Life and liberty for all who still breathe

By: Seth Grahame-Smith

I mentioned briefly in a previous blog that I am not a fan of the Kindle and other such "e-readers,"among other reasons, because I enjoy the tactile pleasures of a good old-fashioned book. We've all heard the old adage that you can't judge a book by its cover, and while this is true, if it weren't for the cover artwork on this book that grabbed my attention as I walked past a book kiosk in the Minneapolis airport, it's likely that I never would have read it. It's a gruesome picture, Honest Abe looks earnest and statuesque, in the black and white photo, as he is usually depicted, but he has left a bright red trail of bloody footprints to where he is standing. In fact, he is surrounded by bright red blood, and you can just see the blade of an axe he is attempting to hide behind his back. The picture made me instantly curious to know what he had in his other hand, hidden behind his back. So I did what I'm sure the artist intended for me to do, I turned the book over. The back cover is the same shot taken from behind and in his hand is the decapitated head of a vampire. I was immediately intrigued. On what planet do these two genres go together? Honest Abe, one of the founders of our great country, and campy vampire horror. Seriously? This is either going to be really good or really, really bad.

It turns out Grahame-Smith has mashed these two varieties up before, rather successfully. His horror parody of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice -- entitled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, was instantly a national bestseller. I have heard of them both but haven't read either. Quite frankly, I was never interested but I came across Vampire Hunter during a stale period of one average book after another. So I said "what the heck" and was surprisingly, finally, satisfied. This is a great book! If I manage to convince you to read it, please take it with a grain of salt. We all know that Abe did a lot of wonderful things for this country, but slaying the undead was not one of them.

I am not an expert on the lives of 19th century Presidents, but I did recognize a lot of historical accuracies with which Grahame-Smith merged an inventive plot, punctuating some of Lincoln's more notorious deeds with fierce and heroic slayings of immortal blood - suckers. To my amusement, he was so thorough in his satirical history of Abe that he even included pictures and cliff-notes. I mean, if you are going to do something audacious, you can't do a fractional job of it; that would be sloppy. I loved that he took a crazy, outrageous story concept and stayed committed to it, giving his readers the license to believe for just a second that there may be details our traditional history books left out.

If you are worried about the level of violence and macabre, don't be. I would say it's suitable for teens and up; there are a few scenarios that are a tad bit grisly, but it's not the kind of stuff nightmares are made of. The radical tone of the book comes more from the presentation of Abraham Lincoln having been a hero to our country in more ways than we were aware of. A little bit of this horror/classic stuff does go a long way. I can see myself giving Pride & Prejudice & Zombies a try at some point in the future, but I'm not running out to grab it anytime soon. In fact, I think I'm going to need something by Jodi Piccoult or Dean Koontz to cleanse my palette, you know, one of those that you know is going to be good. Not great or outstanding usually, but reliably fulfilling until I get my hands on another great one!