The Historian

Initially, I had this rated more highly, but upon further reflection, I'm downgrading it a bit. I think I'm landing it on being a book that, despite my enjoying it very much while I was reading it, isn't really very good. Spoilers ahead.

It's fun while it's going on. The story is told in three different decades, the 1930's, 50's, and 70's, as historian Rossi, then his student Paul and daughter Helen, and finally their daughter pursue Dracula. There's a search for the tomb of Vlad Tepes, menacing vampiric visitations, multiple interesting European settings, an adventure that feels half vampire novel and half cold war spy story, a heretical order of medieval monks, an Ottoman secret society devoted to killing Dracula, and lots of mysteries. The problem is, none of it ever really hangs together.

As a prime example, the book spends a lot of time extremely concerned with a series of maps that purportedly show the location of Dracula's tomb. Our protagonists are constantly worried that they might be lost, worried that they might fall into the wrong hands, intrigued by the warnings inscribed around their borders and by the mysterious legend “Reader, awaken him with a word” written on the most detailed one. They spend a ton of time chasing after them, protecting them, copying them, wondering where they came from. Their ultimate significance? Zero. The protagonists arrive at the valley where the tomb is located, not by using the maps, but by following an unrelated lead (someone tells them that they learned the lyrics to a folk song that appears to reference Dracula in a particular valley). As they arrive, one observes that the valley sort of resembles the one on the map, and then never brings it up again. They discover the location of the tomb not by checking where within the valley the maps show it to be located but, again, by following an entirely different lead (they coincidentally arrive just in time for a peasant festival during which a religious icon that appears to reference Dracula is displayed, then break into the basement of the church where it is stored). When you hang a gun over the mantle in the first act, and then your characters spend the majority of the second act talking about that gun, taking it down to polish it, verifying that ammo for it is close at hand, etc., then, inevitably, in the third act, someone will get smacked over the head with the fireplace poker, I guess.

Similarly, Dracula's secret plot turns out to be...lame? Also, incoherent? As far as I can piece it together, it goes:

1) Entice promising academics by giving them, under mysterious circumstances, an old book, blank except for a ‘DRAKULYA' woodcarving.

2) When these academics begin researching any topic related to Dracula, intimidate them, using means up to and including deadly violence against people close to them, until they stop. I suppose we can infer that this is meant as a test to see which among them are really serious about the research, but that's never explicitly stated, or even strongly implied, and, further, it makes no sense, given who is actually chosen.

3) Eventually, one of these academics will demonstrate their worth. That one will then be spirited away to be converted to vampirism and spend eternity...uhhh...cataloging Dracula's library? That's seriously the endgame. Dracula has an extensive collection of antique books and needs help organizing them.

So...what? And why? In the earliest timeline, Rossi receives one of these little books, gets pretty close to finding the tomb, has his mind partially wiped by Dracula for some reason, and gives up. In the middle timeline, Paul is given his book, tells his academic advisor Rossi about it, Rossi admits that he once pursued this quest as well, and then Rossi is more or less immediately abducted and taken away to organize Dracula's card catalog. What the hell, Dracula? Did you forget about Rossi in the intervening twenty years? Did you change your mind about him? Was saying, “Oh, yeah, I used to research Dracula too” the final test?

Further, how is Dracula managing all this book distribution, grad student intimidation, and abduction? Is he zipping back and forth across the Atlantic himself to do it in person? Does he have a network of minions? We only ever meet one minion, referred to as the Evil Librarian by our protagonists, and this guy constantly shows up no matter what continent we're on. And what's his deal anyway? He's explicitly not a vampire, since he walks around in broad daylight, yet he bites Helen, to apparent supernatural effect. He sometimes seems to be working for Dracula, sometimes at cross purposes with Dracula, as he's angry that Rossi was chosen instead of him. Why does Dracula even need Rossi when this dude is ready and willing to be his librarian of the night?

Finally, less a complaint and more just something that amused me, is the fact that the entire story is told as a series of conversations Paul is having with and, later, letters he has written to, his daughter. Incredibly long, exhaustively detailed conversations and letters. I assume we're just sort of supposed to imagine that she starts reading a letter, then our mental image gets blurry and fades to Paul's first person perspective, and that everything we see there isn't explicitly in the letter, but I prefer to imagine Paul laying out in excruciating detail for his daughter the exact content of every meal he ate on a trip he took twenty years ago, along with every horny thought he ever had about her mother.