This, of course, sounds like a book right up my alley, and I did really enjoy it, but it’s probably not what you’d expect.  The debut novel of Elizabeth Kotova (I think that’s right), it’s about a woman, a historian, writing about her father, mother, herself, and sundry others in the search for the truth about Vlad Tepes – Vlad the Impaler – Vlad Dracul, or Dracula.  I would be fascinated to know just how many of the documents she talks about are actually real, and the archives and museums and information in general ditto.

It’s really interestingly written:  much of it is The Historian (mild spoiler here:  major frustration for me – you never actually find out her name!!) reproducing her father’s letters and diaries, and those of a couple of other people.  So it has a few different narratives in there, but all weaving together to form the one great narrative, looking for Dracula.

It could have been gory, sensationalist, too-Gothic or just plain scary, but it’s not.  It’s great.  It really is about history, in lots of different ways, and it is done exceptionally well.  It’s just over 600 pages long, and I read it in four days (without school distracting me) – because I had to, and because it really was that enthralling.