Life is like a box of chocolates, ya never know wut yer gonna get

Life is like a box of chocolates, ya never know wut yer gonna get

Friday, March 5, 2010

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Killer

I was just looking through my Barnes and Noble online coupon and noticed this new release by Seth Graham Greene.  The title was so shocking that, of course, I had to read the synopsis.  Upon first reading I wondered if the author was serious.  I mean, with all the interest in vampires, maybe there is something curiously real about them.  Did he mean real blood sucking gore, or a sort of representation of business and politic?

He means blood sucking gore. 

The description tells me that Seth Graham Greene was privy to a recently discovered diary of President Lincoln - and that HE (who was is he anyway?) was the first and only one to read it.  Okay, upon first read I believed it;  I don't know who he is.  And my gullible gene is easily activated.  Hell, it needs no activation - I'm a sucker for a good story.  Anyway - here it is:

Synopsis

When Abraham Lincoln was nine years old, his mother died from an ailment called the "milk sickness." Only later did he learn that his mother's deadly affliction was actually the work of a local vampire, seeking to collect on Abe's father's unfortunate debts.

When the truth became known to the young Abraham Lincoln, he wrote in his journal: henceforth my life shall be one of rigorous study and devotion. I shall become learned in all things—a master of mind and body. And this mastery shall have but one purpose."


While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for reuniting the North with the South and abolishing slavery from our country, no one has ever understood his valiant fight for what it really was. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Journal of Abraham Lincoln, and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than 140 years.


Using the journal as his guide and writing in the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Seth has reconstructed the true life story of our greatest president for the first time—all while revealing the hidden history behind the Civil War, and uncovering the massive role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation.




Okay
So how come he never told anyone about vampires?  How come they never thought him a nut case?  What's up with that.  My belief is wavering here.  And then I read this piece from Publisher's Weekly inserted below the synopsis by Barnes and Noble newsletter.


Publishers Weekly


Following the success of his bestselling Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with another mélange of history and horror, Grahame-Smith inserts a grandiose and gratuitous struggle with vampires into Abraham Lincoln’s life. Lincoln learns at an early age that his mother was killed by a supernatural predator. This provokes his bloody but curiously undocumented lifelong vendetta against vampires and their slave-owning allies. The author’s decision to reduce slavery to a mere contrivance of the vampires is unfortunate bordering on repellent, but at least it does distract the reader from the central question of why the president never saw fit to inform the public of the supernatural menace. Grahame-Smith stitches hand-to-hand vampire combat into Lincoln’s documented life with competent prose that never quite manages to convince. (Mar.)

Ohhhhh....k.  And then I read this:


Biography


Seth Grahame-Smith is the author of The Big Book of Porn (Quirk, 2005) and The Spider-Man Handbook (Quirk, 2006). He lives in Los Angeles, California.


The Big Book of Porn?  Really?  Eww.  The Spider-Man Handbook would just make me think him an acceptable geeky nerd.  The porn thing makes me think he's ...   Ewwwww......... Weirdo.

There is one thing (in my opinion) about this book that is well done.  It got my attention.  I want to read this book.  Just so I can make fun of it.  I hope his story dances around the real history lightly and does not disturb any real facts, or my opinion of them.  That would make me mad.  As it is, this sounds like an escapist dream to me - an easy rainy day read; a guilty pleasure.  I don't want any smart ass kid trying to change my politics or something through any sneaky story.

Oh.  And there is another one for the Jane Austen crowd.  Pride and Predjudice and Zombies.  Yeah.


Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Pride and Predjudice and Zombies
Are both works of fiction by Seth Grahame-Smith


1 comment:

  1. Just what is ... the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough?

    ReplyDelete