"The Historian"

You are indeed lucky! Today my favorite BOTS of last summer is on sale at a Bargain Price of 7.99 from Amazon for the hardcover. Now, some of you won't - because you travel or are tight on space - but I actually like this book in hardcover. It is a weighty book and it is a dark tale.... so having heft in the physical book lends a certain amount of atmosphere to this novel. Not that it needs much. Consider the back cover...

"My Dear and Unfortunate Successor : It is with regret that I imagine you, whoever you are, reading the account I must put down here. The regret is partly for myself - because I will surely be at least in trouble, maybe dead, or perhaps worse, if this is in your hands
. But my regret is also for you, my yet-unknown friend, because only by someone who needs such vile information will this letter someday be read. If you are not my successor in some other sense, you will soon be my heir-and I feel sorrow at bequeathing to another human being my own, perhaps unbelievable, experience of evil. Why I myself inherited it I don't know, but I hope to discover that fact, eventually-perhaps in the course of writing to you or perhaps in the course of further events...."

Set in multiple time lines (something I am drawn to) this novel is of a father, his mentor, and his daughter all seeking answers to the age old fable of Dracula. Now I am NOT a vampire person. I have tried a little of this and a little of that but I never really enjoyed that scene. What I love about this book is not the vampire possibilities but the constant tension they created in the storyline as you move from decades past to countries far away. You are always worrying and always wondering, always fearing for the characters in all three time lines as the pages turn closer to a nexus. For a book that was not particularly fast paced, I was amazed at how much, once begun, I felt I needed to read this book. I admit, I did more than 1 lunch from a drive-thru, sitting in my car, reading this book in the parking lot. The author's voice is lovely and compelling and her research seems quite complete (with the caveat that I have not been to most of the countries involved and certainly not during the time lines involved). Should you be willing to give it a try, compelled perhaps by the back cover text as I was, I doubt you will be disappointed.