Just when I thought there was a stopping point, nay, a saturation point of how much YA lit one could read, along comes a book that cleansed my palate.
Enter Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Killer by Seth Grahame-Smith.
The author of the book lives in the most quaint town in New York. His passion of writing gave way to other more important things, like marriage and children, and he soon finds himself the sole employee of a small five-and-dime store. No one really comes by, except for wealthy Henry, who buys fifty bucks worth of things and goes on. But one night, something extraordinary happens when Henry delivers a treasure trove. Ten lost journals of Abraham Lincoln, which chronicles not only his life since childhood, but his involvement with the dark side...and his first encounter with vampires...
Read like a true biography of Abraham Lincoln, the reader becomes intrigued in the smooth segues between true history and absolute fiction. It's seamless and it's simply fascinating to read. From his early childhood in Kentucky to all the moves afterwards that Thomas Lincoln took his family through, the journals chronicle everything historical that happened to Abraham. His mother's death wasn't through disease, but by vampiric intervention. It details the historically arguable fact of his move to New Salem and his first true love, Ann Rutledge, who also died because of sinister political vampire motivation. Was Jefferson Davis a supporter of the Southern Vampire and did he actually try to kill Lincoln? What about John Wilkes Booth? Human or vengeful vampire?
The premise of this book is why the Civil War was actually fought, but the origination of vampires in America begins with John White in 1587 and his colonists who disappeared with only CRO carved on a tree. Henry Sturges was there in the beginning and is the man who gave the journals to the author working the five-and-dime. He was the guiding force behind Abe's career as a vampire killer and the force behind Abe's presidential nomination and win.
Grahame-Smith second book with this novel approach was more to my taste because of the historical nature of the book itself. What a keen and sharp mind this novelist had to create and capture what has been written by countless biographers of Abraham Lincoln's life and weave in fictional details that coincides perfectly with reality.
Could this be one teens would pick up? Absolutely! Pair it with James Swanson's Licoln's Killer, a great YA non-fiction book and you have a pair that's a winner. I am definitely putting this on my booktalk list! And the cherry on top? The "photos" interspersed within the novel as well as the cover....
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