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If your pulse flutters at the thought of castle ruins and descents into crypts by moonlight, you will savor every creepy page of Elizabeth Kostova's long but beautifully structured thriller The Historian.The story opens in Amsterdam in 1972, when a teenage girl discovers a medieval book and a cache of yellowed letters in her diplomat father's library. The pages of the book are empty except for a woodcut of a dragon. The letters are addressed to: "My dear and unfortunate successor." When the girl confronts her father, he reluctantly confesses an unsettling story: his involvement, twenty years earlier, in a search for his graduate school mentor, who disappeared from his office only moments after confiding to Paul his certainty that Dracula--Vlad the Impaler, an inventively cruel ruler of Wallachia in the mid-15th century--was still alive. The story turns out to concern our narrator directly because Paul's collaborator in the search was a fellow student named Helen Rossi (the unacknowledged daughter of his mentor) and our narrator's long-dead mother, about whom she knows almost nothing. And then her father, leaving just a note, disappears also.As well as numerous settings, both in and out of the East Bloc, Kostova has three basic story lines to keep straight--one from 1930, when Professor Bartolomew Rossi begins his dangerous research into Dracula, one from 1950, when Professor Rossi's student Paul takes up the scent, and the main narrative from 1972. The criss-crossing story lines mirror the political advances, retreats, triumphs, and losses that shaped Dracula's beleaguered homeland--sometimes with the Byzantines on top, sometimes the Ottomans, sometimes the rag-tag local tribes, or the Orthodox church, and sometimes a fresh conqueror like the Soviet Union.Although the book is appropriately suspenseful and a delight to read--even the minor characters are distinctive and vividly seen--its most powerful moments are those that describe real horrors. Our narrator recalls that after reading descriptions of Vlad burning young boys or impaling "a large family," she tried to forget the words: "For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me this: history's terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could never have told me. Only history itself can convince you of such a truth." The reader, although given a satisfying ending, gets a strong enough dose of European history to temper the usual comforts of the closing words. --Regina Marler
Intelligent vampire story
| Customer Rating:  | I don't go for vampire stuff just becuz of all that stupid TWILIGHT garbage out there right now. But if you are a fairly smart person, then you'll like this.
This spooky story follows a young woman on a quest to find her father--see why I didn't think i'd like it. But it isn't like that. The writer must have traveled a lot especially to all of the places the characters go becuz it is written so clear and detailed. You follow her as she investigates all the places her father might have gone, and finally she starts running into mysterious people and happenings that get more and more complex until BAM all of a sudden this long book is over and you still want to read more. |
DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU EXPECT
| Customer Rating: | I was surprised that this book had such wildly different ratings and reviews--before I read it. Then I could see that a reader would either greatly enjoy it, or hate it, depending on what their expectations were when they picked it up. From what the published reviews say, you would expect another DA VINCI CODE, and certainly you would expect a 'page-turner'. You might also expect a vampire thriller, like those Anne Rice used to write. It's not in the least like that.
If you liked THE NAME OF THE ROSE, this is probably the book for you. The main thrills (when they come) are those of the literary sort. The book has a very slow buildup. Description is the author's great strength. I personally loved the descriptions of various colleges and countries in Europe, unfolding slowly as the tension slowly built, but it might not be for everyone. I also loved the historical detail, about the Eastern Roman Empire and the fall of Constantinople, and about the various Eastern European countries, such as Bulgaria, and their interesting heritages. All of this was very accurate (unlike the DA VINCI CODE). But it is not going to be for everyone.
You have to suspend your disbelief quite a bit for certain aspects of the book. I personally could believe that a man could live 500 years more easily than I could believe in all the coincidences in the book, that happened at exactly the right moments. That the person sitting next to you in the library (or cafe) should always turn out to be the person who had the next piece of the puzzle, either in the form of a letter or a journal, or their personal reminiscences seemed highly unlikely and was sometimes a bit annoying. I also found that the characters were not very 'round'--none of them convinced me that they were real people (except, oddly enough for Dracula). They were beautifully described in physical terms. I could see them. But none of them had convincing motivations for what they did. People did everything from fall in love (very quickly, in all cases) to travel miles and miles all over Europe, for no real reason except that the plot demanded it. To state just one particularly glaring example, I find it very hard to believe that a graduate student would go through all the trouble that the hero did, simply to search for the professor that was his advisor. I had advisors as a graduate student that I respected and liked. But I didn't LOVE them. Certainly not enough to chase a trail all over Communist-era Europe, digging up crypts in old monasteries, etc. etc.
So why do I give the book five stars? Because with all its flaws I couldn't put it down. I didn't believe in any of the people, but the clues interested me and I wanted to know what would happen next. I love books and this a book for a person who loves books and history, very definitely. There is a different take on Dracula, which is fascinating. The paradox of the (extremely) evil ruler, more like such twentieth century tyrants as Stalin, Mao and Hitler than the princes of his time, who yet protected his people from vicious invaders was fascinating, and very well done. When Dracula himself showed up, he was very powerfully drawn, very different from Bram Stoker and very interesting to read about. Besides being great at description, the author is great at evoking atmosphere. Also, as a puzzle, the plot was flawless. EAch piece fit into the next piece and it was fascinating to see it happen. I respected the great amount of work.
I do have to say though, that although the pacing is great throughout the book, it fell apart at the very end. The denouement happened much too quickly, after all the buildup. The epilogue redeemed it somewhat, but this was still a problem.
On a personal level, I also thought that that book was excellent at showing the nature of evil (while never being so crass as to give detailed descriptions of it) but not very good at showing reasons to fight against evil. There was no corresponding sense of good. The main characters (I am reluctant to say heroes and heroines) had nothing to battle Dracula with except a sense of 'decency' and some loyalty to their friends, family (or college advisors!). At stressful moments, they would grab hold of crosses (after having been careful to tell the reader that they didn't actually believe in God), or of Koranic verses (which, in this post-modern work, are equally effective). And it just didn't seem like enough. In Stoker's work, there was a God who was capable of facing down the ultimate evil. In this book all you have is good luck and good friends and good research. It didn't seem like enough to tip the balance in your favor to me, but maybe other readers won't care about that. |
No Glamourous Vampires Here
| Customer Rating:  | | It is a decent novel. But, it is longer than it needed and slow in plot for the first 1/3 of the story. Rich in atmosphere and setting. Characters remained a bit stilted throughout. This effectively picks up with Brahm Stokers style (I felt) rather than modernizing the storytelling. The last 150-200 pages are the pay off and those are well done and effective. A very different portrayal of Dracula himself which I appreciated. |
Dracula aficionados, skip this one
| Customer Rating: | When you see a book has 236 + one star reviews, think twice about buying it. I don't think The Historian deserves one star, but I certainly don't believe it deserves more than two. Regardless of the disorganized mess that somehow became a published novel, Mrs Kostova has a way of beautifully bringing to life far away and exotic places. Unfortunately, this is all the book delivers.
I tried, but this book just didn't make any sense to me. None of it. How did Turgot dispose of Mr Erozan's body? He just said he knew a doctor who could take care of it. How did that happen? Professor Rossi fell in love with Helen's mother in two days? In the middle of hunting down Vlad the Impaler Paul decides Helen is his soulmate? First Paul describes Helen as ugly, then suddenly she looks like a princess? Oh, and speaking of Helen, what is up with that girl and gloves?! Constantly, she is either putting on gloves, smoothing her gloves, or Paul is watching her glancing at her gloves. I lost count of how many times Helen's gloves were mentioned!
The Historian would have been a much better read if there had only been one narrator. The constant shuffle of narrators (and countries) was confusing and annoying. At times, Paul is narrating through letters, then his daughter suddenly begins narrating. The author doesn't even bother to divide the narrators into different chapters. One minute you are reading a letter from Rossi to Paul, then a letter to the daughter from Paul. At one point Paul was narrating for a chapter and a half when all of a sudden the author stops to say the daughter had boarded a train. That's it - just one sentence to announce the girl is on a train.
The worst part of the book is the ending. ***Spoiler Alert*** After reading through 642 pages of cardboard characters looking for a tomb of a fifteenth century vampire through endless medieval maps, manuscripts and remote monasteries, the readers learn Dracula is using his immortality to hire himself a historian to catalogue his book collection. Seriously, don't waste your time on this book. I literally had to skip some chapters just to get through it - such as the Zacharaias Chronicle chapter. I don't know what all that was about, and I'm not sure the author even knows. She certainly doesn't know much about British history. On page 157, she says Edward III endowed a building at Oxford University in the thirteenth century. Edward III was born in 1312 and reigned from 1327 to 1377. For a book entitled The Historian, that truly was a blunder of epic proportions. I'm so glad I only payed $3.00 for this book - even then I feel robbed.
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Wow, i only gave it three stars?
| Customer Rating: | | Yes, its true. Three stars is all i could, in good conscience, give this 600+ page long extended travel guide. LOL. Its a story told from several different characters' points of view, spanning several different countries and decades. Could have been epic, but wasn't. Basically a man is hunting for Dracula and apparently the only way to find said vampire is to search through dusty libraries for the occasional scrap of long forgotten parchment, or get lucky enough to hear a fire walking old coot sing a folk song deep in the heart of communist Bulgaria. Go figure. The book starts with some promise when a young girl finds documents in her father's library that (long story short) indicate Dracula is still alive. Now, that's a story i can get into. What was harder to get into was the endless descriptions of Hungary and Romania and blah blah blah. If you added up all the real action that happens in this book of more than 600 pages, you'd honestly have less than 20 pages to work with. At some point around page 400 i was literally forcing myself to keep reading. And even though the book was written from various points of view, the "voice" is the same throughout. Its all very proper, very dry, very stiff english, except when a foreigner is speaking, in which case there is an occasional "how do you say" thrown in there because after all, its a foreigner. I don't know.... i wanted to like this book more than i actually do. But, the ending really killed it for me. I could have forgiven all those other things if only the ending had sealed the deal. After that many pages, to have Dracula meet his end so abruptly, with so little buildup, and the description of his actual demise be so brief after having suffered through so many pages of how great Budapest looks from a taxi cab, i felt robbed! I mean really, that's just wrong to do to a person. So, i think, skip it. |
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