The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
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Book Reviews of The Historian
Book Review: Long, meandering historical vampire fiction
Summary: 3 Stars
Plus Side: Nice job painting a lovely picture of eastern europe in both the 16th and 20th century (crumbling ruins, cold war eastern europe environment). Really, a few pages it does transport you to those places.
Minus: Ultimately, this is a vampire novel, and a sketchy one at that. Avoiding spoilers, the vampires' behavior is a bit strange, even for a vampire, especially at the end. The author spends soooo many pages developing the lovely environment the plot gets shoved back in the corner somewhere. And there are soooo many pages. I spent many a minute wondering when the main characters were going to get wherever they are going.
If you have a lot of time and really like vampire novels, consider this one, otherwise skip.
Book Review: Starts strong then goes wrong...
Summary: 3 Stars
What a killer great start. I thought I was in for a really good read here. For about 300 pages I was right there. But then just about half way through, things slow down in a serious way. It's pretty disappointing considering the pace of the first half of the book. It gets pretty campy at the end. Okay, the end is really bad. I was really forcing the last twenty pages. Even though this may seem like a bad reveiw, and it sort of is, I think the author is talented and writes pretty well. The descriptions of the exotic locals are really good. The main problem I see here is in the editing. That's why I give it three stars. I can't say I recommend this book, but I blame the lack of good editing, not the author.Book Review: No Glamourous Vampires Here
Summary: 3 Stars
It is a decent novel. But, it is longer than it needed and slow in plot for the 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.Book Review: Good writing...bad editting.
Summary: 3 Stars
The editor must have been asleep on this one. At least a third of the book could have been removed altogether which would have made it a better read. She describes everything beautifully, it is simply too much.Book Review: Dracula aficionados, skip this one
Summary: 2 Stars
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.