On the contrary, what I found was a missive with a writing style that was smooth and suggestive. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that most of this is a boring book. Yes, I hear you say, that two thirds is a good deal to go through to get totally hooked by this type of a book, especially with such a lengthy novel as this one. But when you get about two thirds of the way through the book, you’ll find yourself really wanting to know what happens next and get to find out how it all ends. I’d also say that the action isn’t all that fast paced, either. I’d say that this book is creepier than anything else. And despite some of the gory details of the real Vlad’s crimes, I didn’t find this to be all that gruesome, either. However, this isn’t one of those novels which will actually scare you out of your seat or even keep you on the edge of it – at least not at the beginning. I’m also not into the horror or mystery genres. Now, I’m not a big fan of thriller or action novels. And although it isn’t totally chronologically done – since we jump back and forth between the time periods – the parallel accounts certainly mesh quite nicely, filling out the story into a whole by the end of the book. Confusing, isn’t it? Well, since this is done through the retelling of incidents and reading of documents, it becomes quite less confusing as you read it. Rossi (and Dracula), and the daughter and Barley are in another time period – in looking for the missing Paul who has gone to try to find the missing Helen (as well as Dracula). This is also done in two layers, since Paul & Helen are involved in one time period of research – in looking for the missing Prof. Rossi’s daughter Helen, Paul & Helen’s daughter (who narrates the book) and an Oxford student named Stephen Barley who befriends her. Bartholomew Rossi, his doctoral student Paul, Prof. These ancient looking books are totally empty except for an elaborate wood cut of a long-tailed dragon, and it is from this initial ‘clue’ that the historians are essentially challenged to get to the bottom of the myth or truth behind the infamous Dracula. The choosing is done by a mysterious delivery of a book to each of these historians. In order to tell this story, Kostova focuses on a particular group of people who apparently have been chosen by Dracula himself to research him and eventually find him. This story then takes the premise one step further in that it also assumes that Dracula has been ‘undead’ over the centuries and that he continues to prey on the blood of his victims while being hunted by historians throughout the ages. Count Drakul, etc.) who was a real person in the 15th century in Transylvania (or Wallechia), and then mixes in the idea that perhaps Bram Stoker wasn’t wrong when he made this real person into a vampire. In essence, this book takes the reality of Vlad Tepes, (a.k.a. What if the infamous Dracula really existed and wasn’t just the fruit of the overactive imagination of one Bram Stoker? What if he’s been recruiting people all these years since his ‘death’ to help him in his vile work? What if some people figured out that he could actually be tracked down? And what if that search overtook their lives to the point of frenzy and placing themselves in mortal danger? This is the premise of The Historian – Elizabeth Kostova’s first novel – and touted as “The Da Vinci Code for Dracula”.
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