Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, a book review

Revisionism has always been a part of history. Take the Civil War as an example. Was the war about freeing slaves, state rights, or any of the hundreds of other reasons? That's how history works. The story is always changing to reflect the Now. That is what we have such stories as Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.

This book is brought to us by the same creative mind that brought Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to the world. In this book, the text of Pride and Prejudice is injected with scenes involving Zombies. I haven't read that one, but one of my English professors wrote the introduction to the second edition (now with 30% more zombies.)

The concepts are smart and thought provoking. What would history look like if Abraham Lincoln was a vampire hunter? What if the Civil War was really about stopping vampires from using slave populations to fulfill their blood lust?

So how does the book do in telling its story? I found it lacking in a lot of ways.

First, there is definitely not enough vampire hunting for my tastes. Lincoln only hunts vampires as a young man. It does make sense since he can't have that kind of strength and resilience as a child or older man, but I'm not really interested in seeing an older vampire hunter try to be President. I want to see Honest Abe rolling up his sleeves and fighting.

Second, the book takes itself far too seriously. Am I really going to believe that Lincoln fought vampires? Not with the way this is written. When I first heard about the idea, I was excited about the combination of actual written work by Lincoln and fictional passages. There is so much potential there. Unfortunately those passages tend to be a way out of actually writing. Also, there are fictional writings that make it hard to take any of it seriously.

Third, is the ending. I don't want to give anything away, but I did not feel satisfied with the ending. It was a cop out and took away from the rest of the story. I wish I could tell you exactly what I don't like about the ending, but I do want you to read the book even if it isn't as great as it could be.

There are things that I did enjoy, but they tended to be isolated segments. Here are some of them:

• Lincoln seeing the impact of slavery on the slaves as 10 auctioned slaves are sold to vampires to feast upon.
• Lincoln mistakes Edgar Allen Poe for a vampire.
• Lincoln actually fighting vampires.