The Historian

The "Historian" was excellent. It reminds me of a horror story mixed with Brown's "Da Vinci Code".

This story revolves around a History professor and his daughter. The Professor, and his mentor Professor Rossi, stumble across ancient texts that seem to imply that Vlad Dracula didn't die in Wallachia. As they begin to delve further into this historical mystery, it begins to dawn on them that, perhaps, Dracula didn't "die" at all.

The story then takes on a strange journey through the halls of University libraries, to various countries from Hungary to Romania. All of this is to find where Dracula's actual tomb is. Along the way, as strange disappearances and strange events begin to occur, the intrepid heroes find that Dracula might still be alive and that vampires are real. This mystery will eventually lead them into a confrontation with the myth become reality.

Superbly written and impeccably researched (obviously the vampire stuff is fiction), there is a great deal of cool historical setting as Kostova really gives a wonderful view of the traditions and folklore of the Eastern Europeans. Sometimes the story is interspersed with letters that give further insight. Yet, this never loses the feel of a "horror" story.

If you're looking for a well written and superbly researched story about Dracula, then look no further. A great horror story and a great novel in general. Highly recommended if you're a fan of vampires or even just history.

Enjoyed this reread very much. Still one of my favorite books. I was thrilled to travel with Paul and Helen. Would I, lover of books and history, have been able to withstand the invitation given to Bartholomew Rossi? What would Vlad have made of Twitter and Facebook...and Goodreads? Oddly, I have not been able to enter either of Kostova's other novels, but this one, for me, is perfect.

Most boring first 15 pages of any book I've ever read.

For revenge, I will attempt to write the shortest review of The Historian :D

Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb. Why does this book get so much hype? It's overlong, overboring, overpredictable, and just plain dumb. Seriously, why did I even continue to waste my time. I don't know what else to say. Don't succumb to the hype. Please.

This is actually the second time I've read this book. For a first novel, it is outstanding. I was completely engrossed in the story. I really love history and the whole Dracula lore. I thought it was a great mix of both. It added a lot of suspense that made me read it with the lights on. I think I read it in about four days, I just couldn't put it down. I will say this though, if you are not really into history or researching, I would skip it. If you are wanting to read it just because it has to do with Dracula, I would pick a much smaller book. However, I just love history and research (duh, I work in a library) so it was right up my alley. Actually, I'm doing a little research on it myself. I did read some of the comments on Amazon.com and wasn't exactly surprised by the comments. It was either a "love it" or "hate it" book. That is why I throw my caution out there. Basically, people who didn't enjoy it were out for a Dracula story and thought the history was "a drag". I'm really into history so I thought it was pretty damn good. I will say I did discover a few historical inaccuracies, but I think I'll let them fly for now. ;) All in all, a good read, especially for a rainy day.

This book reminded me of the DaVinci code in some ways, but was much more interesting and better written. All of the research and historical documents were fascinating. I was especially interested in the subject matter, because it was about Vlad Ţepeş, the Wallachian (Romanian) prince, who Bram Stoker popularized as Dracula. (Not because I'm interested in vampires, but because I served my mission in Romania and was interested in Vlad himself. Evil and terrible as he was, the Romanians actually are very proud of him because he saved their country from the Turks. They do not like it at all that he is construed to be Dracula. His father was called Vlad Dracul, which is where that name comes from. Dracul is the Romanian word for the dragon.)

The Historian goes with the belief that he is definitely a Vampire, and that he is still alive. Or "undead" as it were. There are three different stories weaved together into one about three people who are trying to find Dracula: The narrator, who is telling her story from her viewpoint as a 16 year old girl in 1972, her father, whose story is told through letters to his daughter as well as conversations about his experiences in 1954 and finally, Professor Rossi, who was the father's advisor in college. Rossi's story is also told through letters and conversations and occurred in 1931. Every once in a while it is difficult to figure out which story you are reading as they jump around so much, but after the first few chapters you start to get a feel for it and it seemed really ingenious the way she chose to combine the three stories.

I loved reading so much about the history of Eastern Europe during the rule of the Ottomans as well as during Communist times. I don't know how much of it is actually based in fact, as that line blurs when we talk of vampirism and Vlad Ţepeş, but I know much of it was. The author is obviously an excellent researcher and really knew her stuff.

I was slightly annoyed by the fact that the Romanian language wasn't always written accurately (I guess she didn't research that quite enough). It was almost always missing diacritical markings, except for in place names. Her Hungarian seemed to have all the diacritical markings in it, and I am unsure of the Bulgarian, since she used our alphabet rather than cyrillic. So I was just bugged by that, although I know most people wouldn't even care! :)

It also bothered me that we never know the name of the narrator. Her father never refers to her by name, and neither does anyone else it seems. We know she was named for "Helen's mother" but "Helen's mother" is another character whose name we never actually hear. I don't know why this bothered me so much, but it did. I guess we get to make up her name, and since we know it was Romanian, I choose Anca. :)

The epilogue was a little unsettling, and the final resolution of the story seems comical when I think about it now, but it was completely fitting and totally acceptable in the framework of the story. I did have to chuckle every time I read the phrase "evil librarian."

It is not a quick read...took me nearly a week to get through, but definitely enjoyable. Kostova has a lovely, almost Victorian style of writing. Very descriptive. The book also scared me out of my wits at times. Really good though. Loved it, despite all my above annoyances.

n  Read on the WondrousBooks blog.n

*** First read on June 29th. This review is written after my third time reading the book. ***

As I mentioned in a recent review of mine, I visited Romania last month and I had an extremely strong desire to re-read my favourite Dracula books so I returned to Stoker's Dracula and, of course, Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, which has to be my favourite vampire book ever and I don't see another book taking its place anytime soon.

My history with The Historian is a long and complicated one. My English teacher turned out to be an acquaintance of the author and could have met her around the time Kostova was writing this exact book, though I don't know that for a fact.

It rarely happens so that I don't remember what made me get a certain book, but I honestly have no recollection as to how I decided to buy The Historian. But still, one of the best purchases in my life(and I've actually bought it twice since someone stole my first copy of it).

What's amazing about this book is that it might be a book on the supernatural and it might have a great role in the book, but ultimately, it's not a mind-numbing fantasy and instead the story takes the shape of a very believable and thorough investigation, which almost makes you feel like it's completely credible and realistic. At certain points, while reading the book, I've felt like it's the absolutely true account of events which really happened.

My favourite thing about The Historian, which might or might not surprise you, is the travel and the geography. The  way the author describes places, the places she describes and her undeniable passion for travel is enough to spark the flame of wanderlust inside the reader. Kostova talks about my own country, Bulgaria, in a way which makes me want to pack my bags and start exploring. I almost feel ashamed that she has an appreciation for Bulgaria which I don't think I've ever had.

I was sort of sad that she doesn't talk about my own new passion, Romania, as excitedly as she does about Bulgaria, Turkey or France. For a book focused on the story of Dracula, she certainly goes for locations more unconventional than the expected Romania.

My second favourite thing were the characters and just how vivid they are. They are not perfect, not even that good-looking by the authors description - instead they are realistic and flawed. And since I think that I'm very pedantic myself, I love that some of the characters were, too.

I highly appreciated the layers upon layers of story-telling in the book. There was one particular chapter in which the daughter is narrating the narrative of her father about the narrative of Professor Rossi about somebody else's narration. I've also always admired authors who include all types of means to diversify the story, those being letters, notes, books, conversations and so on.

If there is one thing that I'm not fond of, it is how replaceable the secondary characters are. It's natural that in an adventure like this one many characters will come and go, but I felt like some of them were too big a part of the story and yet completely forgotten in the aftermath. Such were Helen's mother and aunt, Hugh, Stoichev, even Turgut Bora.

And speaking of Professor Bora, I would absolutely love to read a novel about his secret organization, set in Turkey. That would be absolutely marvelous! Considering how fantastic Kostova is when talking about travel and foreign countries, I think I'd learn so many new and amazing things about Turkey if she wrote about it.

Last, but not least, I was fascinated by the many little facts that Kostova mentions and to which you might not have paid the needed attention but if you consider them out of context, they are certainly wonderful. Aside from facts about the world or certain countries/cities, the information she provides about Dracula himself is amazing and so is her literary knowledge. Sadly, it would take me quite a long time to comb through the books mentioned in The Historian and find which ones are real and which ones made up in order to contribute to the story. But it would be a real pleasure to find many of the real sources and especially ones that have anything to do with the history of the Balkans, since it has been an interest of mine for a while and especially since I started learning more about Turkey and gained a new perspective through which to appreciate the good side of the Ottoman Empire, even though I fully realize that there was a bad one, too.

Though many of you might not find this book as realistic and as wise as you might want it to be, it's actually a great mix of everything that I, personally, appreciate in literature: it's entertaining, it's thought-provoking, it's informative on more than one level, and especially when it comes to history, it's well-written, the characters are well-built and it keeps you on edge.

Keep in mind that I think life is entirely too short to re-read books and yet I've read this one three times. As many of my favourite books, it gives you something different each time you read it. For example, the first time I read it, I was mainly fascinated by the Dracula story, after that I remember paying a lot of attention to the travel element in the book the second time I read it. Now that I have a full-blown obsession with the Balkans, I'm in awe with the descriptions and the history.

OMG I DID IT.

Also, considering how long it took me to get through this mammoth, dense history lesson, I'm actually rating it pretty highly. I did enjoy.

However I'm burned out from the effort so I'm reverting to bullet points for a bit.

Good Things
-Lots of pretty places
-Dracula
-Historical Dracula in all his impaling glory
-Fun story that romps all over the world
-Rossi was such a cute old man. Am I allowed to say he was cute? He reminded me of Indiana Jones' dad, but then maybe I'm mentally building the character more than the book did XD


Bad Things
-The LENGTH OF THIS THING.
-SO. MUCH. DETAIL. (see first point)
-Stories within stories within stories within stories (see first point)
-Story was so sloooooooow (see first point)
-Uncanny coincidence that so many people all over the world they happen to bump into are doing the same kinda research and they want to help
-No pictures

Basically it was just too damn long but was otherwise an interesting, unique tale filled with fascinating history that was weaved in with fiction and an element of the supernatural for suspense.

That's all I have to say on the matter at this time.