The Monster Mash-up

I wonder if author Seth Grahame-Smith knew what he was starting when he wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Before you knew it, there were all kinds of "classic fiction meets monster movie" blends making the rounds. Now the man himself is back at it again with his latest, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. It tells the tale of how America's famous president waged a secret lifelong war against vampires, seeking to eradicate them from the country.

A friend loaned me this book, knowing that I'd read the epic Lincoln biography, Team of Rivals. I will say that one can have a greater appreciation for this book if you've read that one. It's not so much that you can see more ways this work of fiction connects to real history, but more that you can appreciate the writing style being adopted here.

I heard from this same friend, who read Pride and Prejudice (in both Zombie and non-zombie versions), that Seth Grahame-Smith deserved praise for so uncannily aping Jane Austen's style. Here, he shows a similar nimbleness in adapting his own writing, making it read very much like a biography in general, and Doris Kearns Goodwin's kind of biography in particular.

Unfortunately, things never really transcend the level of "cheap gimmick." Of course, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was a gimmick too, but you can forgive a little-known writer for a stunt to gain readers. (Besides which, I hear the book was pretty good.) This time around, I think he could have written any book in the horror/monster mode, they could have slapped "from the writer of P&P&Z" on it, and it would have sold. I don't think he needed the gimmick here... though I was certainly willing to let him have it, if it was done well.

The thing is, it really wasn't. Despite the effective mimicry, the story itself never really justifies why it's about Abraham Lincoln. It's a rather effective period vampire story with some interesting twists and turns. And while the book does ultimately connect the spread of vampires with slavery, it ultimately feels like it could have been about any person in the mid-19th-century, and would have been a better book standing on its own merits.

I supposed I'd call the book a B-. Not bad, but it left me wishing it had been something other (and more) than it was.