Type of bind: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 656
Printing Date: June 14, 2005
Sale Popularity Level: 248875
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DESCRIPTION: In this riveting debut of breathtaking scope, a young girl discovers her father's darkest secret and embarks on a harrowing journey across Europe to complete the quest he never could -- to find history's most legendary fiend: Dracula. When a motherless American girl living in Europe finds a medieval book and a package of letters, all addressed ominously to 'My dear and unfortunate successor...' she begins to unravel a thread that leads back to her father's past, his mentor's career, and an evil hidden in the depths of history. In those few quiet moments, she unwittingly assumes a quest she will discover is her birthright: a hunt that nearly brought her father to ruin and may have claimed the life of his adviser and dear friend, history professor Bartholomew Rossi. What does the legend of Vlad the Impaler, the historical Dracula, have to do with the 20th century? Is it possible that Dracula has lived on in the modern world? And why have a select few historians risked reputation, sanity, and even their lives to learn the answer? So begins an epic journey to unlock the secrets of the strange medieval book, an adventure that will carry our heroine across Europe and into the past -- not only to the times of Vlad's heinous reign, but to the days when her mother was alive and her father was still a vibrant young scholar. In the end, she uncovers the startling fate of Rossi, and comes face to face with the definition of evil-- to find, ultimately, that good may not always triumph.
Amazon.com Review:
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
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Rated by buyers 
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It is a decent novel. But, it is longer than it needed and slow in plot for the very 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.
Rated by buyers 
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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.
Rated by buyers -
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.
Rated by buyers -
The moment someone pulls a mysterious ancient book off the shelf you have got my attention but the story had better go somewhere meaningful. A novel in the vampire genre, no matter how well researched, cannot stand solely on the pretext of historical suppositions. As I sit here, without looking up at the synopsis, I cannot remember the name of the main character. Anything so easily forgotten is best forgotten. The structure of the story was built around dark, raining backgrounds and countless library backrooms followed up by the occasional tomb but it almost completely lacked compelling characters or decisive action. Kostova tried to set her work apart from previously written works, perhaps leaning more towards the Bram Stoker version than Interview With A Vampire. While I admire her spirit of depth, the story was sleepily written. Had I not been waiting for a revelation that never arrived, I would not have finished it.
Rated by buyers -
It was a good read. A little longer than it needed to be. One chapter just went on and on like a high school textbook. The book went on forever, then the end seemed to come out of nowhere. I'm glad I read it, but wouldn't recommend it to just any friend.
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