Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

The book is in my TBR pile.

I hated that book, but more power to him. May we all get such a deal one day.

It just sounds so bad. I hate to come off like a literary snob (because I do read some crap and occasionally really like it), but it just sounds like utter slock. Or maybe it's my civil war fascination (that war, I believe, is the most misrepresented war ever--especially the way it was taught to me in grade school). There's just something about this book that gets under my skin like a jigger.

Okay, now that I've written that, I suppose I should say I can't actually come up with a war that hasn't been misrepresented. But still...!

The first book by this guy sounded like a neat idea, but then it's execution sucked. Then when he did the same damn fucking idea THREE TIMES IN A ROW, I stopped caring and started actively apathyizing at his direction.

Shadow_Ferret said:

The book is in my TBR pile.

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I'm sorry. It starts out interestingly enough, but by the time a second or third time a vampire attack turned out to be "just a bad dream" I threw that book at the wall so hard it ended up in the neighbor's house.

I'm with Devil on this one. I tried so hard to like it, but it just never got there.

Devil Ledbetter said:

I'm sorry. It starts out interestingly enough, but by the time a second or third time a vampire attack turned out to be "just a bad dream" I threw that book at the wall so hard it ended up in the neighbor's house.

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Wait, there aren't any actualy vampires in this?

I wanted to read this when it came out, but read so many bad reviews about it, I decided against it.

I just now finished the book and enjoyed it. The dream sequences are obviously dream sequences from the get-go, but I think the book was directed at people who mostly knew Abe's life. For instance, in the middle of Abe's life, he dreams about being killed by a vampire in a theatre who shouts "Sic semper tyrannis" and who tells him to "beware the ides of April." In the book, the civil war hadn't started yet, but that's an event from the end - that's the big clue that the sequence is a dream.

The author does a really, really good job of imitating Lincoln biographies, history books, and Civil War-era letters. If you're into the era, I think you'll enjoy how he's taken some of Lincoln's more famous quotes and twisted them to fit a story about a secret war against vampires.

It's a book you buy because you want to geek out over a kinda-cool premise for a few hours; if you can't stand the occasional dream sequence, or very brief flashes into another character's head, then this book will annoy you stylistically far more than you will enjoy it.

Wait, there aren't any actualy vampires in this?

I wanted to read this when it came out, but read so many bad reviews about it, I decided against it.

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The story is very much about vampires. The premise is that vampires thrive in the US because they can buy the unhealthy, unfit slaves, and then legally kill and drink them, so the Lincoln + Vampire mashup isn't as arbitrary as it initially seems.

If vampires existed, they'd be very attracted to being able to openly purchase food.