Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (original 2010; edition 2011)

An absolutely fun read, with enough historically accurate detail to satisfy even the biggest history nerd... ( )

If you like your presidential biographies with a dash of gore, this is the book for you. Author follows the details of Lincoln's life faithfully but injects vampire-influenced aspects (e.g., his mother died, not of milk sickness but from a vampire bite) Intriguing, fast-paced spin. ( )

While lacking the scope of Sandburg's multi-volume work, Grahame-Smith exposes a previously unknown side of the 16th President.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith was recently released as a film. I haven't seen it but I might. I think the concept of vampires being behind the Civil War is an interesting one. The film might do a better job of showing the story as the book gets bogged down in endless, dry telling.

The framing story behind Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is of an author finding a secret Lincoln journal which covers his secret life as a vampire hunter. To keep the pretense of this book being the newly published journal going, long passages of the so called journal are presented in block text. It is a visually boring presentation and a fairly mind numbing read for something involving vampire hunting.

I got about half way through the book before I decided I'd had enough. These mash-ups aren't for me. It's not the juxtaposition of Lincoln and vampire hunting that I object to. It's the attempt to write in the style of another author or another era. It's an illusion that just can't be held for the entirety of the book (or even a chapter).

I prefer instead authors who write in their own voices even when dealing with historical figures. ( )

This book was different than I expected it to be. I was expecting much more action and gore with a few tidbits about his life interspersed. In reality, exactly the opposite is true. This book read like a biography of Lincoln's life - from his childhood in Kentucky to his eventual rise through state legislature to the office of the president and the civil war. There were tons of historical details that made this feel like a historical account rather than fiction.

The vampire aspect of the story is woven rather seamlessly into this historical account. Certain details of Lincoln's life, political motivations of the time, slavery - all include a vampire element that is actually a believable alternative to the truth we know.

Other reviewers have said that this is a "gory" book. I disagree. While there are some pretty bloody and disturbing scenes, I don't think there are enough of them to justify calling this book gory. Actually, there was a lot less gore than I was expecting. There are scenes of vampire hunts but more often these episodes are only mentioned rather than described. There are scenes describing horrible things done by vampires but these scenes are not described in enough detail to be gory. They set the scene well and have a definite creep factor but are not downright scary. Maybe I've just been desensitized by too many horror movies.

Overall this was enjoyable but did not have as much action as I would have liked. ( )