Bear Flag Blog

I finished Sovereign on the way out to Gananoque (via Chicago and Syracuse), so on the way back I had to pick up something from the airport bookstore, and wound up with The Historian, which is actually a novel about Dracula.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova - 7/10
This book was basically baroque description in search of a plot. The action in this 900+ page excursion happens pretty much solely in the last ten pages. No, seriously. All the rest is varying forms of reading about Dracula, meeting people and talking about Dracula, and lots and lots of travel to places in Europe that have one or another vague association with Dracula. All while under an air of constant menace from Dracula, which is frankly rather inexplicable. It was a decent read but Ms. Kostova needs to incorporate more actual plot development before I'll pick up another novel of hers.

1634: The Baltic War by David Weber and Eric Flint - 7/10
Ironically, 1634: The Baltic War suffers from exactly the same problem as does The Historian - there's a single major event in the book, it happens at the very end, the entire book is spent talking about that event, and when it happens it's over in an eyeblink and seems ridiculously anticlimactic. I am a major fan of alternate history. I enjoyed 1632 greatly; but the follow-ons degraded in interest until after 1635: Cannon Law (which was released first) I gave up in boredom. The Baltic War did not reverse that trend.