Every bit as beautiful as the Historian and exactly the sweeping history and mystery that I've come to expect from Elizabeth Kostova.

Very strong follow up - terrific novel. Great characters and multi dimensional plot line.

I remember holing up with Elizabeth Kostova’s debut, The Historian, and devouring the book over a single weekend. Kostova’s follow-up, The Swan Thieves, was just as captivating. Her newest book, The Shadow Land, proves that the common threads in Kostova’s novels are beautiful writing, a weaving of the past with the present, and mystery that propels the plot forward.

Alexandra Boyd has just arrived in Sofia, Bulgaria, when she finds herself on the steps of the wrong hotel. As she contemplates what to do, she helps an elderly woman into a car, holding onto her bags in the process. After the car drives away, she realizes that she has accidentally kept one of the lady’s bags, which contains an urn. The mystery of finding the woman (and her companions) sends Alexandra on a journey across Bulgaria and throughout history.

There are two intertwined mysteries in The Shadow Land. The first is the question of what happened to the woman and the two men traveling with her. This mystery helps unravel the second mystery: Who is the person in the urn, and what was their story? Alexandra’s accomplice is a cab driver, Bobby, who drives her around Bulgaria and helps her on her fact-finding mission. In the process, readers also learn the reason why Alexandra has chosen to go to Bulgaria and uncover details about her own sad past.

Kostova was inspired to write the novel after more than 20 visits to Bulgaria. Bulgaria is not a common setting for novels, and its history is not very well known by many readers, yet it is part of the larger history of World War II, Communism, and labor camps. The Shadow Land is a beautiful book with descriptions of both the beauty and horror of a lesser-known country and its past.

I liked this book for so many reasons. I am giving it 4.5 stars because of the depth of historical knowledge on Bulgaria and the communist state. I love historical fiction and the author weaves the mystery with the history with ease. I was taken in from the first few pages when the heroine finds finds herself with a mysterious group's suitcase and finds herself compelled to find them to return it. I know that many prefer the author's the first book, "The Historian", but I preferred "The Shadow Land" for it's steady pace and depth of story line. So many books today are based upon one shock after another that it is refreshing to have a story that has a thoughtful, taut, slow build.

*An honest review of this book was provided in exchange for an ARC. Thanks to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.

I received this book through Netgalley and I’m glad I did. It is a slow start but the second half moves full throttle. I enjoyed this book. It is a mystery with history of Bulgaria. I found learning about Bulgaria very interesting.

The first half of the book is about an American teacher, Alexandra, accidentally keeping a family’s urn of ashes. It is the journey of Alexandra and a taxi driver, Bobby, to locate the rightful owners. They go to the police station, a monastery, family relatives and other dwellings. The first half moves slowly but the pieces come together. Seeds of suspense are dropped at various locations. The second half of the book is more about the person in the urn, a musician, and his history. There is much information about labor camps in Bulgaria from 1944 – 1984.

Once you get to the halfway point, the book is hard to put down. Stick with it – it’s worth it.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed what was effectively a wild goose chase around Bulgaria. The story moved quickly and I was interested to see how it ended. I also enjoyed how the Author's Note at the end gave context to the story. I recommend this book!

The Shadow Land, Elizabeth, Kostova, Author; Barrie Kreinik, Fred Berman, Barbara Caruso, George Guidall, Narrators
It is springtime in 2008 when Alexandra Boyd arrives in Sofia, Bulgaria, to begin teaching at the Central English Institute. She looked forward to being there because she and her brother Jack had often played a game in which they picked a place they would love to travel to, and this was the place he had loved. After an argument with him, while hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains with their parents, he disappeared and was never found. At the time, he was 16, and she was 14 years old. Her thoughts of him are often complicated and emotional.
As the story unfolds over a period of several days, it alternates between her youthful memories of growing up in North Carolina and her present day experiences in Bulgaria. She is now 26 years old, and she is standing in front of a hotel in a country she does not know, where they speak a language she does not understand. She is in a quandary. Her taxi driver has taken her to the wrong place.
As she stood looking up the steps of this unknown, foreign hotel, she spied a few people having some difficulty descending. One of them was in a wheelchair and was quite infirm. A woman she presumed was his wife, stood behind him. A younger man, she presumed was their son, was trying to figure out how to negotiate the stairs with both of them and their luggage. Attracted by that handsome younger man’s demeanor, she offered to help and hurried to their sides. The younger man, Nevin, spoke some English. After their taxi pulled away, she discovered that she was still in possession of one of their bags, a bag which turned out to contain the remains of a cremation. Since Nevin had mentioned that they were going to a monastery, she assumed they were going there in order to bury the urn with the remains of someone called Stoyan Lazarov. She was determined to try and return the urn to them. With the help of another taxi driver, an enigmatic young man named Bobby, she begins her pursuit of the family.
The search for the rightful owners of the urn begins in earnest as they traverse many countrysides and roads in Bulgaria, in what seems to be an unending, unfruitful effort to return the bag and its contents to the Lazarovs. The search often seems to put them in danger. It also seems to endanger the others they have come in contact with who try to help them. Soon there are some violent and frightening moments.
Some parts of the book are much more interesting than others. The first half of the book seems to be about Alex and Bobby and their backgrounds. The second part is about the family that owns the urn and the man whose ashes are in the urn. It was the history of Bulgaria that drew me in and kept me interested when I might have given up on the book. There were several descriptions about the brutality of the Communists after they took over Bulgaria at the end of World War II. Their prison camps and the false accusations and charges presented against the accused will surely remind the reader of the very violence and ferocious viciousness and sadism of the Nazis that they had just defeated. Still, knowing that the Bulgarians had sided with the Nazis, at first, gave me mixed feelings of sympathy for their plight.
Eventually, all of the loose ends are knitted together and the mystery of the bag and its owners is resolved, but it takes a bit too long. The dialog of one of the main characters about his horrendous experience in captivity is too drawn out, too descriptive, and often repetitive. Also, since several characters are telling a piece of the background, it adds to the redundancy of certain parts of the story. I found Alexandra’s character to often be annoying. She tended to melodrama and overly emotional responses. Bobby, on the other hand, seemed more authentic and stable. As the story moves back and forth between the narratives of the different important characters, it also sometimes grew confusing as to where and when the action was taking place. Still, the author does have a way of painting visual images with her sentences which made the book a worthwhile read.
Except for the moments of overdone melodrama, the narrators did a very good job of portraying the individual characters, although a few times, the voice of a character changed suddenly and seemed to become a different character, although the character speaking had not actually changed. Perhaps the age of the character being presented had changed from young adult to older adult or the time had changed from the present to the past, but in those parts of the narrative, it was hard to determine what had just occurred!

This is a very detailed story. I was enjoying it but I found it to be very, very long. I was getting frustrated that I wasn't making a dent in the book. 80+ chapters i rough to get through when they are all so detailed. I put it down for now but am going to try to pick it up again.

The description of this book sounded right up my alley, historic novel meets contemporary mystery. However, this book felt discombobulated. It actually took me over four months to read it. I started it and put it down about five times. The beginning is quite slow.

The present plotline definitely needed the past one for the book to work but despite the lengthy length of this novel, the switching POVs made it hard for me to care much about any of the characters, present or past. I understand that certain POVs make you feel closer to the story, but there were so many first person POVs that it had the opposite effect for me. None of the voices were unique enough to stand out.

The info-dumping was strong in this book. Yes, it's part historical novel and thus needs a lot of context and description but I think the book could have been about 100 pages shorter, had it been more carefully edited. The present storyline felt very circular by the end, it was just a lot of pointless running and chasing. Tighter editing would have made the sense of urgency really pop.

The twist at the end, well it was easily foreseen from about half the book, both the political one and the one about one of the characters' parentage. The convenient ending of the villain felt, well, too convenient, too easy. It fell flat with me.

What did I like about the book? Elizabeth Kostova is definitely a talented writer, her descriptions can be very vivid, even if sometimes her prose is too purple. I loved learning about a dark period in history of a country we don't often read about.

Would I recommend this book? Yes, in the sense that it isn't a bad book by any means, but it is not a must.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House/Ballantine for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova

First Line: Sofia, the year 2008.

Summary: When Alexandra takes a summer job in Sofia, Bulgaria she thinks that it will be the perfect way to heal the loss of her brother who disappeared on a hiking trip. But things do not turn out the way she had planned. She meets a group of three people outside a hotel but when they go their separate ways she notices that she has kept one of their bags. Inside are human ashes. With the help of the friendly taxi driver, Bobby, she is determined to find the group and return the remains. Everything is not as easy as she expected when threats and warnings start to appear as they dig deeper into whose ashes are in the urn.

Highlights: I love the pieces near the end when you get to look into the life of Stoyan Lazarov. He details his time after the war and living in Communist controlled Bulgaria. The strength that he possesses is astounding. I have read a lot about prisoners during the Holocaust and it always scares me plus amazes me the will power and strength these people have.

Lowlights: The middle is slow moving as they are traveling around Bulgaria looking for the relatives of Stoyan. It was a lot of detail gathering and talking that leads up till the ending but it got long.

FYI: Read her other book, The Historian! Amazing read. But make sure you keep the lights on.

Great book, loved learning about another culture . Plot was evocative

his book takes place entirely in Bulgaria. It starts with an American woman, Alexandra Boyd, dropped off at the wrong hotel by a taxi that is now gone. She is trying to decide how to get another taxi and get to the hostel where she has a reservation when she steps up to stop an elderly woman from falling. The two men with her thank her before they get into their taxi. She asks permission to take their picture and they leave after she takes the picture. Only then does she discover she has mistakenly taken one of their bags. She opens it and discovers an urn of ashes.
The book goes back and forth between her efforts to return the urn and the arrest of the dead man in 1949 by the Bulgarian secret police on false charges. The narrative of the horrific labor camp to which Stoyan Lazarov is sent is not for a squeamish person. It reminds me of One day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which I read over 50 years ago. There are some sinister men following Alexandra and her taxi driver friend as she tries to return the urn
The two narratives do connect at the end of the book for a very satisfying ending.
This book brought back memories of my two months in Bulgaria, volunteering as a UN Sanctions Assistance Monitor in the summer of 1993 during the Bosnian war.
Some memories:
Shopska salad--greens. sliced cucumbers& tomatoes covered with shredded sheep's cheese
Doorways into shops with ribbons or bead from the top of the doorway to the floor.
Excellent and very cheap wine. I was at a restaurant with colleagues. I ordered a glass of wine. I spoke almost no Bulgarian. The waitress spoke very little English, but told me that I could not order a glass of wine. I must buy the whole boutelika, which turned out to be $2 for the bottle.
The Rila monastery, not mentioned in the book, but a UNESCO World Heritage site that I visited. Alexandra visits a fictional monastery driving through fictional mountain villages that are familiar to me.
Some quotes:
Fall of the Berlin wall "Actually, it was all to the credit of Pink Floyd. They built the wall and they made it fall down one little piece at a time."
Doorway "In the field beside them stood a doorway, all by itself--no house, no door--just the frame and a few concrete blocks."
Smile "That smile--so handsome it made the sun come out."
I am counting this for Bulgaria in my UN mystery challenge.
Violinist "He said the violin should be able to tell the truth and it should be able to cry."
An easy 4.5 stars. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me this book.

My heart was in my throat at the end of this book. Elizabeth Kostova, you are a brilliant author. The Shadow Land was a ride on an electrifying rollercoaster, and the way it all comes together in the end,
is gut wrenching. I loved this book. I love this author and have read everything she has written. This book goes into my best books ever read list. To follow Alexandra through Bulgaria with Bobby and Stoyan (the dog)..wow! Living through Stoyan, the musician, was another experience altogether. I felt every description, every emotion, every fear, every note played on his violin. Ms. Kostova brings characters of such richness into the hearts of her readers. One feels as if they are sitting right next to you, telling their stories. This is a book I will think about forever. Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the perusal. While lengthy, read every well written and glorious word.

Alexandra Boyd arrives in Sofia to teach English. When her cab driver drops her at the wrong hotel, she has a brief encounter with an elderly couple and their son. She ends up holding their bag which she later discovers contains an urn labeled as the remains of a man named Stoyan Lazarov. The story revolves around her attempts to find this family with the assistance of her new cab driver, Bobby.
While I enjoyed learning about Bulgaria, in particular during the communist oppression, I found the mystery chase to find the Lasarovi to get tedious. I liked the alternating chapters about Stoyan the most. I waited the entire book to find out how the story about Alexandra's missing or dead brother would connect and it never did.

I really struggled with how to review this novel. It's beautifully written, the characters are vivid, but I think I have to acknowledge that as a fast reader it shouldn't take me ages to read a book. I enjoyed this novel in parts but I'm not sure I can say I loved it or I would even recommend it. It felt as if I was torn between two books as I was reading it, and the author had made the decision to fit both stories into one. The novel jumps between two timelines, and I think both stories are fleshed out but they don't always transition smoothly between the two. Half of the book is about an American woman travelling through Bulgaria and becoming involved in the return of a lost urn and the other half of the book is the story of the dead man's life. Both stories deserve their due, although I did find the deceased man's story to be darker and ultimately more interesting.

Almost from the beginning of this book, I found there were too many things happening that I just had a hard time buying into. While I loved learning about a new place, I just couldn't get past my initial problems with the book and set it aside after 140 pages.

Although haven't finished this book, I give it 4 stars because I bought bought a paper copy to read and keep. I appreciate the writing of this author.

I enjoyed this book--possibly more than I enjoyed The Historian. It was very descriptive and flowed nicely. Bulgaria is a country and culture that I do not know too much about, so I enjoyed learning something new while having an intriguing story to go along with it. I really love how she is able to weave Bulgarian culture and history with the fictional parts. The story itself can be a bit of a stretch to the imagination and you will have to drop any rational thoughts you may have, such as going on a long cab journey with a stranger or even going to the extreme to return a lost bag like our main character did.

There is some point of view switching throughout, which got a bit awkward at times. I am not sure the "love" story part of it was really needed either. Almost felt like it was thrown in there as an afterthought. Neither of these though really spoiled my opinion of the book and I am still glad I got the chance to read it!

An ambitious, well plotted story of death, suffering and love in a strange land. A young woman, Alexandra, arrives in Bulgaria to work as an English as a second language teacher. After helping an elderly woman into a taxi and speaking with her son, she discovers she has an additional package among her luggage. It turns out to be an urn containing the ashes of a family member. By the time she realizes she has it, the family has disappeared and she is in another cab heading toward her accommodations. Thus starts an adventure covering time and love and death over many years.

Alexandra and her cab driver, Bobby, search together to find the missing family. Their journey is filled with new people, beautiful scenery, and some very scary fellows. Their search for answers bring us from modern day Bulgaria back through time to an unstable country ruled by fear and corruption. Ms. Kastova’s descriptions of the surrounding countryside comes to life as we travel through the Shadow Land.

I first encountered Elizabeth Kostova when I tackled The Historian ages ago. The tome still sits on my bookshelf. I was less than thrilled with her second novel, The Swan Thieves and as a result, I approached requesting The Shadow Land with a bit of trepidation.

Within two chapters, I was sucked into The Shadow Land. Within two days, I was 50% complete with a close to five hundred-page novel. The story, the characters and the scenery were magnificent. Kostova does a beautiful job describing the scents and sounds of Bulgaria. I could see, feel, hear and smell the country. By the end of the novel, I want to visit Bulgaria and experience it for myself. So score one for Kostova for taking me mentally to a country I never before considered visiting.

The story itself takes two paths. In the present we follow Alexandra, a troubled American travelling to Bulgaria for a teaching job when she is unexpectedly thrown into a life threatening situation. Her journey, from page one to the last, pulls her out of her shell and helps her to see life in a new light. Her journey and her forced reliance on strangers to complete her journey teaches a wonderful lesson. Sometimes we get wrapped up in our own problems and issues that we forget that others might be able to offer some comfort or share in an experience that will allow us to understand ourselves and/or the world better.

The second path is in the past following a doomed violinist in an Eastern-Bloc country post World War II. And I couldn’t help but compare this novel with The Last Lament and since both novels take place during a similar time period. For some reason, I have more of a connection to Stoyan’s story in The Shadow Land than Aliki’s story in The Last Lament.

Stoyan’s story is only told in the present tense as it happens to him. Perhaps this, coupled with the fact that Stoyan is an adult vs. Aliki’s being an adult reflecting back on the past provided a “real-time” connection with The Shadow Land. Stoyan understood more (or as much as you could during the Communist rule in eastern Europe) the implications of his actions or inactions at the time. There were also more breadcrumbs in the story to lead to the resolution of the mystery.

Only two things stand out as issues.

1) What was the point of Alexandra’s brother’s disappearance in the opening chapters?
2) The ending, compared to the rest of the book, was just a little perfect, somewhat lackluster and not as strongly written as the rest of the novel.

The book, as a whole, was well written as Kostova managed to pull me running through a rather lengthy emotional novel in less than a week. Since the rest of the story was so tightly woven, I was hoping for a bit more punch at the end.