She gives Jane's moral view of the world?the ethical stance that made her desert Rochester once she found out he was married?tangible essence. Good and evil do not reside merely in traits and ethical choices, but are manifested in physical forms. Jane becomes a more vital and independent heroine because she possesses a skill that Rochester desperately needs. When she returns to his side, she literally saves his life. "Reader, I married him" transforms delightfully to "Reader, I buried him."

--Eloisa James