Those of you who have known me for a long time may want to sit down for this.

Yes, I really am reviewing a vampire novel.

And it was scary! Not in the least bit campy, a la Buffy, which is normally the only way I like my horror.

And I liked it!!!

I read a pre-release review of this somewhere a month or so ago, and it caught my attention. So when I ran out of reading material in the Chicago airport last week, it practically threw itself into my hands.

In the context of this book, that’s extra creepy.

You see, almost all of the main characters in Kostova’s novel are academics who mysteriously receive antique books that are blank, except for the presence of an ominous woodcut dragon figure in the center pages.

Kostova has done one of my favorite things authors do — she’s written an immensely complex book that weaves in and out of time and between narrators, a la Neal Stephenson.

The main narrators are an American academic who has become a diplomat and lives in Holland, and his teenage daughter. What happened to her mother is one of the mysteries that unfolds in the tale, which ranges from the US to London, the south of France, cold-war era Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Istanbul. It includes tales of political intrigue, religion, doomed romance, family tradition and librarians visited by tragedy.

And of course, Dracula and his minions.

If you’re looking for a good long novel to really sink your teeth into (sorry! I just couldn’t help it), I recommend the 642 pages of The Historian. Even if you don’t like vampire novels.