The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostava is not to everybody's taste I am sure. As the title states, it is about a historian, or several historians, and much of the book takes place in dusty libraries and various other repositories containing ancient texts and books. But the histories they are searching are of Vlad the Imapler...the Transylvanian prince who fought off the Ottoman Empire and whose cruelties and blood thirstiness led him to become the legend of Count Dracula.
But as we get deeper into the book, and deeper into the characters we become sure that Dracula is not just a legend, but a real vampire...and not from the past, but present now.
This is a creepy book, as much as it presents the artifice of a scholarly tome. It has some very eerie scenes, and some quite freaky. Kostova constructs this artificial history (or is it artificial?) with care...for her words, for the plot and for the art of history.
I think it may be too slow paced for some, but for me it just added layers. The only complaint was a few times she had too many alternate time lines running at once. But that is really a minor quibble.
It is not a fast-paced as say, The Da Vinci Code, and takes its time unravelling the mysteries contained in the historical texts. But it kept me turning the pages, wanting to uncover more alongside the characters.
A great debut novel. Really enjoyable!
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