Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

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!

I expected this book to be a comedy: the zany adventures of gangly Abe Lincoln slaying the undead. But while the premise is comedic, the novel takes a serious approach, painting Lincoln as a man beset by death at every stage of his life, whose efforts to fight slavery and keep the union of states were actually part of his determined vow to rid the world of vampires. It actually makes a lot of sense. Vampires would thrive in the slave states, where they could use the monies they've amasses over the decades and centuries to purchase victim who would never be missed or mourned. And, naturally, these same vampires would adamantly oppose abolition and would fight to preserve the Confederacy. Although I was surprised by the serious tone of the novel, I certainly was not disappointed by it. Author Seth Grahame-Smith does a wonderful job of taking a ridiculous concept and fitting it into American history.

I expected this book to be a comedy: the zany adventures of gangly Abe Lincoln slaying the undead. But while the premise is comedic, the novel takes a serious approach, painting Lincoln as a man beset by death at every stage of his life, whose efforts to fight slavery and keep the union of states were actually part of his determined vow to rid the world of vampires. It actually makes a lot of sense. Vampires would thrive in the slave states, where they could use the monies they've amasses over the decades and centuries to purchase victim who would never be missed or mourned. And, naturally, these same vampires would adamantly oppose abolition and would fight to preserve the Confederacy. Although I was surprised by the serious tone of the novel, I certainly was not disappointed by it. Author Seth Grahame-Smith does a wonderful job of taking a ridiculous concept and fitting it into American history.

I expected Seth Grahame-Smith's latest book, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, to be a tongue-in-cheek look at the life of Abraham Lincoln. I assumed it would be a parody of sorts attempting to use the timeline of Lincoln's life as map and having a little fun with US history. I expected vampirism to be an analog to slavery. That was simply not the case. Seth Grahame-Smith went well beyond all of that. He took the biographical history of Lincoln, and the historically pertinent parts of US history from Lincoln's time and wrote a compelling alternative look at one of the greatest presidents in our nations history.

Conspiracy theorists are forever trying to reinterprets facts in an effort to constitute a hidden truth. Provide enough evidence, enough quantifiable facts, and the conspiracy theory gains momentum. Essentially this book posits that vampirism was the source of many of the seemingly natural and unnatural deaths of the time period. It goes a step further and makes a convincing argument that vampires were the driving force behind slavery in early United States history.

Of course all of this is done in good fun. Anyone taking the story seriously needs to make an immediate appointment with their nearest head-shrinker. But the story is based on historical facts intermixed with some extremely creative fiction. My initial expectation for the book to be a lampoon was far from the mark. The book takes itself very seriously while still making for a fun read. In essence, Grahame-Smith asks an interesting question. What if early American history was forged by a hidden battle between good and evil? What if a supernatural secret was the formative force behind some of the United States darkest days?

The book is well worth the time to read. It is a unique and interesting alternative look at American history. Based on enough historical fact to make even the most disbelieving wonder, what if...