The great thing about reading outside your comfort zone is finding yourself in places and times you never thought you would, and learning from them anyway. The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova, is certainly not a book I would have chosen on my own, nor expected to find interesting. And yet I enjoyed the trip!
As part of my Novel Destination Journey, I just traveled through Eastern Europe, including Turkey, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. The time machine was in play, so I experienced cultures, landscapes and legends from the mid-fifteenth century to 1975. The Historian is a fascinating puzzle through time.
If you are a historian at heart, you will enjoy following the characters of The Historian through various ages, locations and societies on a quest to shed light on a legend. If you have a passion for travel, you will enjoy the descriptive passages about the landscapes, people and cultures. If you prefer thrillers or mysteries, you will enjoy the suspense of The Historian. Elizabeth Kostova hits it all!
The quest is this (And this is why I would never have picked this book up at random:) To discover, and uncover, as much as possible about Vlad the Impaler, aka Dracula, and separate fact from fiction, history from legend. Was he really a vampire, or was he part of a secret society called The Order of the Dragon that has survived into modern times? Join the quest and discover the past, or maybe the present, for yourself.
As for me, I’m off to Japan!
