I heaved this handsome, titanic novel off the shelf with the expectation that it would be an interesting bit of historical fiction/folklore that would provide me with a long, satisfying reading experience. All I got was "long." Heavy-handed, endless passages do little to either move the story along or help paint the picture of the vampire-chasers' adventures.Rather, the hundreds of descriptive pages in between plot points do little to build the suspense and one could actually forget it's conceived to be a thriller in the first place. While it is obvious that the author has a gift for language and detail, I (finally) finished this opus questioning her overall storytelling ability. Best for die-hard Drac fans, methinks.