Review: ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER, Seth Graham-Smith

When I first come across this novel as I hunted around the sales tables at Waterstones, the thing that struck me was how ridiculous the notion of the President of the United States during the Civil War, who was assassinated by a die-hard Confederate and actor, John Wilkes Booth, was a sort of Buffy vampire killer. I   knew that it couldn't be a serious piece of work. Indeed, the writer Seth Graham-Smith has also published other odd titles that people who frequent books shops will doubtless recognise: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The parody novel of Jane Austen's classic surpassed all expectations and became a surprise bestseller.

Yet if I have one major issue with this novel it is the question of whether I was supposed to take it seriously or as a joke. Considering the author's track record, the first assumption must be that it is a parody. The reason why it is so easy to be thrown one way or the other is because that the manner in which Graham-Smith presents this novel is very subtle. Posing it as an historical analysis of Abraham Lincoln's lost diaries, this is used to present the ridiculous story. Accompanied with mocked up photographs of Lincoln, posing with his "famed" ax with which he slayed the vampires, the book is not only written like a historian but has the feel of one also.

The problem isn't this but the fact that at times the author seems to find it hard to maintain the aura of a historian, and instead falls into the trap of simply talking through AL's diary entries rather than just 'picking out' sections and then summarising them in his own words. Moreover the manner in which the 'writer' comes across the 'lost diaries' is a rather cliche manner of a mysterious man passing them over. While this cover story only takes up about the first 20-pages, it still takes a long time to actually get into the book or become the amusing story that Vanity Fair boasts it to be.

Another issue I had was with the pace - it is often too quick, speeding through Lincoln's life like a runaway train. The depth of research that has gone into the novel is quite remarkable but at times it felt like reading a mixed cocktail of different types of writing: the diary, the historian and the novel writer. While this is not necessarily an issue when the three methods are employed effectively, I can't help but feel that more could have been done with this concept of Lincoln as a Vampire Hunter.

Overall this is undoubtedly a well-researched novel that has put a lot of attention into detail, especially in regards to the American Civil War. While the author's style of writing fails him now and then, this is a very easy novel to read and does not require much thinking about. It by no means keeps you wondering, not because it assumes the writer knows anything about Lincoln but because when the connection between vampires and the slave-owners of the American South is made, it feels too obvious a way to bring the book-sucking creatures into the Civil War environment. 

To people who might wish to avoid this novel because it is 'yet another vampire novel', they needn't fear as the vampire aspect at times does not really affect the overall presentations of Lincoln's life. The author finds a fair balance between portraying a human side to "Abe" as well as his eccentric vampire-hunter side, even if he doesn't quite manage to insert vampires comfortably into Lincoln's life. 

If I could say one thing about this book, it is that it is too short. I say this not because I enjoyed it so exceptionally that I wished I could read more, but because once I got to the end I felt it should have been longer. There is a lot that the author could have done and failed to do.

6/10

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Review: THE EMPRESS OF ROME, Matthew Dennison

People who are familiar with the Roman Empress Livia will likely think first and foremost of Robert Graves's I, Claudius, in which she systematically moves to annihilate all the troublesome members of the Imperial family who stand between her son Tiberius and the succession to her husband Augustus's new dynasty. Matthew Dennison's book attempts to absolve Livia, to prove that she did not murder her stepdaughter's husbands, Marcellus and Agrippa, and children, Gaius, Lucius and Postumus, and all manner of wicked deeds that the character contrives and relishes within the hallowed texts of Graves's classic.

Yet there are two major flaws in this history that let it down completely. First is its cherry-picking of the ancient historical accounts, only accepting the ones that favour Livia and coldly beating down the accounts of those that do not favour her - the most obvious being Tacitus, upon whose accounts that Graves based his Livia. Second, is that while the book is very readable and pleasant to read, it says very little and is based primarily on assumptions rather than facts. Most annoying of all, and this is a problem with many non-fiction books, is that the writer attempts to use pointless sources that bear no resemblance to their topic matter to justify their arguments.

It is true that Dennison is faced with the problem that his subject matter is one that we know very little about. Women were rarely written about unless they were famed for murder or incest (or indeed both),  as with the infamous Clodia (who is mentioned several times by Dennison). Trying to get to the bare-knuckled truth about a woman in Rome is an impossible task and, credit to Dennison, he does his best to piece together an impression of what Livia's life would have entailed. However it is his constant attempts to examine Livia's 'psychology' that undermines all this hard work as textually it is assumptions, not facts, that takes up the whole book.

Ultimately, the book would have done better to be much shorter. Most of it feels more like a PhD student's final thesis, using quotations such as Tennyson's poem, 'He chopped down the family tree...' which is the most references of a backlog of irrelevant passages that prelude each chapter. I found myself reading ahead to avoid them as they bore little importance to understanding his arguments about Livia.

As already stated in making his arguments about Livia, he pushes away any negative statements about her and basks in the positive - what little there actually is. While Livia may or may not have poisoned half her second husband's relatives, his arguments are once again let down by the fact that he only cherry-picks with Livia and not with the other imperial women, such as Octavia and Julia. He repeatedly remarks upon Octavia's blind hatred of mothers, 'especially Livia', and his presumed jealousy of her, despite it having no point in his argument past the death of Marcellus. Probably more unfair is his judgement on Julia: at one point he questions the absurd statement that she prostituted herself in the Roman forum (considering her renown for being fairly haughty), but later states the account by Seneca as if it were fact.

The overall narrative is jumbled, darting back and forth in time only to repeat itself. I was especially disappointed by how little time he spent on the later years of her life, in which Livia was emboiled in several scandals. These are mentioned, but include none of the assumptions or hypotheses that are said and repeated over and over in defense of Livia. They are just mentioned and forgotten, as if Dennison either lost interest in the book as he got to the end. Finally, concludes his argument in one line in the manner of, once again, a student's essay. When questioning whether there is any evidence that Livia was responsible for the crimes for which Graves's novel accesses her, he states 'the answer, insofar as trustworthy evidence survives, is no and no again.' This statement is uninspired, yes, but it is also utterly denying Tactius who, while not alive at the time of Livia, is closer to her era than Mr. Dennison is. Moreover he himself points out that one of Tacitus's sources was from the writings of Agrippina, Claudius's Empress. 'If we are to assume', to use the author's favourite phrase, that Tacitus got these stories of Livia from this (and there is nothing to say either way he didn't), then she was close enough to the time to know it to be fact.

Whether Livia killed these people or not, this book is a nice read despite its faults. It is not the work of a trustworthy historian but is a nicely researched account of Livia's life that makes the best it can with the little information it has. It is only a pity that Dennison felt to strongly about denying the work of Tacitus. After all, far from the vilified figure he believes her to be cast as a murderer, it does make her more interesting.

5/10

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