Happy Booker

When I first saw the title a while back, I had first thought it would be some ridiculously campy, cheesy vampire book. But then the movie previews caught my attention and made me reconsider. And since I've decided to watch the movie, I of course, had to first read the book. 

AL:VH was so much more than I was expecting; rich in detail, the story quickly drew me in and I was hooked. The story was interspersed with newspaper articles and speeches that I assume are actual historical fact that gave it all a bit of frightening plausibility and also had me pausing the audio to google random details to learn a little more. 

While I loved Abe's character, the vampires were one of the biggest surprises for me. These are not your run of the mill, bite your neck and drink your blood kind of vamps. These were some of the most frighteningly vicious vampires I've encountered in fiction. This book was certainly a lot more bloody and violent than I anticipated, even after watching the movie previews. Also, the authors ideas of how slavery was affected by vampires was horrifyingly brilliant, the stuff of nightmares, but effective. 

There were areas where it got a bit slow and tedious but never to the point where I was ready to walk away from the book. I'm glad I decided to read this and I'm really looking forward to the movie and hope that it lives up to the book.