The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

Fiction

Now this is a great book! I thoroughly enjoyed reading all 642 pages while ignoring my housework. Kostova does an admirable job of making the life of a historian seem adventurous, filled with exotic travels, exciting, and even dangerous! Heck, if I had read this in college, maybe I would have wanted to go on to graduate work in History, and actually become a historian. Ahh, what might have been . . . . No, really, I have no regrets.

The Historian is a tale of a man, his daughter, and his mentor, who all get mixed up in researching the life of Vlad the Impaler. He is the source of the Count Dracula legend. Or is it really a legend? Kostova blends fact and fantasy so well, that the reader will have a hard time distinguishing the truth.

One thing that interests me: the main characters all modern, atheist, and start out refusing to believe in garlic and crosses as a means of repelling vampires. As they each progress further into danger, they end up using these "medieval" charms as they become convinced of the existence of the evil they are fighting. In my opinion, the author never really resolves this issue. If you know there is evil, and a Christian cross wards it off, doesn't that mean that an opposite force to that evil (ie. God) does exist? I was disappointed that the characters, for all of their meticulous historical research, ignored the possibility of Christ. I think that Kostova could have handled it without relegating her novel to be published by the Christain press.

Overall it's extremely well-written, and quite a page-turner. I highly recommend it.