Robyn S. (handyrae) reviewed on 1/25/2010 + 6 more book reviews

Very little happens in the almost 700 pages of The Historian. The story is told through three generations of historians as they travel through Europe searching for the lost tomb of Vlad Tepes, better known as Dracula. The plot proceeds at a snail's pace and the characters are barely developed past the rather two-dimensional nature with which they are introduced. What kept me going for the first 200 pages was Elizabeth Kostova's wonderful writing style, and after that I continued reading because I thought surely with all the slow build-up and fact finding, the book had to be going somewhere extraordinary. I was wrong. By the time the protagonists reach the end of their search (well after page 600), I was disappointed at how anti-climactic it all was. The Historian will serve as a personal reminder as to why I rarely devote my time to finishing novels that seem lackluster from the beginning.

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