Review: The Historian

THIS BOOK adhjhgfddasdfhjkjhgfd

It melds history and literature, my two great loves, taking a historical approach to the Dracula story. Few people actually know that Vlad Tepys- Vlad Dracula- was a real person who truly did horrors to tens of thousands of people over the course of twenty, twenty-five years.

This story tells three stories simultaneously- the story of a man searching for Dracula in the 1930s, the story of his mentee searching for him in the 1950s and 60s, and the story of the mentee’s daughter searching for her father in the 1970s. It revolves around the finding of four books, each with a dragon emblazoned across the middle, the symbol of the historical Order of the Dragon. It leads scholars on a fevered, near-obsessive, cross-Europe hunt for the man that was also a monster. The stakes rise with the realization that Vlad is, indeed, alive and most certainly a vampire.

It reads like an autobiography. The dedication, the author’s note, it being told in the first person, AND the fact that we never know the name of the main protagonist- the young girl- it all could very well add up to be such. There were times that I was convinced of its truth, even though it’s obviously fiction. It’s so academic that you do learn a good deal about Vlad Tepys through the use of extensive research done by both the author and the characters. The romances were not the main point of the book, and that was excellent- too much and it would have ruined the story altogether, too little and it just wouldn’t be so realistic. I would probably call this setting-driven, as opposed to plot- or character-driven, but it manages to do that without becoming dry or boring as too many setting-driven books can be.

The pure old-academia air of this book made it irresistible for me, and while it definitely isn’t for everyone (if you don’t like history don’t even pick this up. You’ll hate it. If you like history, though… *Cheshire cat grin*), but oh my goodness I loved it so much.

Goodreads Review