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."

My own comments, once I've read the book. Might become a bookray for Club VLAD (see my bookshelf for a link).

Will be a bookray, once I have finished it. So far the shipping order is this:

Shawnna, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA, shipping US preferred
Rrrcaron, Lancaster, New Hampshire, USA, shipping anywhere
safrolistics, Coventry, UK, shipping in the UK only
Cross-patch, Leicester, UK, shipping UK/Europe> - asked to be skipped, has another copy already
LindyLouMac, Vetralla, Italy, shipping within the EU - asked to be removed.

I will kept looking for someone willing to post this to Australia for BellaMack. If it should ever make it down under in its travels, please remember her!

BellaMack, Tasmania, shipping in Australia

Please be considerate and try not to keep the book any longer than 4 to 6 weeks.
Please journal it, when you receive it and let us know, once you sent it on.
A little comment how you liked it would be much apppreciated!
Please also check with the next one in line, if they still want it, before sending it on.
And most of all, have fun!

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!

My book #3 in 2007, first published in 2005; 817 pages. Total for 2007: 1.605 pages. Off to Shawnna in the US in a few days.

Off to the US, enjoy!

I just got home from a two week vacation and this book was waiting for me. I have one to read befobut it won't take long!
Ruth

Although it took me much longer to read the book than I had expected(it was a huge book!)I enjoyed the read.I really enjoyed the visits to all the monastaries throughout the read, and I was almost convinced that Dracula was a real historical figure. The book was that convincingto me. Am pming the next inline and will get this book on the move as soon as possible. Thanks, for sharing!
Ruth

Hello from Coventry, UK, where this book has now travelled to.....
As per usual, I've just started a HUGE book, so don't know how long I'll be reading that before I get round to reading THIS huge book!!!!!

Really couldn't get into this book, it was just too long and boring!!!!
And now I'm not sure where it's supposed to be going to next, as the next person on the list has dropped out.....!

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