The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova

This Book is really good and before I start this review I would like to say that this book was nominated for the Richard & Judy's Galaxy Award but lost out to another book. In my opinion this book should have won instead as I feel that it is that good and deserves an award. What shocked me the most was that this is the first book Elizabeth Kostova has ever written and published. To be honest I felt as it had been written by a more skilled author, what I mean is that it felt as if someone like J.R.R. Tolkein or J.K. Rowling or James Herbert or Stephen King had written it. Somebody famous or somebody who had written a lot of books. Obviously Elizabeth Kostova is what I ...  Read the complete review

To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history... 'The Historian' is an utterly compelling read that ensures you don't sleep until it is finished. The novel is a web of story-lines superbly entwined that update the Bram Stoker classic 'Dracula'. The story cleverly combines gritty details about the splendours of the Ottoman Empire and archaic vampire love that make the entire tale seem too all too possible for comfort. The story begins when late one night a young women, finds a cache of letters and an ancient book which are all ominously addressed to "My Dear and Unfortunate Successor". This discovery plunges her into a ...  Read the complete review

I recently finished the book, The Historian, after taking an admittedly long time to do so. At 700 pages long, much of it dense, detailed narrative dryer than Tutankhamun's t-zone, it was a long slog indeed. I forced myself to finish it, however, hoping that the payoff would be in there somewhere - I mean, a bestseller, on Richard & Judy's book list no less(!), surely there must be something more to it. This "thrilling" novel, oft described as "unputdownable" (my husband did in fact finish it on holiday in a week), was so lauded that I did hold out hope it would pick up my interest more as it progressed. It tended to make me want to fall into a ...  Read the complete review

Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” captured the Victorian Public’s imagination on its publication in 1897. A gothic composition of love, death and destruction, Stoker weaved worlds of erotica and obsession together in a powder keg of controversial ritual and vampire lore. To attempt to build on such a seminal piece of literature would seem like pure folly but that is exactly what the American author, Elizabeth Kostova, has done with her book “The Historian” with mixed results. This book was the first I’d read by Kostova although “The Historian” is her debut novel. Born in New London, Connecticut, she is a graduate of Yale University. Kostova won the Hopwood Award for the ...  Read the complete review

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 already it is being touted as "a Da Vinci Code for Dracula". In essence, this book takes the reality of Vlad Tepes, (a.k.a. Vlad the Impaler, a.k.a. Count Drakul, etc.) who was a ...  Read the complete review