I admit these kinds of books are a guilty pleasure of mine. You give me zombies and Pride and Prejudice I’ll read it in a heartbeat. You give me William Shakespeare with vampires and I’ll add it to my wishlist to read. People are going to scoff at these types of books because they’re known to be silly and not worth the time reading. Sometimes we just need a bit of silliness in our lives to remind ourselves that it’s okay to throw ideas that have nothing to do with each other and make it into a story (or film, or both.) I enjoyed this one because well, vampires, and history put together are usually a great mix. This time around it’s more of an alternate history story line with an interesting but pretty feasible so it’s not over the top ridiculous. Vampires who support the South because it gives them easy access to food. Sounds plausible doesn’t it? It makes sense if you think about it that way. Of course then you have vampires like Henry who don’t believe in getting food that way and that’s where the plot of vampires and history blend nicely together. The format of the book is also different and interesting in where it’s written like a ‘non fiction’ book. It’s a nice way of putting it together and adds more to the story to make it more enjoyable. The problem with this is, since it’s meant to emulate a non fiction book, it also dry and boring in some parts. So the execution of this type of book could have been a bit better to make the read less of a chore - as some parts seemed to have dragged. Despite some of the parts being a bit boring, it’s worth a shot to read. I enjoyed the ending immensely and liked what they did there with Lincoln. This book isn’t for everyone that’s for sure, but if you’re curious about it, give it a try.

This is another book I finished about a year and a half ago, so my review will be rather short and to the point (as three-star reviews tend to be anyway).

 

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was certainly the odd read, and not at all what I expected. I loved Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which was also written by Grahame-Smith, but Abraham Lincoln proved to be incredibly different. It still had all the quirky gore and fight scenes, but with the uninspiring narration of a biography.

 

I am not very good at suspending my disbelief when the author doesn’t 100% convince me certain things are possible in the world they have created. Anyone who knows me knows I love fantasy and other unrealistic fiction, but you’ve got to get me to believe in your world before I can let myself enjoy something. Grahame-Smith’s world here is very much our ordinary world, except it includes vampires. This is fine, but I get stuck at the biography-but-still-a-narrative concept presented in this particular book. The book’s synopsis tells us that Grahame-Smith supposedly discovered The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln, which explains passages of this book that are directly quoted from Lincoln in that diary. It does not, however, explain any of the perfect dialogue exchanged between characters throughout the book. It would have succeeded much more in its believability had it just been written like a narrative, without pretending to be a biography. The dialogue brings me completely out of the story because I am constantly reminded that there is no way the author of any biography could know exact conversations that happened between people hundreds of years ago.

 

Aside from this, though, the rest of it does sell you on its genre (biography), and I really would have enjoyed it much more without so much dialogue. I still felt emotionally attached to a lot of the characters, especially Lincoln’s family, and it was cool to see a “secret” side of history. I find conspiracy theories fascinating, and this felt very similar to that. I do generally enjoy Grahame-Smith’s writing (since I loved one of his other books), but this one wasn’t all that memorable for me and I would probably by-pass it when recommending books to someone.

 

There is only one other thing that made this impossible for me to believe, but since it’s a huge spoiler, it is going under a “read more” tab!

 

This isn't a book that I would typically pick up an read and it was my first time reading Seth Grahame-Smith and anything Abraham Lincoln related, however loosely. I was introduced to this book when I began listening to the preview for it on audible and I was so intrigued that I bought the audio book and I actually ended up loving it! I don't think I would have liked this book nearly as much if I had read it in paper format, or e-book for that matter, because the audible narrator, Scott Holst, was phenomenal! He really brought the story and the characters to life and completely captivated me in the process. Obviously this was a very loose reselling of the life of Abraham Lincoln but I have to admit there was a lot of historical accuracy, aside from the vampires and the hunting of them, of course, but I learned a lot about Lincoln's childhood and family life as well as what it was like growing up in that day and age of American history. Grahame-Smith did an amazing job of collaborating fantastical elements with historical events to create a re-telling that was entertaining and informative in equal measure. I'm looking forward to reading more of his books like this and the next one on my TBR shelf is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies! I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys historical fiction, historical non-fiction, or books about Vampires and I definitely recommend listening to this book in audio format for an even better experience!

Set in the 1800s, this book follows Abraham Lincoln’s life. Initially, the story  is told from the viewpoint of the author who stumbled upon the hidden, secret diaries of Lincoln. The story then shits to a historical retelling of Lincoln’s life, with snippets of Lincoln’s diaries added in here and there. There’s vampires, and hunting, and politics.

First, I adored Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride & Prejudice & Zombies so I was really looking forward to this book. However, this book is told in a very different manner and I have to say I didn’t like it near so well as my first Grahame-Smith book. First, the point of view shifts back and forth often, and not just the POV, but also the tone. We start off with the amiable author finding the secret hidden diaries. He uses these as a basis for writing a new history on Lincoln. The reader is then tossed into this ‘history’ with no more amiable author POV. The history is written rather dryly being mostly dates, places, events, people. But then little snippets of Lincoln’s hidden diaries are tossed in nearly every other page. These snippets are much more personable and have a very different pacing and flavor from the ‘history’. I often found myself frustrated that the author, Grahame-Smith, didn’t just pick one style or the other to the story telling for the majority of the book. The historical parts would put me to sleep and the diary parts would jolt me awake, get me hooked and then leave me sad and weeping for more.

Perhaps I should get a paper edition and cut out all the diary entries, paste them together, and read the book that way. That would probably be more satisfying.

The other thing that made me sad was that there were almost no women and what few women there were, had little to do with the story. Grahame-Smith set such a high bar with Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, which has several lead female characters, that I really expected something of the same here. Alas, the lack of female vampire slayers had me weeping again.

Lastly, the author over-used a dramatic ploy. You know how an author will launch you into an action sequence with all the characters you have become familiar with, then something horrible happens, and you start to think through all the consequences this has for the plot… and then the character wakes up and realizes it was a bad nightmare. I think this little ploy was used like 4 times in the book. And to make me shed a few more tears, these dream sequences were some of the best written action scenes of  the entire book.

Really, I haven’t cried this much over a book (in frustration) in forever.

There were a few things I liked about the book. Since it is written like a history, we do learn quite a bit about Lincoln’s life. He did have some issues with family members that would have been scandalous today. I really liked the dark, deeply serious tone of the diary entries.

Over all, it was a real let down.

Narration:  Scott Holst did a good job. He had to sound like a dried up history professor for the dry historical bits and then completely switch gears and become Lincoln for the diary entries. Since many of those entries also recorded conversations had with other folks, Holst had to come up with several male character voices with regional accents. He performed well!

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.