The Historian

The Historian is a vampire book unlike any other vampire book I have read. One Hint: the vampires don't glitter. For once, the vampires are not the subject of the romance. For once it isn't a romance, its an actual horror story. Unique! Its more of a mystery novel than anything though, the solid fact that vampires exist isnt believed until 1/3 of the way through the novel, the main characters are regularly people with no inclination to believe in the supernatural at all, so when they are confronted with it...its scary. When unromanticised, vampires are actually horrifying. The premis is that all vampires are escendents of Vlad 'The Impaler' Ţepeş, whos very real and grotestque history is explained throughout the book. Halfway through the novel, before any contact had been made with a vampire, simply finding out that Vlad still exists is terrifying.

The characters travel around the world, often a decade or so after each other, to uncover the truth and find the character that connects them all, the historian, who plays granfather to the main character, mentor to her father and father to her mom. The description of their destinations is beautiful, and the charqacterization is realistic.the author created a real portrayal of people would react to learning of the existence of vampires. On the bad side, for me the book really dragged. It seemed to inch along where it should have been flying, and I still have yet to finish it. I am going to, because it does have its hooks in me, but it might take awhile.