I recieved this as a Christmas gift a few years ago by friends who knew my slight minute itsy bitsy tiny obsession with vampires. I only recently had time to pick it up – and I could NOT put it down! It is really an amazing read with fascinating language, intellectual discussion, historical character, and intriguing fantasy – EXCELLENT!

I really liked the descriptions of the Eastern European areas and history, but I got lost in the time shifting (are we talking about the 14 year old at the beginning, her father, or her father’s mentor).

I made it about 3/4 of the way and liked it, but then I couldn’t take it anymore.

It is taking me so long to slog through this book. I think I’m on about page 170 and it’s starting to pick up a little bit, but not much. I’m going to give myself a few more weeks to try and get into it, but if it doesn’t start getting better I’m going to just put it back on my shelf and admit defeat.

I just lost interest in it. . . the style of writing wasn’t stimulating enough form me and the characters just didnt keep me intrigued. . . I’m sure I’ll finish it someday, but for now there are other things that I would prefer to read.

I highly recommend this book, because unlike most books that deal with vampire lore and mystery thrillers, it is not very predictable, and it is actually very smart.
It develops through 3 story lines that go back and forth to create an image of a past long gone, but that is still affecting the characters to “present.”
Kostova delicately mixes the storyline with lots of historical facts to depict a Dracula that makes more sense than Bram Stoker’s, as she brings him to life in the context of his history as “Vlad The Impaler.”
The story is very well written, and while it is abundant in detail, it makes you want to learn more about the history of the era – 1477, soon after the fall of Constantinople. It also brings up folklore and traditions from different regions and religions, making the story more complete. And if you are familiar with some of the folklore and some of the religious traditions that are talked about here, it makes you connect concepts and ideas that are but vaguely related to this book.
In addition, it also has a somewhat romantic storyline – for those who enjoy some romance – but that it NEVER overshadows the main storyline.
There are parts of the book that seem at first a little unrelated to the story, and they make you wonder why the plot is not advancing any more. But these are few and far between, and you should not let them discourage you from reading the rest of it.
It is a very brilliant book, with which you will learn about Europe – which having had the opportunity to recently visit these places just made it all the more real to me, the Fall of Constantinople, The Ottoman Empire, The rule of Vlad The Impaler, and vampire lore, among other things.
It’s a book about relationships – scholar to scholar, teacher and student, daughter and father, mother and daughter, lover to lover, historian and history – and the strong ties that bond them.
This book is worth reading, if anything, because it is very alive, inspite of dealing with the undead.

I loved this book. I wasn’t at all bored with it. I like books that teach me about history without me feeling like I’m learning something. I’ve also always enjoyed vampire stories, especially the ones that are not super gory and horror movie like.
It was suspenseful, well written and I stayed interested in the story as I read it.

From Amazon.com:
“If your pulse flutters at the thought of castle ruins and descents into crypts by moonlight, you will savor every creepy page of Elizabeth Kostova’s long but beautifully structured thriller The Historian. The story opens in Amsterdam in 1972, when a teenage girl discovers a medieval book and a cache of yellowed letters in her diplomat father’s library. The pages of the book are empty except for a woodcut of a dragon. The letters are addressed to: “My dear and unfortunate successor.” When the girl confronts her father, he reluctantly confesses an unsettling story: his involvement, twenty years earlier, in a search for his graduate school mentor, who disappeared from his office only moments after confiding to Paul his certainty that Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, an inventively cruel ruler of Wallachia in the mid-15th century, was still alive. The story turns out to concern our narrator directly because Paul’s collaborator in the search was a fellow student named Helen Rossi (the unacknowledged daughter of his mentor) and our narrator’s long-dead mother, about whom she knows almost nothing. And then her father, leaving just a note, disappears also.
As well as numerous settings, both in and out of the East Bloc, Kostova has three basic story lines to keep straight, one from 1930, when Professor Bartolomew Rossi begins his dangerous research into Dracula, one from 1950, when Professor Rossi’s student Paul takes up the scent, and the main narrative from 1972. The criss-crossing story lines mirror the political advances, retreats, triumphs, and losses that shaped Dracula’s beleaguered homeland, sometimes with the Byzantines on top, sometimes the Ottomans, sometimes the rag-tag local tribes, or the Orthodox church, and sometimes a fresh conqueror like the Soviet Union.
Although the book is appropriately suspenseful and a delight to read, even the minor characters are distinctive and vividly seen, its most powerful moments are those that describe real horrors. Our narrator recalls that after reading descriptions of Vlad burning young boys or impaling “a large family,” she tried to forget the words: “For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me this: history’s terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could never have told me. Only history itself can convince you of such a truth.” The reader, although given a satisfying ending, gets a strong enough dose of European history to temper the usual comforts of the closing words.”

If you think the synopsis from Amazon is long, complicated and tedious, try reading the book! My mother loved the book and passed it on to some of her friends, who also liked it a lot. I just thought it was a huge drag. It just rambled on and on and on. The changes from one storyline to the next happened often in the beginning of the book – I kept putting it down a lot to read something else, because I was bored. By the time I picked it up again, I wouldn’t have a clue, whose story I was reading – the characters all sounded the same. About half way through the book I considered tossing it, but sheer stubbornness kept me reading. I finally finished it this morning, thank god! It finished on quite a bitter sweet note. Well, and it tried to leave you with a cliffhanger, of course. Sorry, not scary.
It’s a bestseller, obviously many people liked it. So don’t let me put you off, give it a try!

When I first started this book I had a hard time getting interested in it. Once I got to about the middle though things really picked up and I realized I was hooked on it! This book really inspired me to want to know more about history and the arts, and made me long to travel. This was a wonderful story, I can’t wait for more from Kostova!

This book was great! I loved every moment of it – from the mentor relationship between student and teacher (that few people understand), the characters, their adventures, and the history that Kostova brings into the novel. I never wanted to put it down and I was sad when it came to an end. The book draws you in and you want to rush through it to find out what will happen next. However, when you finish it you wish that you had prolonged your reading of it so that you could still be with the characters.