Wait... Lincoln was a what?
This is a work of fiction (obviously) but it reads like non-fiction. You started this blog with a non-fiction book that read like fiction, so it is fitting that you flipped that notion over and read a book like this with such a ridiculous premise. A few years ago Seth Grahame-Smith, starting a trend in the world of fiction, wrote "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies". You haven't read any of the other titles in this over-the-top genre, but you did find the notion of a world where Abraham Lincoln (your son's namesake) stalks vampires and wields his axe with a thirst for vengeance to be too absurdly enjoyable to pass up. Plus, you wanted to have at least one negative review on this blog.
But here's the thing... you ended up liking "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter."
The format is interesting, with its mix of third person narrative interspersed with Abraham Lincoln's first person "secret" uncovered personal diaries. Revelation follows revelation and you soon find that the greatest vampire hunter in the history of the United States was also its greatest president.
Yes, the premise is preposterous, and yes, turning a man revered in American history into a vengeful blood-soaked vampire killer boarders on blasphemy, but that's kind of what is so intriguing about the book.
It's fun to shake up preconceptions. It's good to challenge truth.
One of the things that you liked so much about the book was how difficult it was to discern where the history ended and the fiction began. Sure, once old Honest Abe's axe blade is smashing some vampire's brains out, you're clearly in the fiction part, but how did he get to that battle from from his job in the Illinois Legislature? At what point does Lincoln step out of the real world and into the fantasy? Grahame-Smith makes it hard to tell!
Of course, the author has plenty of opportunity for embellishment provided by the realities of the 19th century. People who lived along side Abraham Lincoln died all the time, and the causes were not always exactly crystal clear. Disease, poisonings, murder.. until a good way into the 20th century, death was everywhere, claiming the young and healthy as well as the old and infirm. The cause of all these deaths all too often remained shrouded in mystery.
Lincoln's grandfather was murdered in 1786 by Shawnee indians while working his fields, but how do we know that those indians weren't really murderous vampires? The killers were never caught. Abraham Lincoln really did suffer from recurring and vivid nightmares, who's to say they weren't a sort of PTSD echo of his exploits combating the undead? There is no way of knowing for sure. Lincoln and Stephen Douglas really were lifelong rivals, they both courted Mary Todd, and they both ran for US Senate and for President. And when he was defeated in the 1860 election by his old rival, Douglas really did go on a tour of the border states warning of the dangers of secession, and he really did die suddenly after that tour. Who knows if he really was killed by the very vampires he had once befriended? These fantastical plot points are easy to smile at and dismiss, but they cleave so well to established history that they become hard to separate from the lore of Lincoln.
This surprised you and also brought up a question in your mind. Isn't the mythology of Abraham Lincoln a bit of fantasy even without the vampires? No man could really have been as incredible as the 16th President of the United States has been made out to be. Not really. No real human being could ever live up to the legendary status that Lincoln occupies in the minds of so many. Surely some of the stories we cherish aren't true either. Undoubtedly Lincoln was a flawed man who was not truly larger than life. You know this. And yet you still named your son after him.
"Abraham Lincoln: Vampire hunter" reminded you of a central tenant of the human experience. We choose the stories we decide are important. Luke Skywalker doesn't exist any more than Lincoln's vampires, but that doesn't mean Luke's story isn't meaningful. Just because a story isn't true, doesn't mean it can't teach you something. Sometimes we tell made up stories to illuminate meaningful truths, and the truth told in this preposterous book, the overarching theme, is that slavery was one of the purest forms of evil.
It is tempting sometimes to encapsulate American slavery as a historical anomaly, something long-dead people experienced centuries ago, something that has no bearing on our society today. It is easier sometimes to attempt to gloss over the horrors of this despicable practice and argue about "states' rights" or to get caught up in an argument that ignores the evil in our past. This book makes no such attempt.
In this alternate universe, slavery enables vampires. The two are caught up together in an almost parasitical relationship. Evil feeding evil. Vampires avoid hiding their true nature, become slave owners and perversely grow their own meals. In a twisted, fantasy world, a brilliant clarity emerges. If slave owners had really done this, if they had really feasted on their slaves, no one would have known, and only a few would have cared. After all, what you did with your "property" was your business. And in a sense, by building a society and an economy upon the backs of the oppressed, by enriching themselves through the forced misery of others, isn't that what slave owners really did anyway?
Early in the book, a young Abraham Lincoln witnesses an atrocity perpetuated on a few newly purchased slaves, and realizes that his fight against vampires will never be over unless slavery is ended. The real Lincoln was motivated by logic and compassion for his fellow Americans to fight against the institution of slavery, but Grahame-Smith's Lincoln is fueled by a fanatical drive to defeat another evil as well. Highlighting how pernicious human enslavement was by equating it with the supernatural exploits of the blood-thirsty undead clarified for you, more than ever before, how destructive and wicked slavery truly was. After finishing the book you thanked God and Abraham Lincoln that such evil is gone from America now.
Sometimes the silliest books can remind you of the most important truths.
On to the next book!
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