Post by Melissa Kane on Feb 17, 2007 12:28:20 GMT
Right now, I'm reading "The Historian" by Elizbeth Kostova, a 704 page book which explores how things might have been had Vlad Dracul, the historical prince of Wllachia who was the scourge of the Ottoman Empire and the focus of the Dracula legends, been a real vampire.
Told for the points of view of three historians from different times (a modern-ish female historian, her father, named Pau and her father's mentor, Profssor Rossi) all of whom receive a mayterious and potentially dangerous book bearing the dragon symbol of the Dracula family.
I have to admit I had grave reservations (See what I did there? a lil pun for ya! Hehe!) when I started reading this book. The first 191 pages are like wading through treacle - they feel like very hard reading with all the details, perspective changes (all three historians are telling the story at this point) and overlong passages of reference materials the characters used to try to aid in their collective quest. As a child, the girl discovers a book and letters of her father's and he haltingly begins telling her the story of his mentor's disappearance, Rossi's research and the hazard placed in his way by an unseen and dangerous force. If this sounds complicated, it is!
The second third of the book (pages 193-449) sees the female historian (I haven't found her name as her segments are told in the first person), as a young girl, discovering that her father has gone missing and setting off across Europe with only her father's half told story and his private letters to guide her and her chivalrous travelling companion. This is where the story begins to flow faster and become more intriguing. Gone are Rossi's diary entries and in their place are Paul's letters to his daughter explaining his discoveries and a little of his personal life which his dearest child did not know. There are again the long and rambling passages of research found just after the end of the First World War when Paul and his companion, Helen, are travelling Europe in search of the still missing Rossi and the burial place of Vlad Dracula.
I've just begun the last third of the book (page 451 onward) and the information in the letters & in the girl's own time have become dangerous and far more frightening that it was first believed. By this time, the story is hurrying toward a no-doubt fascinating conclusion and, still stuck in Paul' letters, trouble is brewing. In his daughter's account, things are also taking a turn for the sinister, with her discovery of her father's lodging place and his apparently hasty exit from it....
More when I finish reading...
'Lissa.
Told for the points of view of three historians from different times (a modern-ish female historian, her father, named Pau and her father's mentor, Profssor Rossi) all of whom receive a mayterious and potentially dangerous book bearing the dragon symbol of the Dracula family.
I have to admit I had grave reservations (See what I did there? a lil pun for ya! Hehe!) when I started reading this book. The first 191 pages are like wading through treacle - they feel like very hard reading with all the details, perspective changes (all three historians are telling the story at this point) and overlong passages of reference materials the characters used to try to aid in their collective quest. As a child, the girl discovers a book and letters of her father's and he haltingly begins telling her the story of his mentor's disappearance, Rossi's research and the hazard placed in his way by an unseen and dangerous force. If this sounds complicated, it is!
The second third of the book (pages 193-449) sees the female historian (I haven't found her name as her segments are told in the first person), as a young girl, discovering that her father has gone missing and setting off across Europe with only her father's half told story and his private letters to guide her and her chivalrous travelling companion. This is where the story begins to flow faster and become more intriguing. Gone are Rossi's diary entries and in their place are Paul's letters to his daughter explaining his discoveries and a little of his personal life which his dearest child did not know. There are again the long and rambling passages of research found just after the end of the First World War when Paul and his companion, Helen, are travelling Europe in search of the still missing Rossi and the burial place of Vlad Dracula.
I've just begun the last third of the book (page 451 onward) and the information in the letters & in the girl's own time have become dangerous and far more frightening that it was first believed. By this time, the story is hurrying toward a no-doubt fascinating conclusion and, still stuck in Paul' letters, trouble is brewing. In his daughter's account, things are also taking a turn for the sinister, with her discovery of her father's lodging place and his apparently hasty exit from it....
More when I finish reading...
'Lissa.