The Historian by Elizabeth KostovaMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
Boy did I get suckered into this one. I remember when this came out; it was everywhere. I'd just had a baby so I glanced at it several times and thought "That would be a fun DaVinci Code kind of read when I have time someday." Never picked it up. Never even looked very carefully at the cover.
Then we bought a Nook so that we could travel with our precociously well-read 8 year old without hauling a steamer trunk of books along with us. I was perusing the e-books available at the library and this popped up. "Perfect!" I thought. "I'll read this on vacation!"
But wait. It's about VAMPIRES?
How the hell could I have missed that?
I'm about 2/3rds of the way through; finding it ponderous, convoluted and stodgy but still engaging because of Kostova's ability to evoke a sense of place. You can almost smell Istanbul. In a good way.
But what editor anywhere thought it would be a good idea to faithfully fictionalize a scholarly article about a 14th century travel log? Zzzzzzzz.
And, wait. Vampires? Really?
And now I'm done and feel the need to edit the whole damn thing so that it has a sense of pacing and story arch.
And, really? One lucky shot was enough?
BUT I did, in fact, read the whole thing, so that's saying something, I suppose.
View all my reviews
