About the Book
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.
For more information on Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter please visit Hachette's website.
My Review
This story was very interesting. I liked the way Grahame-Smith took real events and tweaked them, leaving them as historical fact just adding a different side to them. I think that was the most appealing part of this story. I liked thinking of these historical facts in a new way. I could almost imagine that was the truth.
The writing was a bit humorous at times, and given what was going on in the story the slight humor was able to lighten the mood of what would have been a very dark novel. I for one liked the humor.
The characters, both fictional and real, were well developed. While there are characters that we are already familiar with Grahame-Smith was able to add a new dimension to them that lent itself very well to the story. The fictional characters were also a great addition to the story, again tweaking history to make it so interesting.
While this one was a bit gory it wasn't so gory that it made it difficult to read (or listen to). There were a few scenes that did make me cringe.
My only complaint was the narrator was a bit dry in my opinion. I've never listened to an audio book before, so I don't know if all audio books are like this, or if I just happened upon a fluke. When I'm reading a book I have a whole cast of characters in my head and they each have a different voice and attitude, and that was kind of what I was expecting, to an extent. So this criticism may just well be due to my lack of comfort with an audio book.
Other than that I really liked this one. After I read Pride and Prejudice I plan on picking up Grahame-Smith's other novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
