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Average Customer Rating:

Atmospheric and respectful

Customer Rating:

It is hard to believe this is a first novel, so successfully has Elizabeth Kostova captured the atmosphere of the original novel. It is written in a twin narrative by father and daughter, always a voyage of discovery backwards through time via research, documents and letters, left by those who went before... It is a beautifully conveived idea. It is written with a great eye for detail and a wonderful ear for the academic voice and retrained mores of the time. Despite the length of this book (at over 700 pages of close type paperback) Kostova's style is actually highly economical. What she delivers is predominantly a historical mystery mixed with travelogue and laced with an undercurrent of elusive gothic horror. Occasionally the horror breaks through but Kostova never surrenders to it totally, much to her credit, as this would shatter the style of her writing and the credibility of the characters. She produces more shudders from eerily unsettling us than she could deliver via gratuitious shocks. Kostova populates her novels with evenly introduced characters. You won't need your family tree wall planner to keep up with who is who. It's not Jane Austen - even if the tone owes something to her discipline. The slow unwinding allows them to develop, yet I found myself greedy for more developments and tearing through this book very rapidly at around 80 pages a day. It really does grip you, and given how detailed it is and and how carefully it is written, that's a terrific compliment. Of course, she inherits a wonderful legacy from Bram Stoker's spell-binding character, and the Dracula novel and films is openly referred to which makes it even more intruiging. This is an archivists' drama - the librarian meets the undead. It casts a shadow over your nightgown (um...) and if you're thinking to yourself, 'Dracula - horror - blood - gore - etc' you'll be very disappointed. The people who will get most out of this are probably the ones who know least about the films and it definitely repays the literary reader. (Mind you, being a pedant I did spot three split infinitives...). It is nice to gorge so thoroughly on a book that fully justifies the hype on the dust jacket and inside cover. If I have one minor criticism it is the slightly tapering end and I think Kostova could have made more of the ending somehow - I suppose I am secretly on the side of anybody who keeps a good book collection even if he is a vampire. A very nearly superb work. Four and a half stars.

A literary novel, not just a thriller

Customer Rating:

I've just reread "The Historian," and was amazed for a second time by the deft ease with which Ms. Kostova weaves back and forth between multiple narrators and time periods, and by her ability to evoke a tremendously vivid sense of place with a few well-chosen words. It is a book to savor slowly, rather than a page-turner, and it transcends the "horror" genre to an extent that few others in recent decades have matched.

Could have been done better in half the pages...

Customer Rating:

Out of every word in the English language to possibly describe this book (thrilling, suspenseful, terrifying, ingenious) the one that seems to always pop into my mind when thinking about it is, well, disappointment. The idea behind Kostova's writing is truly brilliant with a wonderful plot and theme. In an age where science fiction and fantasy writing reigns supreme, you would expect a book like this to shatter the minds of the public. Regrettably, it did not "shatter my mind", it melted it... into a woozy puddle of boredom. Kostova's ability to generate intrigue lags greatly between each "blip" in excitement. As a literature student, I cannot help but despair at the unfulfilled promise of ecstasy that this book possessed. However, as a history student, I was greatly thrilled at Kostova's vivid descriptions of the protagonist's different visits to far-off and unusual corridors of the earth, as well as the multitudes of historical tidbits. My overall assessment is that it is a very decent book, for a very tailored audience. If you merely have passing interest in the occult, I warn you to attempt this book at your own risk. However, if you are the type of person to fully immerse yourself into every detail of book so that you forget you are not actually in it, you will be thrilled with Kostova's ability to paint every picture in the most elaborate detail.

Entertaining	Customer Rating:
This is unlike Ann Rice novels or the classic Dracula story. I thought Kostova did a good job building up the mystery and overall plot.

I am breathless!

Customer Rating:

This is a rich, well-structured, detailed, and yet extremely exciting book that I could not put down for all of its 500-plus pages. Some reviewers have compared it to the DaVinci Code, but I think the writing is MUCH better than that, and the characters are better-drawn and more realistic. If I can compare Kostova's writing to anyone else's, it would be to Arturo Perez-Reverte, who writes equally intelligent mysteries that grip the reader by the throat (pun intended here) and don't let go until the last page. There is almost nothing in this book that requires the reader to suspend disbelief -- and, in a book about vampires, that's pretty amazing. I found myself feeling that all of the characters in this book could have existed, and could exist now, in any city in the world. There was only one small detail that bothered me, and maybe this shows how much of a nit-picker I can be when I read a book. Late in the novel, one character who has been known as "Rossi" throughout the book (Bartolomeo Rossi, the graduate advisor and historian) is suddenly referred to by another main character, his student, as "Ross." This happens in a critical part of the story, and at first I thought it was a typo, but then I saw it at least two more times, and it took me out of the story completely. Luckily, this book is so well-written otherwise that I was able to overlook this minor incongruity, and was soon caugh up in the mystery and magic again. Not a quick read, certainly, but if you like your stories with some meat on them, and don't mind picking up some extremely interesting history along the way, then I heartily recommend "The Historian." And I hope Ms. Kostova has another novel coming out soon!