Като дете не можех да гледам ужаси на филм. Криех се зад креслото, за огромен бяс на баща ми и за огромно забавление на майка ми. Толкова се бях специализирала, че те даже не усещаха кога съм се измъкнала… Не че по него време даваха истински “хорър”, но тук тамѐ се промъкваше по някоя страшничка сцена. Реших да се “излекувам” като отидох на кино. Филмът беше за Дракула - тлъсти снопове пляскащи с криле подплашени прилепи, оголени кучешки зъби с остротата на скалпел, зловещи прашасали крипти и хубава мацка с оголена шия. И взе, че ми хареса (а и салонът беше пълен, нямаше място за бягство). И досега не мога нито да чета, нито да гледам хорър. Но пък харесвам Дракула!

Елизабет Костова не е добавила нещо кой знае какво за влашкия кръволок с феодална власт, но пък е описала напоително едно дълго пътешествие из куп живописни кътчета на Европа през 30-те, 50-те и 70-те години. Протяжността често навява безметежност, а и повечето приключения са симпатични (само библиотеките ми дойдоха в повече!). Естествено, прекалила е с бавното темпо, количеството страници и умишленото задържане на действието. Героите също далеч не са някакви уникално завладяващи индивидуалности. Има нещо леко джеймс бондовско в перипетиите им, само дето няма мартини, а малко разлютени вампири и обилно количество страховити легенди и измислици, размесени с псевдоисторически доклади и бележки по друмищата от Албиона до Истанбул. Така че - с прескок тук-там - си е съвсем приличен трилър с любопитни пътеписи и съвсем малко кръвчица, добро предколедно неангажиращо преживяване.

2,5⭐️

————
"... ние, историците, се интересуваме от неща, които донякъде са отражение на собственото ни аз, може би дори част от нас - част, която не бихме посмели да проучим извън царството на науката."

I finished. I did not let it beat me!

As I was trying to give the gist to Darkk he said "So, like 'National Treasure', but with vampires." "Sort of," I said, "but not as entertaining." (Which is bad enough, since I sort of liked 'National Treasure' despite myself.)


**Mild Spoilage throughout**

Anyway - where to start? First and foremost, it was so slow and tedious. Endless details about architecture and food and what someone was wearing, and what arm they had their purse on. If this wasn't absurd enough in and of itself, these minutae are presented to us in letters supposedly written in haste, 20+ years after the events took place!

And then there was the bouncing back and forth in timeframes - and once something started to get interestinh with Helen and Paul, we would jump into what I started thinking of as "the present", for no real reason! As I mentioned it to Darkk he was like "it's like a commercial break", and that's exactly what it felt like.

The characters were paper thin, and all the letters were written in the same voice. If they didn't have the little tell-tale signs to know who was speaking, you'd have no way of knowing them apart.

And the romances! No real lead up or development, but in three days a sheltered village girl is sleeping with some random dude, a 16 year old, also sheltered girl, is getting hot and heavy with a college boy... and in 23 days Paul and Helen are engaged to be married. I mean, really? If I believed the romances at all, I might've felt more for the characters, but I didn't, and I don't.

And the coincidences. Let's sit in this random cafe and just happen to have some guy, who just happens to have also received a book, start talking to us for no reason, and we can all find out we're all part of the same hunt. Or, let's talk to the only other native-English person at a conference, and find out that he's involved, too! Oh, what are the odds? Heck, even the characters seemed distrustful of these coincidences...

And the reasoning.

**MAJOR SPOILERS**

This whole thing - all this drama and people being warned and disappearing and being attacked - all because Dracula can't organize his own damn library? Really!? That's what you're giving me?

I actually quite liked the scholarly, aristocratic Vlad. Since Kostova gives him such a bad shake throughout the book, as he's nothing but "the fiend" and "the evil", I quite liked the quiet, almost debonair Dracula. The fact that the whole purpose of the thing so stupid, though, was just a little annoying, especially after slogging through hundreds of pages of pointless minutae to get there.

Not to mention so easy to kill. My gods, was that last confrontation anti-climactic, or what? Of course, as we find in the epilogue, is it really 'the end'? Dum-bum-bum!

**/SPOILERS**

So, some people who liked it say, "Well, it's about 'historians' - what did you expect?" Well, considering that the back of the book said it was "sinister and suspensful" and "exciting and will keep readers enthralled", I didn't expect to be monumentally bored through most of the book. I would also expect to be a little bit enthralled, excited, or have some vague feeling of suspense. Nadda.

Perhaps part of this is because it's all told in past tense. We have no fear for the daughter or the father. We pretty much can guess how Rossi's gonna end up. And we don't care enough about Helen, or, well, anyone, really.

I was also irritated that while Paul will give begrudging respect to the Ottomans for their strange mix of barbarism and aesthetics, they give no such equal treatment to Vlad.

Even going as far back as the 1800s, there have been different depictions of the reign of Vlad Tepes - sadistic tyrant or horrific hero. In present day Romania he is a folk-hero. He sided with them against the Saxon merchants who taxes them heavily, and he defended them and the land from the invading Turks. Yes, he was brutal - but the story glosses over the fact that he learned his brutality from his imprisonment with the Turks.

There are some who argue that the pamphlets so heavily referenced in the book of his barbarism are propaganda - things written by his enemies to paint him in the grimmest light possible, overstating his barbarism.

And the Garden of the Impaled (which happened once in recorded history - not the common occurrence the book suggests it was) was a stroke of tactical genius. Here he is, his little army severally outnumbered by the encroaching Turks, and then up goes the Garden, made of predominantly Turkish prisoners-of-war. The Turks, already battle weary from getting as far as Targoviste, are horrified are the brutality of it. Oh, yes, it was brutal, make no mistake. But it was also a brilliant tactic - a use of psychological warfare.

And, yes, the boyars hated him. But the book makes it out that he was hated because of his brutality - and he didn't exactly treat them well. He did kill many and put the rest to hard work, which killed them. The book glosses over the fact that these people buried his elder brother alive, and he was getting his revenge while securing his position. It also doesn't mention that one reason the boyars hated him is because he tried to give more power to the peasant, and less economic adventage to the boyars.

Oh, yes, I know - he's the master villian of the story... you can't paint him at all sympathetic. You can't see him as anything less than a tyrant. Many have said that even if the story is long, the history is interesting - but how much more interesting is the strange dichotomy of this brutal, cunning, and oft-times charitable man?

Also, speaking of history, there is much emphasis placed on the Fall of Constantinople to the Turks; however, the story, once again, glosses over the fact that Constantinople was at less than its height during the Seige because the Sacking that took place some too hundred years prior during the Fourth Crusade, in which the Latin Church overthrew the Orthodox church and took over. Some sources even argue that the Byzantine peasantry was just as happy losing their political independence to the Ottoman Empire because at least then they got to keep their religious obsevances - something not so leniently granted by the Holy See. Ironic that the Turks would be kinder to them than their Christian brethren, no?

But we get no taste for the complicated politics in the book.

We also get a glimpse of non-existence ruins on Snagov - which is a tiny spit of an islet. Pretty place, to be sure, but I can find no record of there ever having been a prison there, so I'm not sure where that came from.

So to those who say "but the history is interesting", I suggest actually reading up on the history, because I'm not sure you can really trust this book as an accurate source. That is, after all, why it's called historical fiction.

**

I would say it got more readable towards the end, but I'm not sure if that's because I walked away from it for awhile or not. I was also rather annoyed at how this whole thing was about finding Drac and Helen, and then once everything's tied up in a neat little package, and you don't really care who has died and who has lived, and who will die. I mean, the narrator hardly seems to care when she rather blasely drops some information to come, so why should we?

**

The only reason I'm giving it two stars instead of one is because I still do think the premise was interesting, even if the execution was terribly boring, and I did quite like the portrayal of the scholarly Dracula, if not his lame motivations.

This is one book that might actually be improved on when it gets turned into a movie. Since one of the things that bogged the book down was all the travelogue details, the movie could certainly become much better paced. Hopefully they'll also change it around so that it's told more in present tense, and maybe actually raise the stakes a little (i.e. create suspense) and make you care about the characters some. (In my opinion, they could actually drop the whole daughter part of the story. They could make it a present-tense story of Paul and Helen searching for Rossi and Dracula, interweave Rossi's tale, and cut out the parts with the daughter entirely, since it didn't really add anything to the story to have the three different threads going on at the same time.)

Breathtakingly suspenseful and beautifully written...

The search for the truth becomes an adventure of monumental proportions...

A feat of storytelling so rich, so hypnotic, so exciting that it has enthralled readers around the world.

Um, was I reading the right book? Because I got none of that from this story.

While I like books that are rich in historic detail, I found that The Historian had too much of that in it. I began to feel like I was reading a history text book at times. I got really impatient and wanted to have the story move along at a faster pace. For me it seemed like every time the book would pick up pace, it would get bogged down again by another history lesson. The history parts were essential to the book and some of it was interesting, but there was just too much rambling on and on...and on. It was a very long book, over 900 pages. I don't necessarily mind very long books. I've read quite a few of them, but I didn't feel like this one needed to be so long. This book needed more editing for sure.

Another thing I disliked about this book was the fact that every time something exciting started to happen I would get disappointed because it ended all too soon. At one point there were bad guys after two characters and then the point of view switched right in the middle of it. When we get back to the two characters they are somewhere else and no explanation is given to how they got away. It felt like the bad guys in the book were there to just 'mug for the camera' so we wouldn't forget they were there and then leave so we could get back to all the history.

Also the whole reason behind what is going on in the book was ridiculous enough to be funny.  So Dracula was a book worm, who would have thought. Well ok, technically he was a historian, whatever... I truly cannot believe that is why Professor Rossi was taken and all those mysterious books were given to people.

On the up side, I do think the idea of Dracula being real and alive, and the main character finding out she is descended from him was a good idea. It just should have been way more exciting than this. This was an incredibly boring and disappointing read.

Review also posted at Writings of a Reader

Ova knjiga ima sve što volim : povijest, mračnu priču, putovanja kroz divne zemlje... zaista, svi ti elementi zvuče sjajno i pozivaju na čitanje, ali živote moj, jedva sam preživjela ovih 630 i nešto stranica, a da ne vrištim ili nešto slično.
Količina nelogičnosti u ovoj knjizi zapanjujuća je zaista. Samo jedan od primjera je pismo njenog oca koje je napisao u žurbi, a pismo se proteže na više od 50 stranica knjige ili svi ti divni , simpatični i dobri likovi, slatki povjesničari, svi redom divna srca koji traže Drakulu . Mogla bi spomenuti još toga, ali nema smisla, izgurala sam ovu knjigu do kraja, ponosim se sobom. Dvije zvjezdice samo zbog vrlo lijepog stila pisanja i truda oko istraživanja povijesne građe.

3.5*

I adored this ambitious and astonishing travelogue cum thriller. I never thought I'd recommend a novel that featured vampires, but this story treats the myth with a tremendous respect for Central European history. The plots twists are ripe with suspense, the sub-quest of a daughter seeking her own identity in the story of her mother is tender and rang true. After Dan Brown's cheap and laughable thrills, it was heartening to witness the success of this novel. Kostova has respect for her audience and for history- I can't wait to read what she next delivers!

4.0 ⭐️

Elizabeth Kostova wrote The Historian while studying at The University of Michigan and took ten years to complete her debut novel.

The Historian is written in epistolary format as a historical fiction with darkly gothic, Victorian prose. The novel is based upon Bram Stoker’s Dracula and includes a lot of background context on Vlad Tepes, “The Impaler”. The novel traverses the globe from Amsterdam to Istanbul and Philadelphia with our narrators, Helen and Paul Rossi.

This epic novel spans several generations from the 1930’s through 2008. A common theme throughout the story is religious conflict, primarily between Christianity and Islam and the effects upon society.

The narrator believes Dracula is still alive and sequestered in a subterranean lair library where he studies scholarly pursuits. The book is essentially a pursuit of evidence. I found it a fun spin on the dark academia and vampire genres.

I purchased this book in mid-2022 in a bid to replace my physical books with the Kindle versions of them. I’ve been trying to read this book since high school, shortly after this book was released, and I finally gave myself the chance to finish it.

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This book follows an unnamed female narrator as she explains what happened to her father and mother along with her maternal grandfather leading up to her father’s disappearance.

There is a lot of vampiric lore, especially from the Eastern European variety, as the female narrator tells her father’s story that he told it to her when she was a teenager.

Now that she is in her 50s, she feels it is time to put this story into the world with little danger to herself. Will you survive the reading of the tale or will you be yet another victim of the vampire?

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I’ve been trying to read this book since Thanksgiving 2006 when I found it by accident in my high school’s library. I had seen how thick it was and knew I had a few days off from school coming up so I picked it up.

I’ve always been interested in vampires and keep in mind that this book was published at the same time as the Twilight novels. Sketch, I know. I liked those novels as well at that time so I have a feeling that says a lot more about me. lol

I think my biggest issue with this book is how long it is. I have ADHD, it turns out, and I get bored rather quickly with longer books that are over 500 pages. With this book being 705 pages, I was discouraged with how long it took me to finish it.

This was definitely more of a “me” problem than an author problem, of course. I’m not blaming her, by any means, of course. I do love all the detail included but I do feel like it drones on longer than it maybe should at times.

I found myself quite often lost in the details of the book, which very rarely happens these days. I’m very pleased with that, I’ll admit it. I wanted a good truly violent vampire novel instead of some of the flowery shit we see these days.

This book really does deliver on that count as well, which I’m thankful for at this point. I needed a break from the Throne of Glass series after reading through it off and on since May 2024 and this was a nice break from the seriousness of that.

Not that this book isn’t a serious one. It really tug at my heart-strings with some of the deaths that occurred at certain points toward the beginning of the novel. I think the first 25% of the novel is death-heavy but, again, that’s just me.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that I’m now looking over my shoulder when I’m walking in public, especially when I have my AirPods in. I am usually kinda paranoid, anyway, but this takes the cake. lmao

This review has already gotten a bit longer than I was anticipating at first glance but I’m not in the mood to particularly care at this point. lol I think I feel the most sympathy for the female narrator for having to put up with so much trauma.

She was rather young when her father was relating the events of the book to her and I can’t imagine how what she felt when her father disappeared. I’ve lost my father in 2015 and that was hard enough.

I’m sure it must have frightened her at some point to realize she was by herself other than Barley. I would have been freaked out myself, especially knowing what she does. But that’s just me. lol

I ended up getting the audiobook version of this book via Audible and I’m so glad I did. I’m not sure I would have finished this book otherwise. It did take me quite a while to finish it but I did get through it after a week like I had originally planned.

Would I recommend this book? If you have more patience than me for longer books, then hell yeah! If you want a dark book for halloween that has decent vampire lore, then this is your book, for sure.

A slow paced Gothic mystery, often compared with Dan Brown, but better written. That was the image I had of this book before I read it. But the comparison with Dan Brown might lead people to think it's more action filled than it is, so I would like to join in with a lot of other GR-reviews her, and really underline that this is a very slow paced book indeed. There are some spine-chilling moments, especially when you get the sense that the vampires will see you, and find you, no matter what. They might even be able to read your mind. These moments are exciting because they are so few and far between. When they finally appear, they have all the more impact.

But most of the time this is a slow burning plot with lots of travelling (around Europe, mostly). It also contains a lot of primary source investigation: it describes a lot of old books, letters, documents etc. and the characters discuss them at length. Kostova describes different locations very well, and the book does give you a wonderful sense of place. There is a lot of travelling to libraries and churches, looking for clues that points the characters in the direction of their next destination. There is also a lot of descriptions of local cuisine. A good, hearty meal is very important for vampire hunters.

As I read, I contemplated giving this book four stars, but by the time I reached the end, I landed on three. Mainly because the book has some structural weaknesses and because it was a bit too slow paced - even for me. When reaching the half-way point, I got less and less involved in the story, and I didn't really care that much about the characters. And by the end, I thought things were wrapped up to quickly compared to the enormous amount of pages it took the story to build up and develop. The whole thing was a bit underwhelming.

The structure of the different timelines also bothered me. The main character is a seventeen year old girl. Her story, set in the 1970's, is prevalent in the first 200 pages of the story, and runs parallel with another timeline, set in the 1950's. This one is first told first orally, and then through letters. There's also a third timeline, set in the 1930's, but it's not a very long one. After a while, the 1950's timeline takes over, and the main character, who where just barely given a personality and a plotline of her own, becomes mostly an observer for the remainder of the book. She remains uninteresting throughout. None of the main characters are very interesting, though.

So for the majority of the book, a page long chapter from the 1970's timeline is inserted here and there, surrounded by the considerably more lengthy and detailed 1950's timeline. Either the two should have been more equal, or the 1970's timeline should have been removed from the part of the book where it had next to nothing to contribute with. The 1950's timeline is often told through unrealistically long letters, where the language is no different from the rest of the narration. At first, the main character sits down to read each of these letters, but after a while, they are simply inserted without introduction, and takes over the whole plot.

The plot is not difficult to follow, but it seems messy, or just badly put together. And then there are some other small annoyances, like allies/helpers popping up here and there very conveniently and without good reason. There is a certain atmosphere in the book that will stay with me for a while. It has something to it. But it is very far from perfect.

One of my most cherished and adored novels, I don't care how many milions of negative reviews I come across! I adore everything about it, its heroes have become like best friends of mine, I plan on reading and re-reading it for the coming decades - God willing.

Actual Rating: 2.75/5

I randomly found this book on a list of horror books to read in October and Scribd happened to have it on audio, so I gave it a go. It’s extremely long and slow, but I didn’t mind that. The audiobook has a full cast, which I think adds a lot of intrigue to the story. This book is told in letters and I think without the full cast it might’ve been hard to tell who was talking. In general, I think physically reading this book might be a painful endeavor due to the slow pace. For me, this book was just okay. I’d recommend this for someone who really enjoys the mythology of Dracula.

The first third of the book is boring. The action builds up only on the second. The third is exceptional. It seemed to me that Kostova saved the best for last. Considering that this is her first novel, I would like to think that she still has a lot to offer.

I found the first third boring because of the basic premise: that Dracula and/or his cohorts, Vlad the Impaler to be specific are still alive. What triggers this is the book that is found in the bookshelves of a university professor who has a daughter. The said book makes the daughter curious about Dracula so she goes hunting all over Europe for that Bram Stoker's most popular fictional character. Go through this is like reading an old typical children's book that when the old storytelling grandma, sitting on her creaking rocking chair, lifts the first page of the book, its characters jumps out of it and the innocent children gasp and with their eyes wide open shriek with joy and happiness.

Then on the second third, Kostova upped the ante. This is as if the book graduated from the elementary and entered high school. First is my realization that the book was based on Kostova's real experience with her father. The latter was really fond of telling the young girl Kostova the tales about Dracula and this really made her interested on the old count's life. While reading a book and I get bored, I normally find ways to make it interesting like finding out entries in the internet anything about the author or the milieu of the book. At this point, the three milieus become very evident and quite interesting. The first is Paul the father of the narrator and his mentor and this is in the 30's. The second is Paul himself in the 50's and the third is the unnamed narrator (supposedly Kostova herself) in the 70's. The plot becomes interesting when the narrator realizes that the woman her father encountered in the 50's is actually her mother. So, the father sends her back home to look for his own mother and the daughter looks for his father. Apparently, there was no email or GPS or FB or SMS or Skype in the 50's nor in the 70's. Fine.

The intellectual and brilliant parts of the novel are in the last third. It is as if Kostova graduated from high school and turns collegiate. Here comes the travelogue part of the book. Istanbul. Hungary. Flasback to Romania. Helen's mother has had an affair with the professor (of her husband) and is found to be a direct descendant of Vlad the Impaler. I DID NOT SEE THIS COMING and even if I know all these to be Kostova's work of imagination, I thought it was well done. From then on, Kostova was unstoppable. I will not tell you the rest of the story so as not to give too many spoilers. Just trust me at the three stories in it are tightly and skillfully interwoven and I had to double check if this was really Kostova's first.

Very nice book to be her first. I'm impressed. Some of my friends did not like this book at all. Maybe they did not finish reading. Especially if they stopped somewhere on the first third? Bleh, that was really a big bore.