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The Historian
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MSRP: $14.98
Your Price: $5.75
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Manufacturer: Hachette Audio
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Additional The Historian Information
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To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history....Late one night, exploring her father's library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters. The letters are all addressed to "My dear and unfortunate successor," and they plunge her into a world she never dreamed of-a labyrinth where the secrets of her father's past and her mother's mysterious fate connect to an inconceivable evil hidden in the depths of history.The letters provide links to one of the darkest powers that humanity has ever known-and to a centuries-long quest to find the source of that darkness and wipe it out. It is a quest for the truth about Vlad the Impaler, the medieval ruler whose barbarous reign formed the basis of the legend of Dracula. Generations of historians have risked their reputations, their sanity, and even their lives to learn the truth about Vlad the Impaler and Dracula. Now one young woman must decide whether to take up this quest herself-to follow her father in a hunt that nearly brought him to ruin years ago, when he was a vibrant young scholar and her mother was still alive. What does the legend of Vlad the Impaler have to do with the modern world? Is it possible that the Dracula of myth truly existed-and that he has lived on, century after century, pursuing his own unknowable ends? The answers to these questions cross time and borders, as first the father and then the daughter search for clues, from dusty Ivy League libraries to Istanbul, Budapest, and the depths of Eastern Europe. In city after city, in monasteries and archives, in letters and in secret conversations, the horrible truth emerges about Vlad the Impaler's dark reign-and about a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive down through the ages.Parsing obscure signs and hidden texts, reading codes worked into the fabric of medieval monastic traditions-and evading the unknown adversaries who will go to any lengths to conceal and protect Vlad's ancient powers-one woman comes ever closer to the secret of her own past and a confrontation with the very definition of evil. Elizabeth Kostova's debut novel is an adventure of monumental proportions, a relentless tale that blends fact and fantasy, history and the present, with an assurance that is almost unbearably suspenseful-and utterly unforgettable.
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What Customers Say About The Historian:
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It is full of intrigue and mystery and it is fun and has many twists and turns. I enjoyed this book very much. I am not generally fond of vampire stories but this book is so well written that I very much enjoyed it. This book was recommended to me by friends and I in turn recommended it to friends and even purchased it as a Christmas present. I read it and then decided I needed to read Bram Stokers Dracula. I am not sure that it matters which you read first because The Historian is so well written.
This is an excellent book to take on a long business trip. I couldn't put this book down. I read it on a weekend and I don't even like vampires.
Vampire stories by their nature are full of sex and violence, so why did this book just drag on and on. It takes a special writer to write boring vampire novel.
In both these novels, a female protagonist discovers her ancestral identity through perilous scholarly sleuthing, along the lines of A.S. Kostova's novel quotes Bram Stoker's DRACULA, and traces the protagonist's ancestry to Vlad the Impaler and his Nazified heirs, somewhat comparable to Sylvia Plath's DADDY's Polish, German, Austrian ancestry. Dianne Hunter's ReviewLike THE DA VINCI CODE (2004), THE HISTORIAN (2005) is a genealogical quest, but the latter counterpoints the former, and not only because Kostova writes splendidly and her narrative is compelling. Byatt's POSSESSION (1990), another novel in which scholarship leads to genealogical self-discovery. The fascination with vampires seems to me to be a response to migrations and to Death as the spirit or legacy of history. For Brown, the sacred ancestors are Jesus and his wife, the Grail legend is their legacy, art history provides its transmission. In THE HISTORIAN, the Devil is the ultimate ancestor, Dracula is his legacy, political history transmits its traces.
Parts were even quite excellent. I finished it. I didn't hate it. A decent enough debut novel, interesting premise, well-written, and I loved the sort of travelogue feel to it all. But overall, just too much invested for too little reward. Pages 300-500 were a chore to get through and nothing really ever happens. But my word, this thing is just too long and slow. Not coincidentally, that is the section of the book where there are little to no vampire appearances.
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