Joanne Whalley Books

When you see a book has 236 + one star reviews, think twice about buying it. I don't think The Historian deserves one star, but I certainly don't believe it deserves more than two. Regardless of the disorganized mess that somehow became a published novel, Mrs Kostova has a way of beautifully bringing to life far away and exotic places. Unfortunately, this is all the book delivers.

I tried, but this book just didn't make any sense to me. None of it. How did Turgot dispose of Mr Erozan's body? He just said he knew a doctor who could take care of it. How did that happen? Professor Rossi fell in love with Helen's mother in two days? In the middle of hunting down Vlad the Impaler Paul decides Helen is his soulmate? First Paul describes Helen as ugly, then suddenly she looks like a princess? Oh, and speaking of Helen, what is up with that girl and gloves?! Constantly, she is either putting on gloves, smoothing her gloves, or Paul is watching her glancing at her gloves. I lost count of how many times Helen's gloves were mentioned!

The Historian would have been a much better read if there had only been one narrator. The constant shuffle of narrators (and countries) was confusing and annoying. At times, Paul is narrating through letters, then his daughter suddenly begins narrating. The author doesn't even bother to divide the narrators into different chapters. One minute you are reading a letter from Rossi to Paul, then a letter to the daughter from Paul. At one point Paul was narrating for a chapter and a half when all of a sudden the author stops to say the daughter had boarded a train. That's it - just one sentence to announce the girl is on a train.

The worst part of the book is the ending. ***Spoiler Alert*** After reading through 642 pages of cardboard characters looking for a tomb of a fifteenth century vampire through endless medieval maps, manuscripts and remote monasteries, the readers learn Dracula is using his immortality to hire himself a historian who will catalogue his book collection. Seriously, don't waste your time on this book. I literally had to skip some chapters just to get through it - such as the Zacharaias Chronicle chapter. I don't know what all that was about, and I'm not sure the author even knows. She certainly doesn't know much about British history. On page 157, she says Edward III endowed a building at Oxford University in the thirteenth century. Edward III was born in 1312 and reigned from 1327 to 1377. For a book entitled The Historian, that truly was a blunder of epic proportions. I'm so glad I only payed $3.00 for this book - even then I feel robbed.

Yes, its true. Three stars is all i could, in good conscience, give this 600+ page long extended travel guide. LOL. Its a story told from several different characters' points of view, spanning several different countries and decades. Could have been epic, but wasn't. Basically a man is hunting for Dracula and apparently the only way to find said vampire is to search through dusty libraries for the occasional scrap of long forgotten parchment, or get lucky enough to hear a fire walking old coot sing a folk song deep in the heart of communist Bulgaria. Go figure. The book starts with some promise when a young girl finds documents in her father's library that (long story short) indicate Dracula is still alive. Now, that's a story i can get into. What was harder to get into was the endless descriptions of Hungary and Romania and blah blah blah. If you added up all the real action that happens in this book of more than 600 pages, you'd honestly have less than 20 pages to work with. At some point around page 400 i was literally forcing myself to keep reading. And even though the book was written from various points of view, the "voice" is the same throughout. Its all very proper, very dry, very stiff english, except when a foreigner is speaking, in which case there is an occasional "how do you say" thrown in there because after all, its a foreigner. I don't know.... i wanted to like this book more than i actually do. But, the ending really killed it for me. I could have forgiven all those other things if only the ending had sealed the deal. After that many pages, to have Dracula meet his end so abruptly, with so little buildup, and the description of his actual demise be so brief after having suffered through so many pages of how great Budapest looks from a taxi cab, i felt robbed! I mean really, that's just wrong to do to a person. So, i think, skip it.

The moment someone pulls a mysterious ancient book off the shelf you have got my attention but the story had better go somewhere meaningful. A novel in the vampire genre, no matter how well researched, cannot stand solely on the pretext of historical suppositions. As I sit here, without looking up at the synopsis, I cannot remember the name of the main character. Anything so easily forgotten is best forgotten. The structure of the story was built around dark, raining backgrounds and countless library backrooms followed up by the occasional tomb but it almost completely lacked compelling characters or decisive action. Kostova tried to set her work apart from previously written works, perhaps leaning more towards the Bram Stoker version than Interview With A Vampire. While I admire her spirit of depth, the story was sleepily written. Had I not been waiting for a revelation that never arrived, I would not have finished it.

It was a good read. A little longer than it needed to be. One chapter just went on and on like a high school textbook. The book went on forever, then the end seemed to come out of nowhere. I'm glad I read it, but wouldn't recommend it to just any friend.

The editor must have been asleep on this one. At least a third of the book could have been removed altogether which would have made it a better read. She describes everything beautifully, it is simply too much.