Book Log 2013 #5: The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

If you're looking for the anti-Twilight book about vampires, this is probably it (other than, you know, Dracula). Told mostly in flashback (or whatever one would call flashbacks based primarily on letters written decades before), we follow a teenaged girl (who grows up to be the narrator), as she is dragged across Europe by her father, an academic turned peacenik whose frequent trips to the Balkans for work provide great cover for his greatest personal interest - the hunt to find Vlad the Impaler, who he believes is still alive (or at least not dead).

Whether or not this book works for you will depend on how patient you are with the story being told by letters. The vast majority of the action takes place in letters written by the narrator's father or by his thesis adviser, whose interest in Vlad and eventual disappearance is what sets the dad on the same trail. Most of the book's suspense also comes through the way the letters present information, so if you're looking for epic battles with werewolves or whatever this is going to be 900+ pages of disappointment.

For such a long book I found it didn't drag as often as you'd expect, and that the changes in location and introduction of characters helped keep the story from getting stale. There's also the running theme about the desire for knowledge and the lengths to which it drives people, on top of the usual vampiric themes of good versus evil (in both general and religious contexts), all of which are well presented. Certainly worth a read if you didn't get to it when it originally came out, and if you have the time to dedicate to a longer book.