Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I want to like this book, but it's just... so... bad. The characters are bizarre, the world they live in is unbelievable and illogical, the zombies badly thought-out, the writing just atrocious. I really really wanted to like this book, and let me tell you I slog through some really bad books out of sheer stubbornness; the title and cover art should be enough to keep me going. But I just... can't. Weird moments: 1) the Regency-era uber-polite Bennetts try to avoid talking about zombies so they call them "unmentionables" - but then they talk about them non-stop and 75% of the time call them zombies. It's like the author didn't quite have the writing discipline to enforce the kind of conversational discipline rife in the era. So, um, why did he even try? 2) The characters are just weird. Elizabeth is quite possibly a sociopath, and just very unevenly written. 3) People get "the strange plague" when bitten (ok, that's standard for zombies) but then also it seems like all old or new graves vomit out zombies whenever it rains enough to soften up the earth. It just doesn't make sense. 4) Grahame-Smith appears to have met women before, perhaps even watched us talk one or two times before... but oh it's painful watching him try to recreate it. The best he gets is women waiting till the door is closed to gossip viciously about the person leaving - which we totally do, but it's so clumsily written that it feels like finger painting as compared to Austen's scrupulously detailed oil painting. 5) The part that lost me: famed warrior Lady Catherine smugly invited her dinner guest Elizabeth (who she looked down on for training in China rather than Japan) to spar with her ninjas - oh yeah, ninjas are running all over Regency England, did I mention that part?? - and so Elizabeth does, blindfolded. Maybe spar means something different to people other than me - to me it doesn't mean inviting one's dinner guest to be killed in front of the other delicate guests. So the first ninja she disembowels and then chokes to death with his "lower bowels"; the second she deflects the throwing stars and throws one back at him, cuts of his hands and leg, then decapitates him. The last one she spears to a column with her katana, then reaches in and pulls out his heart (!) and frickin' EATS IT! WTF?? I'm totally lost, both in logic (wait, did Lady Catherine expect her 3 ninjas to kill her dinner guest in a sparring match??) and just grossed out. Aren't they all on the same side, trying to defend England against zombies?? I have no idea about any of the "romance", I got lost at page 132 with the heart-eating episode. Oh, but when Grahame-Smith tried to mimic Jane Austen's legendary wit and repartee, the best he could do was two - count them two! - clumsy double entendres on the word "balls". Yes, really. Sigh. Why 2 stars instead of 1? Well, I liked the title (Pride and Prejudice... and Zombies!), it made me laugh; I thought the gruesome cover art was similarly funny in a terrible way. And the idea was so good, even if the execution was SO bad. So 2 stars, not just 1.