The Historian

It's always a sad triumph when you finish a good book. Goodbye "The Historian", thank you for taking me to Istanbul, Bulgaria, France, on train rides, through fire walking, crypts and wondrous libraries. I'll miss those colorful dreams you gave me, even the scary ones.

One of the places that stayed with me the most is Istanbul. The writing was perfectly descriptive, not too much so that it would bore me, but just right that I could picture everything in my mind the way it should be. And now I can't stop thinking about Istanbul and all its treasures.

Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

"the only thing we could do was to turn our feet toward our one landmark, the Hagia Sophia, orginally the great Byzantine Chruch of Saint Sophia. And once we drew near it, it was impossible for us not to enter. The gates were open and the huge sanctuary pulled us in among the other tourists as if we rode a wave into a cavern. For fourteen hundred years, I reflected, pilgrims had been drawn into it, just as we were now. inside, I walked slowly to the center and craned my head back to see that vast, divine space with its famous whirling shields covered with Arabic calligraphy in the upper corners, mosque overlaying church, church overlaying the ruins of the ancient world. it arched far, far above us, replicating the Byzantine cosmos. I could hardly belive I was there. I was stunned by it.
--Suddenly, in this echoing house of Byzantium - one of the wonders of history- my spirit leaped out of its confines. I knew in that instant that, whatever happened, I could never go back to my old constraints. I wanted to follow life upward, to expand with it outward, the way this enormous interiors swelled upward and outward. My heart swelled with it. "

It's about this teenage girl who starts discovering secrets her father has long tried to keep from her. It's a coming-of-age tale, realizing things aren't quite the way you imagined growing up....seeing the harsh truths of history. The character looming over the characters and the reader is Vlad III Tepes ("the Impaler"), whom Bram Stoker's Dracula was based upon, is more frightful than any blood-sucking vampire. Dracula actually means "son of Dracul", because his father was prominent in the Order of the Dragon. Believe me, google him and you'll earn yourself an unhealthy obsession. He was a scholar, an incredibly intelligent man yet ruthless beyond belief. This man was real, of human flesh, human heart and soul did unbelievable atrocious things such as: roasting people alive, boiling people, skinning the feet of thieves and have goat lick salt off their feet, feeding people flesh from a loved one. His main thing was impalement. Not only would he use it in battle, but he would impale infants to their mother's body. The impalement was not the type you see in movies, the way vampires get staked..... he wanted the victim to be aware of the situation, to feel the pain, the stake would go in through one end of the body and out through the mouth. They might last hours, or days and even dead they'd stay up there for however long Vlad III wanted. Thinking about this man, what he did, not just him, but all the other shameful acts humanity has committed. It's hard to get past it and to know how history has a tendency to repeat itself in one form or another