Book Review - Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter

Synopsis:  When Abraham Lincoln was nine years old, his mother died from an ailment called the "milk sickness." Only later did he learn that his mother's deadly affliction was actually the work of a local vampire, seeking to collect a debt owed by Lincoln's father. When Abe learned the truth, he vowed revenge and kept one passion hidden throughout his life: the brutal elimination of all vampires. His valiant, bloody fight against the undead was all but lost to history, until Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln. Using the journal as his guide, Seth reconstructs Lincoln's life story and uncovers the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation.

You don't know Abe. Honest.

First Line:  "I was still bleeding ... my hands shaking."

Random Quote:  "Jack was giving serious thought to turning his crossbow on Abe.  They'd just made a miserable 200-mile trip north to the town of Chicago, sleeping under the freezing stars of late autumn, trudging through knee-high mud and waist-high water, "and the ganglin' foold done nothin' but talk 'bout a girl the whole damned way." "

Review:  I didn't read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies because it seemed kind of gimmicky (not necessarily a terrible thing, but not an awesome thing in a book, either), but mostly because I loathe Jane Austen. Yes, I admit it: I am a Jane Austen loather. You can go ahead and take away my girl credentials now (I really wasn't using them, anyway). I like my husband's take on Jane Austen, "They're books where a couple of really rich people like each other, play hard to get, finally marry and own a third of Europe." Heh.

Anyway, I like vampires and I like Abraham Lincoln so I figured I'd try this one out. I wish I had liked it, but I really really didn't. Not even a little bit.

Image via Wikipedia

Firstly, I think the elements of a mashup should offer a new way to look at each other. For instance, playing The Dark Side of the Moon over the top of The Wizard of Oz is very very cool, but it also makes you look at elements of each in a new way - that's part of the coolness, I think. I'm sorry to say that being a vampire hunter doesn't bring anything useful to my view of Abraham Lincoln nor vice versa. The two things neither complement each other nor utterly destroy each other. Added to that the notion of vampires being behind slavery and the Civil War and I found the whole thing trivializing. The thing that makes slavery horrific is that it's something that people do to each other - we don't need monsters for it.

I'd like to say that the author at least managed a creative play on the Doris Kearns Goodwin style of political biography, but I can't. All told, this wasn't entertaining and wasn't enlightening and mostly just sucked.

Reading Challenges:  Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2010, Speculative Fiction Challenge 2010, 2010 100+ Reading Challenge, 2010 Support Your Local Library Reading Challenge