The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova is a historical novel that is hidden behind the thin veil of a suspenseful thriller. Kostovas debut novel, The Historian was heralded and her second novel The Swan Thieves met lukewarm reviews. The Shadow Land is her third book.

Alexandra Boyd, a young American woman is taking a new post in the country of Bulgaria as a teacher. She is hoping that moving to another country could help her put behind her the loss of her brother and the disintegration of her family. Something that she has never truly recovered from. Soon after arriving in Sofia, Bulgaria, Alexandra finds herself helping an elderly couple into a taxi. But too late, she realizes that one of their bags had gotten mixed up with hers and now they are gone. When she opens the bag she is horrified that it contains the ashes of a deceased man. She has the remains of one of the family's members, a man named Stoyan Lazarov. With the help of a young taxi driver she goes in search of the family, in a country where secrets are kept and people distrust.

"...The changes?' Alexandra was still eating her salad, which was good.
'In 1989, when out communist dictator was deposed. And our change to democracy, the next year-or at least to a new kind of capitalism,' he said. 'First we had the Turks, then we had the Russians, and now we have Coca-Cola'. She got the sense that none of these things had worked out very well, in his opinion. 'We have not solved our other problems, either..."

The quest to deliver Stoyan's remains to his family quickly turns into much more and the past of this country and its present collide in violence and hidden secrets. Who was Stoyan Lazarov and why was the life of the quiet violinist of such interest to a dark and cruel government. Soon Alexandra realizes that she is in danger and the choices of whom she trusts will be life and death decisions.

"...There was a moment of complete unreality, and he actually turned his head away and looked back into the hall, because he could not register what he was seeing. Velizar Gishev was in the kitchen, but he lay on the floor on what looked like a red blanket; his wife lay next to him, and their son lay beside her with his legs thrown awkwardly apart. The blanket had soaked into their clothes. There was a gun beside Velizar's hand, just clear of the spreading red, an old gun of the sort people's great-grandfathers left behind, to be displayed in a parlor cabinet. Except that since the Revolution no one was allowed to have one, even without bullets, even to display. Stoyan saw again that velvet edge on the cuff of Velizar's jacket, except that now it rested next to a gun...
Then Stoyan saw that the back door stood ajar, too, and there were two figures moving in the tiny walled garden. An acrid smell rose all around him. He felt he should go away, leave at once, but he hovered at the edge of the kitchen, where the seep of blood did not reach his feet..."

Stoyan Lazarov's life is one of tragedy and survival. A peaceful man whose world is filled with oppression and death. Stoyan must survive the upheaval in his country and to do so he must accept the corruption and evil he witnesses. But the cost may be too much for one man to live with and it is in death that the life of Stoyan Lazarov speaks out. A voice that is at once enlightening and dangerous.

I loved Kostova's first novel the Historian and did not follow the consensus that the Swan Thieves was not a good novel. I enjoyed it as well, but with The Shadow Land I cannot say that I found this one to anything as good as the prior two.

As a historical novel of the country of Bulgaria and its people, The Shadow Land does succeed. The false promises of Socialism and Communism has ruined and oppressed the people of this historic country. Had it been told in that manner then the tale may have been more interesting but the issue I had with The Shadow Land is its main character. Not Stoyan Lazarov, but Alexandra Boyd. And my question with this character is why? Why is she here? What purpose does she serve?

The character of Alexandra simply, in comparison to the richness of the Bulgarian characters is a vast void of disbelief. This seemingly intelligent young American woman would leave her family and country behind and everything she knows to travel to an Eastern European country she knows so little about. The traumatic event, the disappearance of her brother when she was a teenage girl; a brother who had wanted to run away and had tired of his small town and small life. But telling him, in an argument, to get lost somehow makes it her fault that he disappeared? Then to trust a strange young man with her life and her quest to find Lazarov's family. That to embark on this quest itself is incredulous and there is nothing about Alexandra that makes one feel that she would do so.

It is almost as if someone looked at this novel and said, "...We better put a pretty young white American girl in here or no one will want to read it..."

And that is really too bad because the tale of Stoyan Lazarov and the tragic history of Bulgaria is a story that is very much worth listening to.

I LOVED "The Historian". I did not enjoy this story. I made it to about a little under a quarter and decided to stop. I just couldn't get into the story of the brother.

I really liked this authors other works, but this one just seemed ok to me. Got bored and really struggled to get through it.

Going back in time and then coming back to present times in telling a story is always fascinating. You compare the then and now and there is always a link, a sense of continuity - and it is always very intriguing how small clues lead us from one story to the next going over decades in time and becoming a cohesive whole.

This was part of the mystery of this novel. Alexandra is a young English teacher, recently arrived in Sofia on an assignment. Her main focus is however to get over the heart rending loss of her brother in rather cryptic circumstances. She is disassociated from her parents as well and feels very much alone. She feels a new start in a new place will help. She did not take into account that she will be left with the ashes of a person who has died and without any knowledge of how to get them back to their rightful owners.

Taking convoluted journeys throughout Bulgaria, going from pillar to post to try to track the owners and in the process uncovering a massive story of corruption, fraud and terror during a dark period in Bulgarian history is the major part of the story. It is quite comprehensive history very well detailed and descriptive and though particularly horrifying in its aggression is a matter of fact telling of what actually happened without sugar coating it.

Not an easy history lesson to follow on but history it is and however unpalatable it is part of the story.

Alexandra's coming of age is part of the more pleasant aspects of the story.

Goodreads and Amazon review posted on 13/8/2017. Review on my blog end November. Also linked to my FB page.

There’s a germ of a good idea at the heart of this overplotted novel, but it relies so much on unlikely coincidences and incredible situations that I soon lost patience with it. It opens with the arrival of young American woman Alexandra Boyd in Sofia, Bulgaria where she plans to teach English. For some reason no one meets her at the airport (would not an employee from the language school meet her?) and she has to make her own way to her hostel. Unfortunately the taxi takes her to the wrong place where she encounters a trio of strangers and ends up – with no rationale that I could see – with a piece of their luggage. An urn of someone’s remains. Naturally (?) she decides to go a trek to reunite them with the urn and luckily falls in with another taxi driver who decides to join her on her ridiculous quest. So off they go gallivanting all over the country – although why they couldn’t have simply left the urn at the hotel where it was discovered I could never quite see. Oh but yes – there is an explication! There’s a whole back story here too – Alexandra is filled with guilt about the disappearance of her brother on a family trek many years before! Of course that would make you go off on a wild goose chase in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language (how fortunate that the taxi driver’s English is impeccable!) There’s some interesting history to add a bit a gravitas to Alexandra’s wanderings but the central conceit is just so silly I ended up skipping most of the book.

Gorgeous writing, gorgeous scenes, and a gorgeous romance. A memorable and delight of a read!

Review appeared at ReviewingtheEvidence.com:

On her first day in Bulgaria, Alexandra Boyd, a young American who has arrived for a new teaching job, accidentally picks up a bag belonging to a family when she helps an elderly couple into a taxi cab. Inside, the bag contains an urn with ashes. Mortified by the mistake, Alexandra feels she must return the urn—and so begins a very long trip to find the family and return the ashes. She's aided in her search by taxi driver Asparuh "Bobby" Iliev, who isn't exactly what he seems.

With a name on the urn—Stoyan Lazarov—and the little she learned during a short conversation, she and Bobby start their search at Velinksi Monastery. From the beginning, they seem to have someone following in their footsteps. At the monastery, they are mysteriously locked in a hallway, escaping only by some quick-thinking on Bobby's part. As they continue their journey, Bobby's car is vandalized and government officials take a special interest in their task.

Although she could have easily left the urn with a relative, Alexandra persists, in part for personal reasons. She is still haunted by her missing brother, who disappeared years ago on a family hiking trip—just after he and Alexandra had an argument in which she told him to "get lost."

As they travel from the city of Sofia into the countryside, Alexandra and Bobby learn more about Lazarov, a famed violinist whose career was cut short by Communist oppression. The novel shifts back and forth between narratives—the present and Lazarov's story in the 1940s, in which we learn the horror that Lazarov endured. Still, as readers we wonder why the events of the past continue to haunt his family—and now Alexandra. Kostova masterfully reveals it, piece by piece.

The novel doesn't reach the heights that Kostova's debut book, THE HISTORIAN, achieved (then again, it is hard to compete with Dracula). But it is still a compelling read with a wonderful cast of characters and tension that ripples throughout. Kostova shows that bad guys don't always need to be blood-sucking vampires—and that history, unfortunately, does sometimes bleed over into the present.

§ Lourdes Venard is an independent editor who divides her time between New York and Maui.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an Advanced Review Copy in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to love this book. Kostova is such an amazing writer, *The Historian* blew my mind! But this one just wasn't up to her usual standards. The first third was a jumble of random interconnected situations that was difficult to believe. I'm really keeping my fingers crossed for the next book!

I loved this book. It will have you reading until the very end. The Shadow Land is filled with mystery and set in a far off land. I would highly recommend this to all fans of The Historian. This book will not dissapoint.

I adored Kostova's 'The Historian' and 'The Swan Thieves', and her writing style is lovely once again in The Shadow Land, but unfortunately I really struggled to fully engage with the storyline. After 3 weeks of chipping away and only getting halfway through it's with a heavy heart that I've decided not to finish this title. As such will not be publishing a review on my website.

The Shadow Land is a rich, textured story that speaks with warm affection for the little known (by much of the wider world, that is) country of Bulgaria and its tumultuous recent history. In it, we follow Alexandra Boyd, an American, who travels to Sofia, Bulgaria to teach and finds, instead, an adventure that will take her across this beautiful and rustic landscape.

Having read (and loved!) The Historian, I found this novel completely different yet captivating in the same hushed, creeping menace sort of way. The descriptions of the land, the culture and the way of life was spot on from what I witnessed on my visit there. The historical story was heart breaking and compulsive reading for me. I ate it up and felt Stoyan's joy and pain as it unfolded during the telling of his tale.

This would easily have been a 5 star rating but I didn't warm to Alexandra and found her foolishly naive. I couldn't relate to her remembrances of her younger life and brother Jack. It seemed superfluous to the story and only there to flesh her out, but didn't, in my view. I did grow fond of Bobby, though. He saved Alexandra (in more ways than one) and was the most useful taxi driver you are ever likely to find. He brought the warmth Alexandra failed to exude.

This was a solid read and left me feeling very satisfied. I especially loved the authors postscript and the brief insight into her life.

This, unfortunately, was a book that I kept picking up and putting down. It wasn't a bad book but the pacing felt rather stranger and I kept waiting for something to happen to propel the plot forward more. I never read The Historian but I remembered liking The Swan Thieves. This one just didn't work for me. I didn't appreciate the changing from 1st to 3rd person with the MC's past and present story line. It had great potential but didn't work for me.

The third novel from Elizabeth Kostova and one which does not highlight the myth and fantasy as much as others. It is a sad and lovely tale about a young woman who comes into possession of an urn containing the ashes of a man and how she tries to return them to the family. Touching on events in Bulgaria over the past century this is part a story of redemption and part a loving view at a turbulent and forgotten country.

I enjoyed much of "The Shadow land". Kostova paints a vivid picture of Bulgaria, past and present. The characters of Bobby, Alexandra and Stoyan were well-developed.

The novel began to drag for me after about two-thirds of the way through. Alexandra and Bobby seemed to be running in circles. I found the depictions of the labor camp difficult to read because it was so graphic and awful.

I felt like the end of the book--the scene at the quarry--wrapped things up too quickly and wasn't believable. And (spoiler) no one seemed to care much about what happened to Stoycho, which I found strange.

In all, a solid book and an enjoyable read but not Kostova's best work.

I really loved Kostova's previous two novels, but this one just didn't do it for me. It was way too long, and I thought the jumps in time were a bit clunky. I will still read any other novel she writes.

The Shadow Land is touching several topics including Bulgaria at War - thus history elements, courage, family and neighbor relationships, how time can change personalities and places and does time matters at all.

This was my first read by the author and I wasn't familiar with her writing but perhaps the other books are written different and yet for me to discover.

I have to admit I did struggle with reading-finishing the book. It took me a while for reading and I did attempt multiple times again and again, but it did't capture my interest, although the writer has written about such an interesting and devastating time at the same.. Although the start was very promising and mystery kind - the book was not for me, I could not relate to any of the characters and follow their mindset.

"She wondered at herself for feeling no fear; at home she would have been afraid of strangers prowling in the night, or even of ghosts, and here she might be followed by someone who wished her harm. But Stoycho was with her, and everything was so unfamiliar that she felt protected, as if she wasn’t actually present. I am the ghost myself."

I read Kostova’s The Swan Thieves six years ago, in July 2011, and was less-than-impressed (review here). My expectations were high when I started the book, but I felt that it didn’t deliver. Instead, it was over 500 pages of red herrings and disappointment. It wasn’t necessarily bad, but it wasn’t necessarily good either.

So when I saw that she was coming out with a new book - The Shadow Land - I was intrigued and decided to give the author another try. The Shadow Land is about Alexandra Boyd and her journey to Bulgaria to cope with the death of her brother; she planned on travelling for several weeks and then teaching English in Sofia. However, on her first day in Sofia, she found she had accidentally kept one of the bags of a family she was helping into a taxi: a bag containing the ashes of Stoyan Lazarov. On her journey to return this treasured urn, she unfurls a secret about this man that might not only destroy his family, but her as well.

I must say that this was an overall enjoyable read, albeit a little fluffy.

My favorite part of the book was the language. Kostova’s ability to describe the Bulgarian towns and landscapes was beautiful. It was almost like I was travelling through this pale green little Eastern European country, a place where I have never been, along with Alexandra and Bobby and Stoyon. The towns and villages, the houses, the rolling landscapes, all set the mood for the plot and provided an apt stage for the characters to traverse and discover the mysteries of the country as well as of the Lazarov family.

I would be lying if I said this book was perfect. Although lovely, there were some elements missing that prevented it from living up to its full potential. Unfortunately, both the plot and the characters themselves fell a little short of the mark.

The plot itself was slow, often languid – which, while apt for describing the country itself, was at odds with the sense of urgency the author concurrently tried to convey. This made the book trod on a bit longer than necessary and also obscured some of the desire to uncover the mystery.

The characters as well were slightly underdeveloped and not quite believable in their thoughts and actions. I wasn’t quite convinced of the sincerity of Alexandra’s character; she was innocent and willing to help complete strangers in a strange country, but her pining over a brief encounter with a man who she knew little to nothing about made the emotional impact of her character less and made any feelings of sympathy I might have felt for her less-readily-accessible.

I’m sure a lot had to do with the differences in culture between America and Bulgaria: where in the latter people are more likely to offer their homes to strangers and go out of their way to help them, while in the former, this is not as likely to occur, at least not to the same extent as in Bulgaria. Even with this openness and willingness to help, I still didn’t quite find it believable that the Lazarov family would openly share their family story – especially as they feared they were in danger – so willingly to strangers.

The ending of The Shadow Land was also a bit disappointing, a similar feeling I felt after reading The Swan Thieves. Even though sometimes the plot felt a bit sparse, there was a definite undercurrent of increasing tension. Who was Stoyon Lazarov? Why were the Lazarov family being pursued, and by whom? What secret might their deceased patriarch have known that could potentially cause the family so much danger?

But for all of the buildup, we are rewarded only fleetingly. Once we get to the climax, to the point where we finally get our questions answered, it was just over. A few tense minutes of action for the characters, then denouement. Tying up loose ends. Fin.

Maybe I’m rating this book higher than I should with a full four-star rating. It’s entirely plausible. The book deserves at least three stars, maybe three-and-a-half, but hell I’m rounding up to a full four stars because (1) it was better than The Swan Thieves, though I had a similar complaint about both books, (2) it held my attention and I actually wanted to read it to find out what happened, (3) I was sufficiently shocked at the big reveal (though I am notoriously bad at seeing these things from far away – I’m a sucker for a good, ole’ red herring), and (4) because underneath the slow-moving plot and often unbelievable characters was the story of a beautiful country with a turbid history.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for an advanced copy of this eBook in exchange for an honest and unbiased review!

Kostova has an incredible talent for evoking remote locations – specifically the small corners of Eastern Europe – in a way that makes the reader feel as if we can touch, taste and smell everything she is describing. Her earlier novel, The Historian, is one of my very favourites, and once again she has inspired me to travel to the breathtaking locations that her characters are lucky enough to explore.

In The Shadow Land, a young American woman named Alexandra has just arrived in Sofia, Bulgaria to start a new job teaching English. Alexandra had an unconventional childhood in which her parents lived mostly off the grid, and hiking through the nearby Blue Mountain trails was their main activity on the weekends. On one such hike, her teenage brother Jack disappeared from the trail, never to be seen again. Alexandra has travelled far from home partly to escape this childhood trauma, but also because Sofia was a city that Jack had longed to visit.

As she is leaving the hotel shortly after her arrival in Sofia, Alexandra stops to assist an elderly couple into a taxi and mistakenly ends up with one of their bags. Inside is an ornately carved box with the name “Stoyan Lazarov” – and inside that are human ashes. Alexandra is appalled to have ended up with such a personal item, and instructs her own taxi driver to follow the couple, but they are soon lost in the busy city streets. The driver, Bobby, agrees to help Alexandra find them, and the two follow a series of clues that lead them through Sofia and across the Bulgarian countryside. Bobby seems friendly, but he has his own dark secrets, including an unnamed threat that follows him around the country.

Along the way, Bobby and Alexandra learn the story of the dead man, Stoyan Lazarov. They meet with his friends and family, and discover that he was a talented musician who studied Vivaldi in Austria – but when he returned to Bulgaria after WWII, he was labelled as an enemy of the Communist state and sent to a prison labour camp. Stoyan’s story illustrates the oppression, fear and violence that come from a totalitarian regime, and the shocking effects that continued for years afterward. These are just a few of the atrocities of the 20th century, as people turned on each other in order to survive.

This novel feels like a great story (Stoyan’s) tangled up inside a mediocre one (Alexandra and Bobby’s madcap caper across the countryside). Stoyan’s story was heartbreaking and real, while the contemporary plot line is uneven, improbable and never quite believable. There were also a few loose ends that were built up and never resolved. I would consider this to be a literary beach read, where the serious is mixed with the silly. There are elements of suspense, but they are really secondary to character-building and the historical setting. While there is quite a lot going on in the plot, it somehow moves at a slow, meandering pace.

Most of all, I enjoyed the setting, and Kostova’s ability to showcase the beauty of the Bulgarian landscape and architecture – she highlights the small details that come together to form a sense of place. Through Stoyan – and to a lesser extent, Alexandra – there is an exploration of the inherent goodness of people vs. our capacity for evil. And while there is always fear in political oppression, we can see here that there is also room for hope, especially in the creation of art and music.

I received this book from Text Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Apologies that there has only been one book review this week but The Shadow Land is a real beast of a book. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Elizabeth Kostova’s books. She writes the most incredible stories but I feel like I have lived this journey back and forth across Bulgaria and have the aches and pain to prove it! Kostova writes very descriptive prose and sometimes it just feels like there is just too much detail, too much of everything…
Alexandra has just arrived in Bulgaria for a work placement to teach English. She has been working hard to learn the Cyrillic alphabet of her hosts but when her plane lands and she finds herself in Sofia she discovers that it is a very foreign land. An encounter with some locals leads to a bag mix up and Alexandra finds herself in possession of an ornately carved urn full of cremated ashes.
Unsure what to do she gets a local taxi driver to take her to the police station so that she can report the events and leave them the ashes so that they can find the owner. An unsatisfactory conversation with the Chief of the Police sees Alexandra leaving the station still clutching Stoyan Lazarov’s remains and vowing to find the family herself.
With help from “Bobby” her taxi driver Alexandra begins the journey that will take them all over the county learning about the Lazarov family and the talented musician who started this quest. It is often an uncomfortable tale with a considerable portion of the book devoted to what had happened to Stoyan in internment camps during and after world war two. I knew very little about this part of the world and it had never really featured in history lessons etc. so I found myself googling events to see what had really happened in Bulgaria during this period.
It feels a bit mean giving the book just three stars but it balances out with four stars for the story but two stars for the meandering and laboured process of getting there. At times I just wanted to shout. “Stop the car. I’ve had enough” but I’m glad that I did persevere in the end.
Supplied by Net Galley and Text Publishing UK in exchange for an honest review.
UK Publication Date: Apr 18 2017. 500 pages.

The Shadow Land is the type of novel I want to push into everyone's hands. The imagery throughout the novel is gorgeous, and Ms. Kostova's attention to detail ensures that readers get more than a sense of the landscape and culture of Bulgaria during Communist rule and after. The characters are well-developed and nuanced. The story delves into a little-known aspect of history and a corner of the world that does not see much in the way of exposure via literature. The mystery is intriguing, and the cross-country search for answers means that there are very few spots of inaction.

Unfortunately, it is also the type of novel that so few people enjoy these days. To call a novel slow to develop is practically a death knell for any work of fiction looking to be popular, and many would call The Shadow Land slow. Others would look at the length of the novel and dismiss it as too big and clunky. While people continue to read and sales of books continue to climb, people prefer novels that are fast-paced and short today.

The thing is that novels that are long and supposedly slow are often among the most rewarding novels to read. The Shadow Land takes its time to establish the foreign setting and the characters. In that regard, it is very European. Watch a European dine, and you will understand immediately what I mean. They savor their food and drink. They take their time and enjoy the experience. The book is similar. It invites you to savor the culture and the atmosphere, to get to know the characters, and appreciate their journey. It is a novel to be read slowly so that you enjoy every last moment.

This is not to say the story is boring. In fact, it is anything but that. It spans a vast swath of time during a period of history that changed rapidly and often. With flashbacks going all the way to pre-World War II Bulgaria to Bulgaria of 2008, it shows how confused Europe got until Hitler's regime and later with the Soviet Bloc. It highlights the fear that existed, the constant worry that the knock at the door was the police coming to take you away for an unknown crime. Ms. Kostova provides exquisite details on the countryside and its towns and villages. However, with that comes the understanding of the severe poverty in which so much of the country's citizens remain. In detailing Stoyan's story, one gets a well-written history lesson of the atrocities done in the name of Communism, and in describing Alexandra's story, one gets an equally well-written lesson on the current issues facing the country. All this during almost nonstop action as Alexandra races from one location to another in her hunt for the mysterious couple.

The Shadow Land is like a warm bath or a trip to the spa. It is not a story to race through and finish in one sitting. Like the bath or the spa, it is an experience one should enjoy slowly and thoroughly. When one does this, the reward is a novel that brings Bulgaria to life and provides a fantastic story around which to highlight the country's history. In her author's notes, Ms. Kostova mentions her love for her adopted country; that love radiates from every page.