As a historian, and a Lincoln fan, I cringed when I heard about this book and then about the movie. I cringed because I had read everything about Lincoln's life and Presidency practically from the first time I learned to read. He is my favorite President.
With that said the author, Seth Grahame Smith, blended the real life experiences of Abraham Lincoln very well with the legend of the vampire. Smith turns every traumatic event in Lincoln's life into an event involving vampires in some way. Even events that didn't directly involve Lincoln were attributed to vampires or events not involving Lincoln at all. The earliest event to involve a vampire had nothing to do with Lincoln, the Roanoke Colony disappearance was attributed to a single vampire who had been one of the Roanoke settlers.
A significant event that occurred in real life but was attributed to vampires in the book was the murder of Abraham Lincoln's grandfather, also named Abraham. In real life the older Abraham was killed by a band of Indians while he was clearing a portion of his land. His son, Thomas, witnessed this tragic event. Smith changes the details of this event in that the Indians became vampires.
It doesn't end there, when Abraham Lincoln is nine years old, his mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, dies of an illness called milk sickness. Milk sickness, also known as tremetol vomiting or, in animals as trembles, is characterized by trembling, vomiting, and severe intestinal pain that affects individuals who ingest milk, other dairy products, or meat from a cow that has fed on white snakeroot, which contains the poison tremetol. This event to Nancy dying because she ingested the blood of a vampire which kills humans.
Abraham begins to train to kill vampires. He meets a man that helps him after he is injured during his first vampire hunt. The man nurses him back to health and helps train him in tracking and killing vampires. His friend sends him on missions to kill vampires. Later he finds out his friend is a vampire himself.
Several more events are changed, very significant events. Abraham Lincoln's first finance, Anne Rutledge, died before they could get married. This event was changed to Anne being killed in the same manner as Nancy. The death of his son Willie is another significant event as he is killed in the same manner.
One of the most significant events to be changed is that of Abraham's assassination. John Wilkes Booth shoots Lincoln in the head, but before he dies his old friend turns him into a vampire and the continue to hunt their own kind, this is depicted at the end of the book when Abraham and his friend are present at Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream Speech.
There are some interesting changes to historical fact that Smith uses. I won't divulge them here. I would suggest that you read the book, if for no other reason than it is a decent story. Pure fiction interwoven with dozens of major and minor historical events.
That being said, I award three stars out of five, based on the Shelfari.com website's rating system.
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