The Last American Vampire: The History of the New World, With Shades!

If you have not read Seth Grahame-Smith’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, beat it.  Nothing for you to see here . . . until you finish that book, and come back to check out its sequel.

Yes, Grahame-Smith’s The Last American Vampire is a sequel (of sorts) to the biography-vampire story mashup that landed him his first feature-length film.  (Grahame-Smith’s first novel, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, will be hitting the silver screen later this year.)

Sure, Abraham Lincoln is dead when The Last American Vampire opens . . .. but this story isn’t about Honest Abe.  Instead, it is about Henry Sturges, the vampire who saved Lincoln’s life, opened his eyes to reality (yes, vampires do exist!), and who turned Abe into the axe-slinging, vampire beheading hunter/President of the United States of America that we all came to know and love!

Always one to borrow/pay homage to classic works of literature, Grahame-Smith has Sturges recount his story via an interview, a la Anne Rice’s Interview With a Vampire.  The story makes sure that we readers are aware of the similarity by coming right out and saying so in the early goings, and then we’re off and running in a story that spans the dusk of the 19th century and the dawn of a new era.

Plot Summary

Sturges’ narrative opens in 1888, with him feeling lost and a touch aimless following the death of Lincoln.  With Lincoln fighting the war against the vampires, there was hope; with him out of the picture, Sturges finds himself exploring America, disconnected from the land he fought to protect.

Soon, Sturges is given a purpose again: an enemy has surfaced who has tracked down and assassinated vampire ambassadors in Spain, Germany, Italy, France and England, returning their severed, mutilated heads back to America as a warning: No more Americans.    Sturges is sent overseas, to England, the place of his birth.  From there, his hunt for the vampire known only as A. Grander will devour nearly a century of Sturges’ existence, taking him from the streets of Whitechapel to World War II, introducing him to the likes of Jack the Ripper, Nikola Tesla, Theodore Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler and more.  When it’s all said and done, Henry Sturges will have witnessed or outright influenced many of the defining moments of the 20th century,

What Works . . . And What Needs To Be Worked Out

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I take a stripped-down approach to reviewing books, or TV shows and movies: basically, if I made it to the end of whatever I was reading or watching without wanting to hurt somebody, I can recommend it.  My fellow English teachers might be disappointed by my simplistic approach, but these things serve only one purpose: to entertain us.  And in the case of The Last American Vampire, Seth Grahame-Smith did, indeed, spin an entertaining yarn.

Following Henry as he confronts Jack the Ripper (an encounter which also provides us with the full story about how Henry became a member of the undead), plays a game of cat-and-mouse with A. Grander VIII, and takes down Girgory Rasputin with the hilarious help of Tesla, for example, are bloody fun, indeed.  Grahame-Smith has a razor-sharp sense of humor, as well, which keeps the events from taking themselves too seriously.  There’s some gory moments included, but for the most part, this story is more action-adventure than brooding, Gothic vampire material – which is fine, given how it is playing with history.

That isn’t to say that everything Grahame-Smith throws at you sticks.  While I enjoy historical fiction, and I admire the amount of knowledge and research on display in The Last American Vampire, some of the celebrities and scenarios seem forced, or obvious.  For every character Grahame-Smith lifts off of the pages of history and successfully uses in Sturges’ narrative, there is another whose cameo seems contrived.   For example, I enjoyed how Nikola Tesla was used to provide us with the requisite “mad scientist” role, but why was the great American author Mark Twain needed, exactly?  And having Sturges involved in an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler – well, that’s just too obvious, in my opinion.

Such are the pitfalls of trying to create a new story out of popular history, I suppose.  The occasional speed bump aside, though, I appreciate Seth Grahame-Smith’s willingness to create an alternate reality in which vampires exist, as it sure makes some of humanity’s more horrific acts seem a bit more plausible!