I stayed up way too late and found myself unconsciously eating way more garlic than usual. I like the plot device of a book that appears to people and won't go away. There are lots of historical and geographical tidbits that are artfully integrated into the story, but above all it is SCARY!

posted Jan 4, 2008 at 10:02PM

In Amsterdam in 1972, a motherless girl finds a bundle of secret letters and a medieval book in her father’s library. The book is blank, save for a disturbing illustration of a dragon and a single word: Drakulya. The letters, dated Oxford, 1930, are addressed to “My dear and unfortunate successor.” Our heroine, nameless and bookish though she is, more than proves herself as she embarks on a quest to find out what this book and its letters means and why they have a nasty habit of changing the lives of its readers (who include her father and her father’s mentor) forever. Just don’t confuse The Historian with any old spooky horror story—Kostova’s book is as thoughtful and contemplative as it is chilling and thrilling. The characters have unique voices, the locations are exotically detailed, and Count Dracula--or Vlad Dracul the Impaler, as we should call him--is transformed from a tired and worn old fairytale into a very real and threatening menace. For readers who thought vampires were just for the teeny-bopper crowd, this detailed, layered, literary novel proved them wrong years before Twilight made bloodsuckers a trendy fad.

posted May 22, 2009 at 10:48AM

read many times, and I still enjoy it every time

posted Sep 12, 2009 at 11:52PM

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