Um, no.

My copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies came in today. While I've only gotten a chance to scan the first few pages (which I adore), something rather odd caught my eye. Now, a realise that this oddity is merely boilerplate, and that I may be reading too much into it, but you really would think that, given the context of the book, someone would have thought better of it, but nevertheless, there, right on the copyright page, is the following sentence: "No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher."

No.

No. A million times no. This is not how copyright law works, and throwing these warnings around all willy-nilly is a real problem. Even if this book weren't 80% public domain, there are still a number of fully legal ways to reproduce portions of the book without any written permission from the publisher. Although I'm sure the RIAA and MPAA, among others, would like to see Fair Dealing struck down, it's still the law in Canada. And it seems particularly bad that a book that exists only due to the power of the public domain would carry so erroneous a warning. I applaud Seth Grahame-Smith and Quirk for all their hard work, but this is going to be a major sore spot for me, one that has somewhat soured the whole experience.