Jane Slayre »

Charlotte Brontë once wrote, "It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it." Though she led a quiet life (and died young), Brontë indeed created action in her sweeping, passionate novels, such as the gothic drama Jane Eyre.

Raised by vampyre relatives, Jane grows to resent the lifestyle's effect on her upbringing. No sunlight, keeping nighttime hours, and a diet of bloody red meat is no way for a mortal girl to live. Things change for Jane when the ghost of her uncle visits her, imparts her parents' slayer history, and charges her with the responsibility of striking out to find others of her kind and learn the slayer ways. After trying her luck at a school full of zombies, Jane finds a position as a governess, where she meets and falls in love with Mr. Rochester. But evil strikes in the form of Mr. Rochester's first wife, a violent werewolf he keeps locked in the attic. Jane departs to study the slayer tradition with her cousins, but finds herself yearning to reunite with Mr. Rochester. She returns to find that Mr. Rochester has been bitten by the werewolf, and only she can release him from his curse.

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