Reviews for The Historian

The average rating for The Historian based on 2 reviews is 1 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-07-15 00:00:00 Robert Caprari You know you've been in school too long when you write a vampire novel in which Dracula's ultimate threat is to force his victims to catalog his extensive library of antique books. On the other hand, after finishing The Historian, and its detailed Vlad the Impaler research, I'm willing to consider that threat as akin to impalement. If Kostova's references to Henry James did not reveal her as an admirer of his, then its sprawling prose, vague plot, and sexually confused characters would have. While imitation of Henry James is not enough in itself to make me wish undeath on an author, it sucked the blood out of this adventure. Kostova writes The Historian in epistolary form, primarily through letters from a father historian to a daughter (presumably) historian. The greater part of the book, however, focused not on this father-daughter team's desperate search for family member(s) and Dracula, but on the obscure history of Vlad Tepes, the historical figure who inspired the legend of Dracula, and on the geography of Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey during the Cold War. If the Travel Channel™ was ever looking for someone to host Istanbul on a Budget 1980 or Passport to Monasteries Behind the Iron Curtain, Kostova would be their woman. Whether the history and geography is true or not, the sheer volume of trivia padding this book and the work it had to have taken to put it all together is confounding. Even with the impressive research, this story is Scooby Doo with no Scooby Snacks. Dracula would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those pesky historians! Dracula and his henchman, the "evil librarian," don't plague society or cause panic. Rather, they make appearances in goofy disguises in libraries and cafes to give books and other clues to especially promising young historians, inspiring the recipients to begin insatiable quests to find out more about this Dracula fellow. Then, Dracula inevitably shows up again to slap people around a little, so that the historians will be too afraid to continue their research. Once, after giving a historian a book to start him on his vampire studies, Dracula disguises himself as "a stranger" and buys that historian a drink called, "whimsically, amnesia." Bet you can't guess what that does - all that research down the tubes! Stop the mind games, Dracula! Not to be deterred by Dracula's or the Evil Librarian's threats, the historians continue to stalk their prey until the reader would pity Dracula (if he weren't annoying), because he is ultimately only trying to build a book collection and a gang of faithful research assistants. In painful detail, Paul, the central historian/vampire slayer, as he tells his daughter the story of his search for Dracula, also tells of falling in love with her "mannish" mother, Helen. The consistent descriptions of our heroine as "manly" only hint at Paul's sexual confusion, which becomes most apparent when he meets his rival, Helen's ex-boyfriend, a Soviet spy. Paul describes this meeting to his daughter in chapter 38. "'What a pleasure to meet you,' [ex-boyfriend] said, giving me a smile that illuminated his fine features. He was taller than I, with thick brown hair and the confident posture of a man who loves his own virility - he would have been magnificent on horseback, riding across the plains with herds of sheep, I thought." Except for the word "virility," I don't think I'll ever get tired of reading that description. If the author of the quote had been a man, I would encourage him to openly write gay characters rather than making his characters marry to hide their sexuality. From the author's picture on the dust jacket, I see that she is Madame Bovary, so the description fits. It is true that because of the vagueness of the plot and the epistolary structure, entire chapters and characters could be cut from this book without losing any story. Beyond its rambling descriptions, however, The Historian flounders as a vampire story. Psychological conflict adds complexity to most vampire stories, as in Bram Stoker's Dracula, when Mina, formerly a protagonist, becomes bloodthirsty. Thirst is the most basic human experience, and all vampires started as humans. Theoretically, thirst (or, more broadly, desire) could become evil in anyone; and, therefore, of all monsters we most easily identify with vampires. In The Historian, however, I am left with the impression that if those historians left poor Dracula alone, he would have just kept collecting books. It was ultimately the research and study, not Dracula himself, that took the historians away from their loved ones and almost destroyed them. From where I'm reading, The Historian is solid evidence of what most high school kids could tell you: too much study is both boring and potentially bad for your health.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-07-06 00:00:00 David Albonesi This has got to be one of the most disappointing books I've read in a long time. Although the descriptions of the various eastern European cities are often pretty and atmospheric, my frustration with this book won't let me mark it above one star. It starts out well; very interesting and suspenseful for about the first 100 pages or so. But as you read it, the book just gets more and more ridiculous. It's about 600 900(!) pages long (which is way, way too long) and I urge anyone reading this book to just put it down or read one of the one-star spoiler reviews on Amazon and be done with it. Or better yet, ignore the book entirely. What bothered me most? I'll try to make a list of my top issues: -- Coincidences. *Everything* in this book happens by some remarkable coincidences. One here or there would be fine, even interesting, but it's as if the author decided 'here's how the plot should go', and couldn't be bothered to come up with realistic reasons for characters to do things and just wanted to move them from one point to another. One of the characters even ends up with amnesia. Amnesia! Like from a bad soap opera! I mean, are you kidding? So stuff just happens. For no reason. Which leads me to... -- Stuff just happens. For no reason. Such as characters getting together romantically, well, just because. No build up, no logic, they just do because I guess they're both there and they have nothing better to do. Which leads me to... -- The characters themselves. Completely non-existent. One reviewer on amazon said that if you take any random section of dialogue from the book, it is impossible to tell which character it came from. So true! The author is completely incapable of creating realistic, breathing characters that are different from each other. Instead they all talk the same, they all have the same reactions, the same motives, hook up randomly in the same way, etc. There is *nothing* believable about these people. And for some reason, they all write unbelievably detailed letters. Which leads me to... -- Unbelievably detailed letters! Now I have read a number of great books that use the format of letter writing to convey the plot. But this? Ridiculous. Not only are these letters insanely long, but they are insanely detailed as well, creating yet another reason why the book and the characters are completely unbelievable. If that's how the author wanted to write this, why did she do the letter thing at all? Which brings me to my final big gripe (I've leaving the small ones out)... -- The ending. OMG if you value your sanity, do not, I repeat DO NOT finish this book. Because if you are sane, you will get to the ending and go, 'What? What?? Are you f-n kidding me?? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!' No joke. The ending, especially after 600 pages, has got to be the biggest let down of any major novel in recent years. I won't spoil it here (however badly I want to vent about it), but I swear to you: it will cause you physical agony when you read it. In short: bad book, promises a lot and delivers none of it. Ignore it, read something else.