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3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
Pompous and boring.
I was so bored reading this that I read some reviews on Goodreads and decided to skip to the ending and read the minuscule Dracula appearances and the ending. Even then, I found it hard to stay engaged.
Honestly, I thought this would be brilliant - history and Dracula combining in a truly gothic tale.... it’s none of those things.
Here are some of my thoughts on the book:
• This is too “academic”. It’s trying too hard to be pompous and “literary”. It’s stuffed with hundreds of pages of dry textbook padding.
• Speaking of dry, there is nothing to choose between the characters. None have a unique voice, none stand out and none are sympathetic. In the beginning of the book, it was difficult to ascertain who was even speaking.
• The descriptions were too much. There is such a thing as too much detail.
• The “present story” was just filler to interrupt the main event. It was frustrating and made this about three times as long as it needed to be.
• I’ve read boring books before, both fiction and non -fiction, but I’ve never actually had my mind wandering during almost every sentence as I did here. Egad!
• Length does not equal quality.
In summation, I don’t recommend this book. It’s as dry as the Gerudo Desert and not at all engaging. Staggeringly, I prioritized dusting my shelving units over reading this... dusting was more interesting. Hm.
I was so bored reading this that I read some reviews on Goodreads and decided to skip to the ending and read the minuscule Dracula appearances and the ending. Even then, I found it hard to stay engaged.
Honestly, I thought this would be brilliant - history and Dracula combining in a truly gothic tale.... it’s none of those things.
Here are some of my thoughts on the book:
• This is too “academic”. It’s trying too hard to be pompous and “literary”. It’s stuffed with hundreds of pages of dry textbook padding.
• Speaking of dry, there is nothing to choose between the characters. None have a unique voice, none stand out and none are sympathetic. In the beginning of the book, it was difficult to ascertain who was even speaking.
• The descriptions were too much. There is such a thing as too much detail.
• The “present story” was just filler to interrupt the main event. It was frustrating and made this about three times as long as it needed to be.
• I’ve read boring books before, both fiction and non -fiction, but I’ve never actually had my mind wandering during almost every sentence as I did here. Egad!
• Length does not equal quality.
In summation, I don’t recommend this book. It’s as dry as the Gerudo Desert and not at all engaging. Staggeringly, I prioritized dusting my shelving units over reading this... dusting was more interesting. Hm.
challenging
dark
informative
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Had it been 100pp shorter, it might be 3 (2.5...rounding down on that other site that cruelly forces such choices).
I think what bothered me more than anything else was that there were several narrators but the voice seemed to remain the same throughout (OK, one from the medieval period did stand out). There are a LOT of characters...with many "bit players" popping up multiple times. I often struggle w names and this is compounded when I even had to doubl e check who was narrating several times. I suppose a 16yo teen who is quite sheltered in a social sense might sound a bit like her dad (that's me trying to defend the book), but she shouldn't sound like a professor who would have to be in his 40s or 50s....esp when there is an element of a first romance (albeit minor).
No idea how accurate the history is...that element did feel impressive (esp re the life of Dracula as a historical figure). But it wasn't enough to keep me engaged.
I put this aside multiple times to get a change of pace but still struggled to finish it.
Felt accomplished on thr last page (best part? The last period!). Def none of the "I'll miss these people/places/stories) that marks a truly positive reading experience for me.
I think what bothered me more than anything else was that there were several narrators but the voice seemed to remain the same throughout (OK, one from the medieval period did stand out). There are a LOT of characters...with many "bit players" popping up multiple times. I often struggle w names and this is compounded when I even had to doubl e check who was narrating several times. I suppose a 16yo teen who is quite sheltered in a social sense might sound a bit like her dad (that's me trying to defend the book), but she shouldn't sound like a professor who would have to be in his 40s or 50s....esp when there is an element of a first romance (albeit minor).
No idea how accurate the history is...that element did feel impressive (esp re the life of Dracula as a historical figure). But it wasn't enough to keep me engaged.
I put this aside multiple times to get a change of pace but still struggled to finish it.
Felt accomplished on thr last page (best part? The last period!). Def none of the "I'll miss these people/places/stories) that marks a truly positive reading experience for me.
dark
tense
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
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:
Yes
adventurous
dark
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
What is there to say about this book? My copy of it is falling to pieces due to so many rereads. I'm at the point now where I just pick it up and turn to a random page and just read a little piece. It's like dark chocolate in that you can do that. You can open up to just a few pages and it's so rich and delicious that you feel satisfied. Sometimes. Sometimes you need the whole dang thing.
This novel is a feat. It is a heavy one. It has wonderful details that paint the cities so vividly that you feel like you are travelling through Europe right alongside the characters.
The layers in this book...! Oh the layers. Sure one could say this book is a book about history and the pursuit of knowledge and deeper understanding. You've got all these half clues that you keep learning and you know that they all have to make sense but you're just not quite sure of the big picture. There are hunts going on- hunts for answers and knowledge and finding people who have disappeared. A daughter looking for her father. A husband looking for his wife. A student looking for their mentor. All of these individual chases all taking place and unfolding to form a clear picture.
Then... Dracula. But it wasn't a vampire novel. If that makes any sort of sense. I'm pretty sure none of this blurb I'm writing makes sense.
I have a paper wreath made out of pages of this book. I can't explain why I love it so just go read it! Sit down with it and absorb it into your very being.
This novel is a feat. It is a heavy one. It has wonderful details that paint the cities so vividly that you feel like you are travelling through Europe right alongside the characters.
The layers in this book...! Oh the layers. Sure one could say this book is a book about history and the pursuit of knowledge and deeper understanding. You've got all these half clues that you keep learning and you know that they all have to make sense but you're just not quite sure of the big picture. There are hunts going on- hunts for answers and knowledge and finding people who have disappeared. A daughter looking for her father. A husband looking for his wife. A student looking for their mentor. All of these individual chases all taking place and unfolding to form a clear picture.
Then... Dracula. But it wasn't a vampire novel. If that makes any sort of sense. I'm pretty sure none of this blurb I'm writing makes sense.
I have a paper wreath made out of pages of this book. I can't explain why I love it so just go read it! Sit down with it and absorb it into your very being.
When I was pretty new to the library, a patron asked if we had any "real" vampire stories, without any creative license taken with the vampire lore. I googled for a while and found a number of people recommending Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian as a good straight-up vampire novel. I brought it to the patron, he took one look at the 650-page book, and handed it back to me. The next day, I noticed the book was also available in our ebook collection, so I read through it.
This book is kind of a mess. When I was hurting for books to put on my Staff Picks display I finally gave in and threw it up there, calling it "flawed but gripping," and still felt pretty guilty that I didn't disclose just how flawed it is. Every problem - and many of the strengths - of those book stems from the fact that it's clearly trying to be 2005's version of Dracula, with every storytelling device that being Dracula entails. So it has like three frame stories set in three different time periods, with side jaunts for other characters' stories, mostly told in epistolary form or through verbal recounting of old memories, but all told in the same overly verbose melodramatic voice clearly trying to read like 19th century prose. And that's bad enough, but for whatever reason Kostova decided to recreate other 19th century horror staples, like super racist portrayals of Romani and Middle Eastern people. And she has characters go on weird rants about the virtues of free market capitalism. It's not great.
But I didn't lie about the book being gripping. Every time I was put off enough to put the book down, I'd pick it back up again relatively quickly because, ultimately, I was interested in the vampire mysteries at the heart of the book, even if they were ludicrously ahistoric and set in a nearly unrecognizable facsimile of our world. And I've read a few vampire novels since finishing this one because I'd found myself so drawn to this central vampire story. I wanted this but..like...good.
Vampire stories usually tend to reflect anxieties about the wealthy and powerful of the time in which they were written. The Historian, instead, reflects anxieties about the ways historical conflicts continue into the present. It's very concerned with Vlad the Impaler as Dracula, but is most interested in his position as an immortal representation of the violence enacted on Muslims by invading Europeans during the crusades. The book also touches on Soviet campaigns into the Middle East and compares the two, but the author herself characterizes the central conflict of the book as one of religious war. Given that it was published in 2005, it's clear that the actual anxieties of the book are really about the US campaigns into Iraq and Afghanistan. The book's preoccupation with the Soviet Union feels, to me, like an End of History thing. The fall of the Soviet Union was supposed to position capitalist liberalism as the only functional world order, but the post 9/11 conflicts poked some holes in that thinking, which was even more permanently disrupted a few years later with the bursting of the housing bubble and the rise of movements like Occupy. These questions of history, the book's setting implies, were valid in the 80s, before history ended. There's no reason for Vlad Tepes to haunt the world of 2005 in the same way he haunted the 80s.
And yet.
This book is kind of a mess. When I was hurting for books to put on my Staff Picks display I finally gave in and threw it up there, calling it "flawed but gripping," and still felt pretty guilty that I didn't disclose just how flawed it is. Every problem - and many of the strengths - of those book stems from the fact that it's clearly trying to be 2005's version of Dracula, with every storytelling device that being Dracula entails. So it has like three frame stories set in three different time periods, with side jaunts for other characters' stories, mostly told in epistolary form or through verbal recounting of old memories, but all told in the same overly verbose melodramatic voice clearly trying to read like 19th century prose. And that's bad enough, but for whatever reason Kostova decided to recreate other 19th century horror staples, like super racist portrayals of Romani and Middle Eastern people. And she has characters go on weird rants about the virtues of free market capitalism. It's not great.
But I didn't lie about the book being gripping. Every time I was put off enough to put the book down, I'd pick it back up again relatively quickly because, ultimately, I was interested in the vampire mysteries at the heart of the book, even if they were ludicrously ahistoric and set in a nearly unrecognizable facsimile of our world. And I've read a few vampire novels since finishing this one because I'd found myself so drawn to this central vampire story. I wanted this but..like...good.
Vampire stories usually tend to reflect anxieties about the wealthy and powerful of the time in which they were written. The Historian, instead, reflects anxieties about the ways historical conflicts continue into the present. It's very concerned with Vlad the Impaler as Dracula, but is most interested in his position as an immortal representation of the violence enacted on Muslims by invading Europeans during the crusades. The book also touches on Soviet campaigns into the Middle East and compares the two, but the author herself characterizes the central conflict of the book as one of religious war. Given that it was published in 2005, it's clear that the actual anxieties of the book are really about the US campaigns into Iraq and Afghanistan. The book's preoccupation with the Soviet Union feels, to me, like an End of History thing. The fall of the Soviet Union was supposed to position capitalist liberalism as the only functional world order, but the post 9/11 conflicts poked some holes in that thinking, which was even more permanently disrupted a few years later with the bursting of the housing bubble and the rise of movements like Occupy. These questions of history, the book's setting implies, were valid in the 80s, before history ended. There's no reason for Vlad Tepes to haunt the world of 2005 in the same way he haunted the 80s.
And yet.
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
4.5 out of 5 stars
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. At first the length intimidated me, but I was quickly immersed in the story. I thought the characters were fantastic, and the story was engaging. Kostova paid a lot of attention to detail. For example, different people translating the same text would come with slightly different results. I also found it interesting how the daughter intentionally did not have a name. It was something that I thought about through the entire novel. The little bits of humor embedded in the novel made this a very enjoyable reading experience. I read this novel much faster than I imagined.
However, I do think the climax was a bit rushed. It seemed strange that the event the entire novel was building up to only lasted a few pages. Also, between the half way and three quarter mark of the novel became a little slow because of all the information being presented. It was all necessary and interesting, but I do wish we had more of the daughter's story sprinkled throughout to give some breaks.
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. At first the length intimidated me, but I was quickly immersed in the story. I thought the characters were fantastic, and the story was engaging. Kostova paid a lot of attention to detail. For example, different people translating the same text would come with slightly different results. I also found it interesting how the daughter intentionally did not have a name. It was something that I thought about through the entire novel. The little bits of humor embedded in the novel made this a very enjoyable reading experience. I read this novel much faster than I imagined.
However, I do think the climax was a bit rushed. It seemed strange that the event the entire novel was building up to only lasted a few pages. Also, between the half way and three quarter mark of the novel became a little slow because of all the information being presented. It was all necessary and interesting, but I do wish we had more of the daughter's story sprinkled throughout to give some breaks.