Book Review: Seth Grahame-Smith's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

7/10-score years ago, when Seth Grahame-Smith published Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, I was in my first year of parenthood, transitioning to my new career as a Teacher Librarian, and less engaged in the world of horror fiction. As a result, I completely dismissed the novel as a frivolous cash-grab meant for a less-literary audience. Fourteen years later, I am happy to admit that I was (mostly) wrong in my prejudiced estimation of the book.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a truly immersive reading experience, replete with footnotes, citations, and "vintage" illustrations embedded in its 336 pages. Writing in an academic style that mimics Ron Chernow, Jon Krakauer, or even Malcolm Gladwell, Grahame-Smith fabricates an alternate history of the United States in which the sixteenth president of the United States fought nobly against the army of the Confederacy and a legion of the undead.

And it's just as wonderfully bizarre as it sounds.

Meticulously researched (or so it appears), Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter offers plenty of United States history to contextualize the fictional "reality" of 1800s-era bloodsuckers. Grahame-Smith traces the lineage of these American undead back to the original colonial settlements in Jamestown, Virginia (including a clever twist on the missing Roanoke Colony); from there, the author crafts a horror tale that's as thoroughly entrenched in American history as it is with vampire lore. Imagine a cross between Grady Hendrix and Bill Bryson , and you're somewhere in the general vicinity of this novel. Don't quote me on this (because I'm an English teacher who doesn't have an in-depth base of historical knowledge regarding Lincoln's life), but it appears as if Grahame-Smith has really done his homework. Even if he's playing fast and loose with the facts, his writing is convincing enough to make the reader believe that he's earned his US history merit badge

Unfortunately, after the clever novelty of a fictional textbook biography wears off, the novel gets bogged down in historical minutiae. At the expense of a fluid, engaging narrative, the author overcompensates with Easter eggs to appease the hardcore Lincoln aficionados out there. While it might sound strange to describe a book about hunting vampires as "tedious," Grahame-Smith somehow manages to pull off that designation. However, even at its most tiresome, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter still deserves credit for what it does well: clever world-building with a meticulous mythology.

Despite his imperfections, Grahame-Smith has piqued my interest enough that I'm going to sink my fangs into this novel's sequel, The Last American Vampire. I appreciated the twist at the end of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (a plot point that many readers will predict, and many others will dislike), and I'm invested enough to read more about Lincoln's vampire friend/mentor/Jedi master. Seth Grahame-Smith has achieved an impressive feat with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, creating an American breed of nosferatu that departs enough from Anne Rice and Stephenie Meyer to whet readers' appetite with fresh blood.

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