Many of you remember my absolute delight over "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies." Well, the author of that delightful mashup of Regency-era manners and brain-eating monsters, Seth Grahame-Smith, has now given us "Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter."

This second novel is a similar premise from the first -- legions of the undead plopped in the middle of a familiar story -- and so it might be easy to dismiss him as one-note. But in actuality this book is much different.

It begins with a first-person narrative introduction, written by Grahame-Smith as a character in his own book, explaining how he came across Abraham Lincoln's journals, and why he's writing a book based on them. Then the book becomes a biography of sorts, detailing the heretofore unknown history of Lincoln's battles with vampires.

And so I'm tempted to analyze the deeper meaning: By making John Wilkes Booth a vampire (as seen in the AWESOME book trailer above), is the author saying the South was a parasitic presence, causing the turmoil of the Civil War in the first place? Or is it a comment on the inhumanity of war: It was so horrible, clearly the people responsible for such suffering had inhuman qualities in them, making the entire situation more bareable in hindsight?

Or maybe it's just a fun dalliance into the world of monster stories. Either way, I'm enjoying the read, and I hope to meet the author in person when he stops by the Smithsonian on Tuesday, March 9th.