I just finished reading Elizabeth Kostova’s The Swan Thieves. It’s a good book. I recommend it. Really, you should read it. I gave it 4 stars on Good Reads. I give 4 stars to lots of books I would truly hope others might pick up and read. So there you go. Read The Swan Thieves for yourself.
I, however, am so busy being annoyed that this book is not The Historian that I’m not really sure how much I can praise it. The Historian I have loved. The Historian left me chilled to the bone and wanting more. The Historian is a perfect 21st Century imitation and continuation of the tone and style and lyrically frightening thrills of the 19th Century Dracula.
The Swan Thieves is by the same author. I should know better than to make comparisons. I should let each book stand on its own. I should appreciate the deftness with which multiple stories of hopeless obsession are interwoven into the framework of a psychiatrist attempting to help his patient.
And it’s true. There is deftness of craft here.
What there isn’t is my own sense of being awestruck by what I’ve just read.
Sorry, second book by a fantastic writer. I like you well enough, but you just aren’t my new best friend.
