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3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
richly detailed descriptions of beautiful cities and a dark academic story about dracula? hell yes.
An interesting subject and beautifully detailed, but certainly not a page turner. It was a slog to get through, but I couldn't quite convince myself that it was slow enough to just stop reading.
This is a book you read to find out what happens next. The pacing's wonderful, as good as one can expect to find in the work of an established author. I hope she has at least one more book of this caliber left in her.
Great book! The author clearly did a lot of research, and I learned a lot about the real life person that Dracula was based on, plus it was intertwined with a more modern-day mystery. Loved it!
(These comments left long after the actual reading): What I recall of this book is that it was very long, occasionally a bit tedious, but beautiful in the creation of atmosphere and history. Loved it as a kind of historic travel journal, was less captivated by the vampire thread.
Beautiful imagery, interesting plot, but I just didn't like the end. I felt it was very anti climactic.
Very lengthy! Great descriptions, but sometimes it dragged a bit. This is a very good book for those looking for a different take on vampires, especially if your completely turned off by YA glittering vamps. and the like. I read it around the time when the Twilight movies were extremely popular, and I found this book as refreshing as a large wine glass overflowing with blood given to a starving vampire. The action doesn't quite start until towards the end, so if you're looking for a very fast-paced read, this may not be your cup of tea. All in all, I say give 'The Historian' a try!
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I wish there was a way to give this book 3.5 stars - I really liked it in the end (thus the 4 stars), but it was very slow moving for the entire first half of the book. I always enjoy vamp lit (even bad vamp lit is at least amusing) but this was well written (though dry) and I thought a very interesting telling of the Dracula legend.
This debut novel by Elizabeth Kostova is written in a style reminiscent of 18th and 19th century novels, namely narrative-within-narrative, using letters, diaries and other means to tell parts of the story to the audience and a long, slow-paced narrative.
It is tracing the story of a young girl of 16 living with his diplomat father in Amsterdam. One day she discovers a letter in his father's library and stars following the story of how his father was involved with tracking the real Dracula's tomb - namely that of Vlad Tepes, the 15th century Romanian warlord who has been in a lifelong struggle with Sultan Mehmed of the Ottoman Empire and is believed to be the model for BramStoker's famous vampire novel. As she reads about the adventures of her father, how she met a Romanian girl while following the footsteps of his academic advisor who was trying to find the tomb of Vlad Tepes and later on she gets involved in the same story.
It is a difficult book to follow, with several intertwined stories running in parallel. However, I would have accepted this style (which has been used far more successfully by other authors) if the story had a merit. After reading through several hundreds of pages, I was really disappointed with the lack of real events and a very weak ending.
Thus the book does not add anything to the legend of Dracula and it seems that the only motivation for the book is to demonstrate the ability to write in 18th or 19th century novelists' style to handle a classic story.
It is tracing the story of a young girl of 16 living with his diplomat father in Amsterdam. One day she discovers a letter in his father's library and stars following the story of how his father was involved with tracking the real Dracula's tomb - namely that of Vlad Tepes, the 15th century Romanian warlord who has been in a lifelong struggle with Sultan Mehmed of the Ottoman Empire and is believed to be the model for BramStoker's famous vampire novel. As she reads about the adventures of her father, how she met a Romanian girl while following the footsteps of his academic advisor who was trying to find the tomb of Vlad Tepes and later on she gets involved in the same story.
It is a difficult book to follow, with several intertwined stories running in parallel. However, I would have accepted this style (which has been used far more successfully by other authors) if the story had a merit. After reading through several hundreds of pages, I was really disappointed with the lack of real events and a very weak ending.
Thus the book does not add anything to the legend of Dracula and it seems that the only motivation for the book is to demonstrate the ability to write in 18th or 19th century novelists' style to handle a classic story.