Review by Vicky London
Seth Grahme-Smith is the best-selling author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. In his latest book, Seth has hybridized history with fantasy to create a fascinating story of one of our most famous presidents as a vampire hunter. The tale of Lincoln’s transformation from country boy to one of the most fearsome slayers to president of the United States is riveting.
Here’s the back cover blurb:
Indiana, 1818. Moonlight falls through the dense woods that surround a one-room cabin, where a nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln kneels at his suffering mother’s bedside. She’s been stricken with something the old-timers call “Milk Sickness.”
“My baby boy…” she whispers before dying.
Only later will the grieving Abe learn that his mother’s fatal affliction was actually the work of a vampire.
When the truth becomes known to young Lincoln, he writes in his journal, “henceforth my life shall be one of rigorous study and devotion. I shall become a master of mind and body. And this mastery shall have but one purpose…” Gifted with his legendary height, strength, and skill with an ax, Abe sets out on a path of vengeance that will lead him all the way to the White House.
While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving a Union and freeing millions of slaves, his valiant fight against the forces of the undead has remained in the shadows for hundreds of years. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln, and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than 140 years.
Using the journal as his guide and writing in the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Seth has reconstructed the true life story of our greatest president for the first time-all while revealing the hidden history behind the Civil War and uncovering the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation.
The book begins in a fictional auto-biographical way when the author is approached by a vampire with Lincoln’s personal journals and requests that he write a book using the information. I was a bit disappointed that the story never went back to the author. It would have been nice to come back to that and bookend the Lincoln story with his own for continuity. We never find out for sure who that vampire is but the reader can make an educated guess.
The blend of history and fantasy makes the story more realistic. I found interesting parallels in the politics of the late 1850′s and current politics in the US. The civil war era is one of the most tragic times in this nation’s history and the link between slavery and vampires is logical and horrifying. I very much liked the ending, it’s too sad to think of Lincoln’s life ending in such a tragic way after decades of struggle and pain. This book made me proud to be an American even if old honest Abe wasn’t really the greatest vampire hunter to ever live.
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Release Date: March 2, 2010
ISBN-10: 0446563080
ISBN-13: 978-0446563086
Popularity: 3% [?]
Reader Ratings - Click On A Star to Rate This Book:
(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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