Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Overall, an interesting and fun read. I really liked how all of these historic events tied into the vampire plot. As you read, you feel like it is being told by Abe Lincoln. However, sometimes the book was slow and boring. Mostly in the middle when there wasn't any vampire action. We get tons of background information about Abe, his family and friends, but the juicy bits of the Civil War aren't as long or detailed in comparison, which is a shame because it was exciting to read.

By the way, if you watched the movie first or at all, you'll notice that both are VERY different. Yeah, they got the point that Abe is a vampire hunter who wields an axe with Henry helping him out, but the movie makes up a lot of scenes and some characters.

If you like history and vampires, give it a try.

Enjoyable spin on one of history's favorite and intriguing characters. It's a snowy weekend book that you'll enjoy as you read, but could have been much more.

This book, at least to me, was utterly fascinating. Perhaps it's due to the fact that I wasn't allowed to read vampire fiction when I was younger, or perhaps it's due the historical content. Either way, I very much enjoyed this book, due in large part to the sheer amount of research it took. There are many parts that I thought were embellished or simply untrue that turned out to be historically correct.

hell yeah

http://www.frowl.org/worstbestsellers/episode-81-abraham-lincoln-vampire-hunter/

Originally posted on www.CreativeMadnessMama.com

Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith
Genre: Historical Fantasy
Pages: 448 Mass Market, Trade Paperback, Hardcover and eBook & FILM!
Date Published: June 26th, 2012 (orig. 2010)
Publishers: Grand Central Publishing

 

While reading this book, it felt historically accurate but was by no means a history book. Of course Lincoln didn't carry an arsenal to his speeches and slip out of his room late at night to chase down vampires. At least as far as we know anyway. I never bothered to look into the historical accuracy of the non-vampire points. Oddly though, even the vampire parts of the book were told in a way that made sense if we suppose for a minute that vampires really existed in the mid-late 1800s. The story flowed so well that I even enjoyed the political parts of it. The parts with axes splitting skulls were good too though. I thought this was an awesome idea for a book. It was mostly written as if it was Lincoln's own words coming straight from his diary. A diary presented by some mysterious figure. After reading the book, you might know who.

The version read was the Hardcovers 2010, thanks to Hatchette Book Group.

Seth Grahame-Smith is the New York Times bestselling author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. In addition to adapting the screenplay for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Seth also wrote Tim Burton's latest film, Dark Shadows. He lives in Los Angeles.

 




 



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And now... the MOVIE based on the BOOK in theaters June 22, 2012!

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter explores the secret life of our greatest president, and the untold story that shaped our nation. Visionary filmmakers Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov (director of Wanted) bring a fresh and visceral voice to the bloodthirsty lore of the vampire, imagining Lincoln as history's greatest hunter of the undead.

Coming from a historians perspective, this was a very interesting book. Grahame-Smith takes Abraham Lincoln on a very different journey from the one we read about in history books, and puts a different perspective on his life, one that was not of his own making. He twists the fabrics of history to paint a different story and add a element that makes history more interesting to those that do not normally enjoy it.

While I enjoyed parts of the book, there were a few things that I found quite dark, as some of the descriptions were rather vivid, and not something that is easily erased from memory, but Grahame-Smith did his homework well, and was able to correctly weave the parts of Lincolns life that were true in with the fiction that he wove around it.

I would recommend this book to higher ages, as some of those that are younger might have a more difficult time with some of the scenarios painted throughout but an interesting read none the less.

Have you ever read any of the annotated Sherlock Holmes? This runs in the same vein. ;) I described AL:VH to a friend as less entertaining and more (deeply) interesting. I now want to know more about the real story of Lincoln. I want to dig into the spots where fact and Grahame-Smith's creations meld together. Is there a real Henry? Did Will really get accosted by a stranger? Gah! I don't have time for the obsession that I could have over this subject.

Liked the pace of the story and the bits of history tweaked to a more interesting alternative.

Somehow both silly and boring. I wanted to like it, and I do think the premise is interesting (once you get past the initial “well that's ridiculous” reaction). And maybe if World War Z hadn't already brilliantly pulled off the fake history book premise I wouldn't have held it to such a high standard.

Personally I think it would have been better if it was just Abe's journal or just a dry history book instead of the mildly annoying narrator's summary/interpretation of Abe's journal. There was a fair amount of historical research, but to me it felt too segmented and not part of the fictional story. There'd be detailed exposition about Abe's ridiculously fake exploits and then all of sudden an extended summary of the Dred Scott Case or the lost colony of Roanoke. Real Abe and Vampire Hunter Abe never connected for me, and that's a shame because it would have been awesome to learn about how a man reacts to that extreme political turmoil when he is both leader of the country and a slayer of mythical beasts.

Way better than the movie. Mash-up of history and vampire-hunting is a fun read.

This is one of those books that I did not want it too end. Seth Grahame-Smith is my new favorite author.

I made the mistake of starting this book today during lunch. I did NOT want to return to work when my lunch hour was over, lol.

OK, finished the book last night. It was, for the most part, an enjoyable read. It bogged down a bit toward the end but finished up nicely with an interesting little twist.

Vampires: they're everywhere. Ever since Stephenie Meyer's atrocious Twilight Saga made its appearance on bookstore shelves, more and more writers have been hopping aboard the vampire train and pretty much flooded the shelves with new takes and variations on this blood-sucking (or soul-sucking, in some cultures) creature of the night. In many cases, these new takes aren't any better than Meyer's attempt at creating a new vampire mythology, at which the Twilight Saga fails spectacularly. Most of these new attempts seem to focus on making the vampire a mysterious, attractive creature, quite irresistible to the hordes of hormonal teenagers who are the inevitable audience of these books.

As a result, it's been incredibly difficult for readers such as myself, who like vampire fiction but are extremely reluctant to go wading into the toxic pool that Meyer's books have made the genre into. Thankfully, though, there have been a handful of writers who have successfully managed to take back a small corner of the genre for those of us who like our vampires more monstrous than romantic. The most notable of these authors has to be Swedish writer John Ajvide Lindqvist, whose spectacular novel Let the Right One In chilled me all the way down to my toes when I first read it - a feat not even the excellent Swedish movie (not the watered-down American remake) managed to do so totally and so completely. That novel restored my faith in all things vampire, and I've been scoping the shelves out with a bit more confidence.

It was partly due to this renewed faith in the genre that I decided to pick up Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith. I'd read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies before, and though I found it amusing in its own way, I didn't find it especially worthy of notice aside from the fact that it made reading Pride and Prejudice a mite more amusing to read. But Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was just a pastiche of Austen and zombie apocalypse literature. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, on the other hand, struck me as being something more like alternate history with a supernatural twist, created by reimagining Lincoln as a vampire hunter, and how that might have played into what is known of him today. This sounded particularly intriguing, so I gave it a shot, despite not really being all that interested in Lincoln to begin with.

The result is an attempt by Grahame-Smith to create a biography, of sorts, using material from a set of secret diaries that Lincoln supposedly wrote over the course of his lifetime. In those diaries, Lincoln recorded his life as a vampire hunter and his struggle against all vampire-kind in the United States - one which was deeply connected to not just Lincoln's personal vendetta against them, but the greatest struggle of his time: the Civil War.

Before I proceed, I would just like to say that I have some difficulty discussing certain aspects of this novel; in particular, I cannot judge for certain which aspects of it are actually fact, or fiction. As I mentioned earlier, I am just not that interested in Lincoln. He is an important figure, to be sure, but I've always been more fascinated by the Civil War itself. While I do not doubt that many key decisions were made in the high political circles were Lincoln, as President, was most powerful, I've always been more drawn to the civilians caught up in the war, as well as the common soldiery.

As a result, I can only say for certain that anything involving vampires cannot have happened, or that certain events were manipulated in order to better make the vampires fit into the story. In this, however, Grahame-Smith does a pretty good job of making sure everything fits together. It all appears to have been seamlessly done, so that while I know vampires do not really exist and certainly had nothing to do with the Civil War, Grahame-Smith seems to know how to ensure that everything remains within the realm of plausibility. For the greater part of the book, Grahame-Smith strikes a pretty good balance between fact and fiction, maintaining that balance pretty handily. It's only towards the end that things went downhill, beginning the account of Lincoln's assassination. The idea of John Wilkes Booth being a vampire was, I felt, just a bit much. Never once does his identity as a vampire become crucial to his ability to assassinate Lincoln: all it does is provide an explanation as to why he does so, which, in my opinion, is a pretty flimsy reason. Booth could have wanted Lincoln dead for a variety of reasons; he didn't need to be a vampire in order to give him that excuse.Another thing I found rather ridiculous was the fact that Lincoln was actually made into a vampire by Henry Sturges - the very same Henry at the beginning of the book, who supposedly gives Grahame-Smith the journals upon which the "biography" is based. This is something I find rather silly, since in much of the last third of the book Lincoln constantly mentions that he wants to give up hunting vampires; in fact, he's already pretty much retired from vampire-hunting, focusing instead on his family and later on his political career. Lincoln's disdain of vampires is only rarely overcome, and though Henry constantly offers to bring Lincoln's loved ones back to life by turning them into vampires, Lincoln always refuses. In light of this, I find it rather impossible for Lincoln to want to come back to life as a vampire. Even if Henry hadn't exactly given him a choice, I think Lincoln would have killed himself a second time. He certainly wouldn't have lasted long enough to see Martin Luther King deliver his speech in Washington D.C., that's for sure. And although it might be argued that Henry would have given Lincoln a reason to keep on living in undeath, I sincerely doubt Lincoln would have made it as far as the sixties. This conclusion stands in such direct contrast to everything else that's gone before in the novel, it's almost painfully jarring to read it. Sure, there's something awesome about the idea of Lincoln being around to listen to Martin Luther King give his speech, but it loses much of its luster when the reader knows it's not exactly plausible.

Something else that bothers me about the book are the supposedly “historical photographs” of Lincoln as a vampire hunter. I understand, of course, why they were included: photographs are invaluable inclusions in biographies and autobiographies. They emphasize the “reality” of the events in the subject or subjects' life, succinctly encapsulating a moment that would otherwise take a page or two of text. Used properly, photographs can add much to a biography in a way that pure text cannot.

Unfortunately, the images inserted into the novel aren't exactly of the sort that add anything to the story. They are photoshopped, of course, and to be fair the photoshopping seems to have been done pretty well. However, they don't really add much to the story already being told, and could have been eliminated from the text entirely without making the book less readable. I suppose they were included to make the book feel even closer to an “authentic” biography, but I think it's already clear that this isn't a biography, but a novel, and so the photographs could have been easily eliminated without sacrificing a single aspect of the story itself.

Despite those flaws, however, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a pretty enjoyable read. Lincoln is portrayed as a sympathetic and very human character; every time he loses somebody in his life to the vampires, I truly felt quite sorry for him, and genuinely hoped he'd achieve his goal to eliminate all the vampires he could. And even when he got older and decided he wanted to stop hunting in favor of being happy with his family, I agreed right along with his decision. By that point I was rather glad that he stopped, because it felt as if his vendetta against vampires hadn't allowed him to live much of a life, to seek happiness. I knew, of course, that he'd never truly have peace, but I was quite satisfied to see him attempt to build it for himself. The supporting characters are equally intriguing - especially Henry Sturges. Of all the supporting characters he is the one that the reader encounters most often, and is also the most important: he's a vampire who teaches the young Lincoln how to be a better vampire hunter, and later on paves his way to the presidency. His relationship with Lincoln is complicated at the best of times, but this is what makes Henry the most interesting supporting character in the entire novel.

Overall, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is an enjoyable read. The characters, especially Lincoln himself, are engaging and sympathetic, and are capable of holding the reader's interest throughout the book, whether or not they're familiar with Lincoln's actual history. However, some might find the pictures scattered throughout the book unnecessary, but since they don't really add much to the story, skipping right over them doesn't affect the story itself. The ending, however, is far more problematic, and might be a deal-breaker for some readers who were hoping for something a bit more logical.

I really loved this. So glad I went back and read it (I saw it months ago, but was not in the mood). After finishing Unholy Night, I remembered how much I love Smith and grabbed Abe. Great, fun read. I kind of can't wait for the movie now.

Absolutely amazing! I loved the way Abe was portrayed and the ending threw me! I will definitely recommend this book to my friends.

This was pretty wicked. I cannot wait for the movie.

What if Abe Lincoln freed the slaves to end the scourge of vampirism in the new world? The title of the book, and the audacity of the premise had gotten this book put onto my list sometime last year, but I've only recently gotten around to reading it. The movie version will be coming soon, and despite it not being a great book I think the transition to a movie will do a lot of good for the story.

I'm finding one major issue with having my Kindle is that I can have way too many books stacked up to read. I think at the moment I have 8 books I'm in progress on, and another 20 or 30 I'd like to read this year. Over the last few months I've probably loaded a few hundred books into it, and I have absolutely no idea when I'll have a chance to read thru all of them. Ok I have an idea, but that's for a future post.


Historical fiction is not a genre I read very often, and most books in that genre are pretty forgettable. Although reading about Abe Lincoln as a vampire hunter was a fun read, I doubt in 6 months time I'll have any desire to read it again and will most likely have forgotten most of the specifics. I would recommend this book though if you need something lite to while away the time.

The story follows a generally historical timeline of Abraham Lincolns life, with the addition of Vampires (of course). I'm honestly not too sure how historically accurate the book is, but with Honest Abe hunting vampires I think you should go elsewhere for your history anyway.

This review available on my site - http://www.mattsrrespite.com

Knowing that it's all going to come to a tragic end at the Ford Theatre you're propelled along wondering how the conceit of vampires will be integrated into history to tell the story. I found the writing a bit flat and the constant switching back and forth from the first person to third person narrator was discombobulating. I'm afraid the movie version will simply rest on the idea of Lincoln! Vampires! much like Cowboys! Aliens!

Amazing and very well done. It's both very thoughtful and an incredibly intellectually stimulating read. Yes, seriously.

Okay, so maybe I got into this book a little too much. I've always been a bit of a Civil War buff, but I admittedly didn't (and still don't) have a lot of familiarity with Lincoln or his life. I'm not saying that this should be step one of a study of Lincoln's life, but it's enough to tempt the appetite.

This, too, may sound a little silly, but I frequently found myself wondering what actually happened that served as the catalyst for the story. Was there anything? What were the real causes of Abe's mother's death? The deaths of his sister and sons? Did Jack Armstrong exist? I don't know but it made for a couple of smiles as I read. (Again, this is another reason that the story could have been enhanced by more knowledge of Lincoln's life.)

Now on to something more in depth about “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”. I think that Grahame-Smith reached for a lot of things but didn't necessarily get there. I understand the connection he's trying to make between the evils of slavery and the evils of vampirism, but I just don't think that it was strong enough. It could have been, but it wasn't there. The first third of the book barely mentions slavery and it only appears in about half of the second section. I personally felt that the first section could have been shortened by half so that we could get to the more historically-driven material (i.e., Abe's political career and the Civil War). The historical sections were much more interesting because the audience could connect with the actual events; with the first section shortened, Grahame-Smith could have strengthened the link between slavery and vampires. The narrative failed to answer the question: Was the central theme of the book a skewed and fictional biography of Lincoln or a correlation of vampirism and slavery?

The twist that ultimately ended the book was apparent from the first conversations between Henry and Abe. I must say, though, that I enjoyed the way said twist played out. I also enjoyed the way other characters worked into this book (e.g., Edgar Allan Poe, Jefferson Davis, etc.). It was creative on Grahame-Smith's part and could potentially ground the book for a wider audience.

Ultimately, as I said above, I enjoyed the book. I would advise to not dive into it thinking that it will be a literary achievement - just look at it as a well-written, enjoyable read.

The plot of this book was better than the story it turned into.

Great idea, poor execution.

I read the first 50 pages and was bored, skimmed through the next 150 pages and was still bored, and then just gave up on the book. I've got better things to read.

I was of two minds about this book. On one hand, it was a fun read, and I still get a bit of a chuckle from reading the title. At the same time though, it takes itself fairly seriously: maybe there's some humour in the details for the serious Lincoln scholar, but for someone who doesn't know too much about Lincoln, it seemed like it was trying to be a straight horror novel about Abraham Lincoln and his secret war against the vampires of America.

It took a little time to get used to the format of the book, as well - it's being told by Grahame-Smith, but the paragraphs are interlaced with excerpts from Lincoln's hidden journals about his war against the vampires. I found the speed at which it went back and forth between the two to be distracting - I think I would have enjoyed the journal bits more if they'd been told as separate chapters.

I found the “vampires were responsible for supporting and maintaining the slave trade” theme a little distasteful, as well. I can understand why it was included - you can't write a book about Lincoln without discussing slavery, after all - and I would even concede that “slave owners as blood-sucking parasites” metaphor is a good one, but it also comes across like an attempt to absolve humans from the evil of slavery. We're capable of evil enough without vampires there

In summation: it's deeper than I had been expecting it to be, but kind of unsatisfying at the same time, although I can see why a lot of people seem to love it.

Surprisingly well-written and a really engaging story.

Seth Grahame-Smith does an excellent job combining history with fantastical fiction, and it all comes together with gruesome detail in this book. I half expected this to be a comedy (not having read anything else by him), but I was definitely surprised by some of the turns this story took. Not for the squeamish!