Kostova’s third novel (after The Historian and The Swan Thieves) is a road trip adventure mixed with mystery, literary fiction, and a little suspense, but even that doesn’t encompass its full cross-genre appeal. The story opens in the spring of 2008, as Alexandra Boyd, fresh off a plane to Bulgaria to take an English teaching job, finds herself unintentionally entangled in another family’s private business. After briefly encountering an elderly couple and their middle-aged son outside a hotel in Sofia, Alexandra is horrified to discover she mistakenly took one of their bags into her taxi: a satchel with a carved box containing an urn filled with ashes. The box is labeled with the name of an elderly man, Stoyan Lazarov, who had died two years earlier. Alexandra’s determined quest to find the family and reunite them with their loved one’s remains is as deep and multi-layered as Bulgaria’s own history.

Although she’s cautious about strange men, Alexandra slowly befriends her taxi driver, Bobby, who becomes an active participant in her mission when it becomes clear that someone’s putting up roadblocks in Alexandra’s way. As they travel across the country, from tiny villages left nearly unchanged by time to the steep outcrops of the Rhodope Mountains, they encounter warm hospitality and also many signs of danger. Stoyan’s neighbors and relatives share memories that shed light on the talented violinist who suffered under Bulgaria’s communist regime. The country’s painful past is revealed through periodic flashbacks and through Stoyan’s own account, which is powerfully moving.

Kostova’s ability to paint images in the reader’s mind is exquisite. She clearly loves Bulgaria and writes passages that show its mesmerizing beauty. The plot fits the definition of “meandering,” and Alexandra’s and Bobby’s travel route sometimes feels overlong, but this is a book in which the journey matters as much as the destination.

(from the Historical Novels Review's May 2017 issue)

There are times when books seem alright at the beginning, then you slowly start to hate every moment of reading it, but afterwards come some parts that you enjoy very much and then an ending you just want to get it over with ASAP, like ripping off a bandage.

«The Shadow Land» is a mystery historical fiction set in Bulgaria, following adventures of young american woman, Alexandra, on her arrival to a foreign country.

Bulgaria, adventure, mystery – all of this sounds amazing and incredibly interesting! However… it’s not as simple as that. This time I will reverse my review pattern and start with things I disliked (because there were too many of them and I need to get them off my chest!)

1 – Tedious and ongoing descriptions. I am not sure if it was the unfamiliar writing style that took me forever to read through, or if the story was simply too descriptive, all I know is that the book could have had way fewer pages and the plot would not suffer from it at all.

I am all about descriptions when the authors keep the pace of the story relatively quick. Unfortunately, I didn’t find that in this book. But if you enjoy slightly slow-paced novels, this might be a book for you.

2 – When the main character does not provide much to the story, it might be time to give him / her some “spices” in their personality. I can’t say that Alexandra was unintelligent, but I can’t call her very bright either. During the whole story she is relying on Bobby – to find out what to do next, to come up with a plan, to speak to people, to analyse the situation, to drive her around – the list goes on!

Her background was interesting and somewhat mysterious, but nothing too exciting was done about it and it didn’t develop into anything other than occasional tears or sad thoughts by our main character.

3 – Related to the previous passage, this bullet point is all about the only question I had in my mind during the whole reading experience: “Why is she running around Bulgaria looking for people she doesn’t know just so she could return a bag? Even if there is something special in it.”

It is still difficult for me to wrap my head around the fact that a young woman, who comes to Bulgaria to teach at a university, had very little money to spare, would decide that the best option would be to find these people on her own without involving the police.

Don’t get me wrong, from the plot building point of view, she had to do it this way otherwise there would be no story to tell… but Why?? WHY??? If someone understood this better than I did, please let me know.

The actual reason why I was reading this book – the story of Stoyan Lazarov. Incredibly well written, heartbreaking and astonishingly real! My absolute favourite part of the whole book and the only thing that kept me reading until the end. Narrated by multiple characters, his presence in the book was beyond anything and anyone else, and I’d prefer a book solely about him, without Alexandra on the horizon.

The story of Stoyan Lazarov made it hard to put the book away, not completely erasing all other imperfections, but giving enough drive to read it until the very end.

A lot bleaker than I wanted to go! Sadly not my sort of book.

After the loss of her beloved brother, Alexandra Boyd is listless and drifting. Having completed her studies and worked some time in a library, she decides to enrol for a teaching programme far away and thus she ends up in Sofia, Bulgaria. After a long and arduous journey across the ocean, she only wants to get to her apartment. Waiting for a taxi, she is helping an elderly couple who struggle with their luggage, but when Alexandra finally sits down in a cab herself, she realized that she has one of these people’s bags with her. She has a look at the bag and finds an urn with the name Stoyan Lazarov in it. Since the police are reluctant to help her, she and her taxi driver decide to find the people and return the remains of Stoyan. What starts as an accidental swapping of bags, leads to a journey across Bulgaria and the dark history of the country.

What I really liked about the novel was the fact that you get an unexpected mixture of a mystery story, a bit of romance, the history and culture of an east European country, the life history of a dedicated musician and notion of Bulgaria which is not very well known by many people. Yet, as a consequence, it is not easy to come to a conclusion about it. What I appreciated most were first of all the fairy tales and myths about Bulgaria. I have never been there and always imagined it as a country deeply rooted in its history and legends. Kostova perfectly managed to integrate these into her novel. Second, having the characters travel around the country gave her the chance of introducing the country’s fascinating landscape to the reader. Not only the larger and old cities of Sofia and Plovdiv, but also small villages in the mountain areas are part of the setting.

The mystery plot was a bit constructed to my liking. I cannot really imagine a young, innocent woman going to a really foreign country of which she hardly knows anything at all and especially of which cannot even speak the language, relying on strangers as Alexandra does. It was necessary for the action to send them from one place to the next, encountering different characters linked to the Lazarov family, but again, this is not really realistic. To be welcomed and accommodated once, ok, this is likely, but not making close friends with everybody within minutes. Much more interesting was the story of the dead man’s life, the oppression by the communists, his time in the work camp and particularly his love for music. He certainly is the most interesting character of the novel, above all in comparison to Alexandra who remains a bit shallow and flat throughout the whole story.

All in all, I believe the author has done a lot of research and gives us a multifaceted picture of Bulgaria now and then. I liked ready much of it, but admittedly, there are some longueurs in it, too.

The Shadow Land is set in Bulgaria, beginning in 2008 when a young American woman, Alexandra Boyd, arrives in the country’s capital city of Sofia, where she will be starting a new job as a teacher at the Central English Institute. Discovering that she has arrived at the wrong hotel, she stands outside to wait for a taxi and here she falls into conversation with a family consisting of an elderly couple and another younger man who are also leaving the hotel. It’s not until Alexandra is sitting in her taxi, on her way to her destination, that she discovers she has picked up a bag belonging to the elderly people. Looking inside, she is horrified to find that she is now in possession of an urn engraved with the name Stoyan Lazarov and containing somebody’s ashes.

Instructing her taxi driver, Bobby, to take her to the nearest police station, Alexandra hopes this will be the end of the matter, but when the police prove to be less helpful than she’d expected, she decides to find the family and return the urn to them herself. She knows what it’s like to grieve for a loved one – her brother Jack disappeared on a hike in the Blue Ridge Mountains several years earlier – and she wants to make her apologies in person. However, the family of Stoyan Lazarov appear to have disappeared almost without trace…and it seems that somebody else is also searching for the urn.

With Bobby’s help, Alexandra travels around Bulgaria from town to town, trying to pick up the trail of Stoyan’s family and in each place she visits she learns a little bit more about the man whose ashes she is carrying. I have to admit, I found this quite unconvincing as I’m sure most of us would just have handed the urn in to the hotel reception or insisted on leaving it with the police – and even if we had decided to track the people down ourselves, it’s unlikely that a taxi driver we’d only just met would agree to come with us! The implausibility of this central plot point, however, didn’t really bother me because I was already enjoying the story so much.

Having the action moving from one location to another also gives Kostova an opportunity to describe the feel and appearance of various Bulgarian towns and villages and to capture the beauty of the countryside. Because we’re seeing all of this through Alexandra’s eyes, we can appreciate what it’s like to be exploring a new country for the first time, unable to speak the language and with no knowledge of local customs and traditions. As for Bobby, I loved him and, unlikely as it might have seemed, I was glad that he decided to abandon his usual routine and join Alexandra on her mission.

The Shadow Land really is a fascinating novel. It begins with a simple idea – a person accidentally taking something which doesn’t belong to them and then trying to return it – and slowly expands into an examination of Bulgaria’s history, of war, communism and political unrest, and of one man’s courage in the face of unimaginable horrors. I wish I could go into more detail, but I would rather let you read about Stoyan Lazarov’s experiences for yourself. It’s a very dark novel in places, particularly later in the book as Stoyan’s story begins to unfold, but it’s an important story and, despite the darkness, I think it’s one that needs to be told.

I did not finish this book, it couldn't hold my attention.

Imagine arriving in a country to teach English. But before your job starts, you get caught up in a decades-old mystery of a Bulgarian family. This is what happens to Alexandra Boyd, a young American woman carrying her own story of mystery and sorrow.

Elizabeth Kostova, whose book The Historian is one of my all-time favorites, writes a quiet, subtle book with The Shadow Land. Don't expect a fast-paced thriller, but a labyrinthine story of love and survival at all costs. Kostova infuses Bulgarian history and culture throughout the book as well.

Most of the characters who speak English speak it as their second language. While she captures this speech accurately it sometimes feels stilted and difficult to read. On the other hand, Kostova uses her own command of English to create evocative descriptions like this one:

"I felt that as long as my mind did not cave inward, I could afford to be silent. I was too tired to think even about my concerti, and so I stayed in the silence for a while. The silence was white, like snow."

Alexandra is a likable character overall. However, her typical American responses to poverty and repression wore on me at first. Once she began to adjust to life in Bulgaria, it was easier to see her positive qualities.

The Bulgarian characters and their stories are quite lovely (except the bad guys who were appropriately deplorable). And the story-within-the-story framework had a few twists, although they weren't particularly surprising.

For me this was a good book with few faults. It just wasn't a sizzling great book. 3.5 stars

Thanks to NetGalley, Text Publishing, and the author for a digital ARC in exchange for this honest review.

I loved this book; I loved the story, I loved the emotions it evoked in me [even the horror and sadness], I loved how it flowed. This, to me, was a near perfect book. The characters felt real to me, like I would know them in my everyday life. And the genuine concern and caring that Alexandra felt from the minute she discovered that she had someone else's bag and how she felt as they went searching for the family was some of the best part of this story.
This was a beautifully written, haunting story that could have been me, or any of us. I will be recommending this to everyone I know. For me, it is a must read book.

Barely 3 stars. The Shadow Land felt like two books. One of them was heart wrenching but really good. The other one was long, meandering, pointless and implausible. Alexandra travels from the US to Bulgaria to teach English and get away from some sadness in her life at home. Immediately upon arriving in Bulgaria, she has a chance encounter with a Bulgarian family that leads to a luggage mix up, and she ends up with a bag containing an urn with human ashes. The rest of the book consists of a long chase in the company of Bobby the taxi driver to return the ashes to the rightful owners. As the story progresses, we get the back story about the guy in the urn. The backstory was good. It gave me insight into Bulgaria's history, and some of the atrocities suffered under the communist regime in that country. The contemporary story was frankly silly. That Alexandra would get into such a situation was beyond improbable. The endless travel from one place to another was tiresome. And the underlying mystery about why the family is so hard to track down hinges on way too many coincidences. Which is unfortunate because buried in there is an interesting and emotionally engaging story about Bulgaria's past. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy. And thanks to GR friends Angela and Diane for another great buddy read -- I definitely enjoyed the company if not the book.

There are a number of things that I liked about this book and some that didn't work so well for me, leaving me with a rating of 3 stars and an extra half star for the dead man whose ashes and life become the focus of the novel. I found myself very engaged in Alexandra's story initially. The back and forth in time giving us a view of her past, how she came to Bulgaria and the deep loss she feels about losing her brother Jack, was very moving . I was engaged in the search she embarks on with Bobby, a taxi driver she connects with, to return a bag with the ashes of a man named Stoyan Lazarov, that she mistakenly comes to have in her possession. I loved the descriptions of the places in Bulgaria where they traveled and learning a bit of this country's history. I loved the historical sections of the book where we discover the man whose ashes they carry around . This for me is where the story comes to life.

At some point, though the search felt like a wild goose chase and I just wanted it to be over. I only became reengaged when the story focused on Stoyan, the only character I felt was fully realized. He was the only character I felt I knew and I have to give that extra half star for how the gut wrenching story of his time in a prison camp and his passion as a musician lets the reader know him . It was both heartbreaking and uplifting that he imagines playing his violin, his beloved Vivaldi to keep from losing himself. What we know about Alexandra and Bobby come to us in snippets of facts not through seeing who they are through what they do. I didn't get why there was such a mystery about Bobby and knowing earlier that he was more than just an activist taxi driver wouldn't have made a difference to the story if we knew earlier. While I enjoyed parts of this book, it felt somewhat overwritten at times.

Thanks once again to my friends Diane and Esil for our third read together. It's always a pleasure to be enlightened by their thoughts!

I received an advanced copy of this from Text Publishing through NetGalley.

I loved Kostova's first book, The Historian, but was less enamoured with The Swan Thieves. As I started The Shadow Land, I was looking for the dark underworld - perhaps some more vampires? It took me quite a while to let go of that idea and realize that this is just an absolutely captivating, suck-you-in-and-transport-you-to-a-different-world piece of historical fiction. The descriptions of 20th and 21st century Bulgaria are exceptional, and the characters are sympathetic from the first chapter. An excellent read.

Elizabeth Kostova has been a favorite author of mine for almost fifteen years, despite a relatively low output in that amount of time. Her first novel, The Historian, ranks among my top-five all-time favorite books -- of any genre. She followed up that supremely atmospheric, gothic supernatural debut with something a little different; her sophomore work The Art Thieves was a total departure in tone, plot, and character. With The Shadow Land, her third published novel to date, Kostova once again employs the narrative structure of dual, connected storylines in different eras, though she tackles new themes and ideas her historical look at Bulgaria.

Descriptive, layered, and detailed, Kostova's style is storytelling is given to be rather verbose. Her brand of storytelling relies heavily on using the setting and research to help foster the plot; this is an author that can recreate a vivid time and place. The plot of The Shadow Land is narrowly focused and centered on an American teacher Alexandra Boyd ("Bird"), a mysterious figure named Stoyan Lazarov, and the history of Bulgaria as experienced by those two characters in their differing times. The beginning of the novel is rather slow and takes time to create any real tension or suspense for Alex or her stalwart cab driver Bobby ("Bo-bi"!). Still, it's easy to fall into Kostova's recreated Sofia thanks to the author's obvious due diligence when it came to research.

I did like this novel, but have to admit it is my least favorite Kostova. I am sad to say that for all its merits, and while technically proficient and impressive, it lacks an emotional connection. Even though Kostova is given using emotionally-distant narrators and main characters, it was hard to engage with Alex's inner monologue. For the first half of the book her main emotion is tiredness and general helplessness; hoping someone else will find the solution to her problem. I missed the agency and decisiveness of past protagonists from this author; I also missed the chemistry between love interests. Though Bird and Bobby are great friends, theirs is a bond that's purely platonic and it lacks the oomph. Simply put: this book lacked the ability to create emotional investment. I was more drawn into the story for the writing itself than for the outcome of Alex/Stoyan's stories.

The Shadow Land is a novel that showcases the power of the past, combined with this author's usual descriptive style to create a good historical fiction in an often-overlooked country.

I loved „The Historican“ and I liked „The Swan Thieves“. So I was very excited when I saw Kostova’s new book. But I really struggled with this one.

The story idea is unique but also a bit unbelievable. Alexandra has just arrived in Sofia to teach Englisch there. Her cab driver misunderstood her and left her at the wrong hotel. She is still groggy from her long flight but when she sees some people in need of help to get into their cab she immediately helps them, happy to meet their first Bulgarians. After they are gone she takes a cab herself to go to her hotel. There she realized she kept one of the bags from this nice Bulgarian people. Inside is an urn. For some reasons she is determined to return this important thing by herself. Fortunately her cab driver is very keen to help her and drive her around half of Bulgaria to return the urn. Their journey brings them not only to modern Bulgaria but also to its dark history. Alexandra learns a lot about its history and even more about the person which ashes are inside the urn.

When I started this book I was pleased by its unique story. I liked Alexandra’s back story and the reason she came to Bulgaria. I also liked the way the author described the beauty of this country and made me almost wanting to visit it. But somehow nothing really happened. After 40% into this book nothing really had happened. They drove around. The description of the landscapes and what Alexandra saw while they drove became boring and long-winded. I began to skip most of the pages. There was just too fussy. There was very less storytelling and all of this lead to nowhere. I got bored and wanted to end the book. I even skipped the flashbacks from the labor camp. I suppose they were emotional and important but I only wanted to finish this book. At the end everything is solved in a rush.

The story is unique and interesting but is written much too detailed written. There are way too much details, it is too slow. Alexandra and her driver just drive for hours to just don’t really find anything or anybody. And so they go on driving. It was just boring. The story of the man which ash is in the urn is quite tragic but it got buried under lots of words which lead to story to nowhere. This book would have been better if it was shorter and more focused on the story.

4.5 stars (just shy of "amazing")

I suspect I knew less about this book than virtually anyone else reading it before publication. Not only had I never read one of Elizabeth Kostova's books (The Historian has been on my "to read" list for a couple years), but when I started I had no recollection of even reading a "teaser" summary. (I must have, but I went almost two months between deciding to read it and actually starting, and I have a terrible memory.) Without any plot expectations, I was pleasantly surprised by, and drawn into, the intrigue that slowly developed.

It's important to get that word "slowly" in my review. The Goodreads summary mentions "suspense," and I did find it suspenseful, but not in the sense of what you'd expect from a thriller. All is not what it seems and a mystery needs to be unraveled, but it takes place at a deliberate pace, reminding me somewhat of The Cuckoo's Calling. Our main characters travel from place-to-place, having extended conversations with people and putting pieces of the puzzle together, until eventually the full truth becomes known. For me, in the hands of authors who write well, the pace worked great in both books.

The Shadow Land also hit on another favorite theme - it took me to a faraway place and taught me something about its society and history.

Thank you to NetGalley, Ballantine Books, and Elizabeth Kostova for providing me with an advance copy of the book in exchange for a review. Whereas most of the time a reader needs to request a copy of a pre-publication book, in this case they were freely offered to all NetGalley users (at least as far as I could tell). I found this an odd choice for an accomplished author who would probably sell quite a few books on her reputation alone, but it worked out great for me.

The beginning of this book was very slow for me. While I do enjoy getting to know the characters, I feel like too much time was spent on Alexandra's life before she traveled to Bulgaria. As a whole, I really did enjoy the book and the story of Stoyan Lazarov and his family. I also liked how the author didn't give too many hints as to who was behind the threats and murders which kept me guessing until the very end.

Struggling to get into this one. I may come back to it later.

This is another door stopper (but luckily in eBook format) from Elizabeth Kostova. I've read her debut work, The Historian, a couple of years back and while I don't really remember it, the Goodreads review says that I quite enjoy it (as I quite enjoyed this one).

The Shadow Land is a sort-of mystery. Alexandra Boyd has just arrived in Sofia, Bulgaria when she realises that she accidentally took an urn. Containing human ashes. The name on the box is "Stoyan Lazarov", and as she tries to return the urn (with the help of a friendly taxi driver nicknamed Bobby), she finds threats and danger lurking. And she also finds out more about Stoyan Lazarov, a gifted violinist as she tries to figure out why having his urn is so dangerous.

When I get a really, really thick book, I like to skip to the back to see how it ends (yes, I know, it's odd and I shouldn't do it). In this case, skipping to the last 50 pages didn't help because you really have to read the entire life story of Stoyan to understand what is going on, which means that I'd have to read the second half of the book in its entirety to get any spoilers.

That said, the way the information was doled out was pretty interesting, and I felt that it helped to increase the tension in the second half because I kept reading on to find out more. (The beginning was a bit slow for me)

As for the characters - sorry, Alexandra, but Bobby is the star of the show. Alexandra is likeable enough, but I basically got her entire backstory in the first few chapters, while Bobby was continually surprising me over the course of this almost 500 page book. Obviously, the surprising character is the one that made a bigger impact.

Apart from Bobby and Alexandra, there is a whole cast of supporting characters (and Stoyan), though I only really remember Stoyan, his wife, Neven and Irina. The rest just sort of blended together. The villain was pretty clear and quite menacing, though the 'twist' for one of the bad guys was difficult to understand.

If you don't mind slow starts and like long books set somewhere different, then you'll probably enjoy this book. The mystery was enough to keep me reading to the end, and I really enjoyed the way the past was revealed in the present (reminded me a little of the Night Garden series)

Disclaimer: I got a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a free and honest review.

I am not quite sure how to start this review. I feel like i have just left a magical land!
A couple of years ago i read [book:The Historian|10692], and i loved it so much. So, i was really thrilled when i was approved by NetGalley and the Publisher for this book.
[book:The Shadow Land|31394293] is not [book:The Historian|10692], it is much better. At least this is how i felt about. And yet, i could see that it was written by the same person. Elizabeth Kostava has a fascinating way in telling stories.

Alexandra Boyd just arrived to Sofia, where she secured a job, far away from her hometown in the States, and as far as she can from her devastating memories about her brother. A strange coincidence made her stop at the wrong place, and meet a family, and while trying to help them she kept by mistake one of their bags. It was not a normal bag, it contained an urn, with human ashes and the whole life of a bulgarian musician: Stoyan Lazarov.

In her attempts to return this urn to its owner, Alexandra was embarked into an amazing adventure that took her through Bulgaria, but also back into the past, to a post-war Bulgaria.
The story, the mystery was really good. and the way it was told was even better. All through her search for this family, Alexandra met with many of the people from Lazarov's past , and bit by bit his story was told. I likes the fact that it was not told in chronological order, it was not confusing at all, in fact it made Stoyan Lazarov more fascinating, and in a strange way closer.
The characters of this book were very interesting, mysterious and they had a way in capturing me. They felt so real for me, not merely creations in paper.

The book was not only words. Music kept me company all along it. Stoyan was an amazing musician, Bach and Vivaldi were part of his story, and they were also part of my reading. Whenever a spacific piece was mentioned, i listened to it simultaneously, althouh i confess that sometimes i stopped reading to just listen to that pure magic.

But the story had a lot a dark moments, in that not very far past. It was so intense, so heartbreaking, especially when i come to think that something like that really happened in some place or another..
It was indeed the Shadow Land, but in a way also a Land for hope.

I don't know what else to say about this book, except Just READ IT! It is worth every moment i spent on it (and every moment i skipped working to continue reading it).

3.5*

Years back I had read Kostova's famous first novel - The Historian - a Dracula spin-off of sorts. I had greatly enjoyed it, even though, compared to the OTT breathtaking storytelling of the original, it moved at a leisurely pace. What has remained with me through this time are not details of plot but, rather, impressions of poetic descriptions, lovingly evocative of the mysteries of the Eastern European setting.

This characteristic resurfaces in Kostova's latest offering, "The Shadow Land". It starts with a young American woman, Alexandra Boyd, arriving in Bulgaria, ostensibly to take up a teaching post. In reality, she has a personal reason for settling in this country - she wishes to fulfil a childhood wish of her brother, who had gone missing on a mountain trip and never returned. Through a series of coincidences, she ends up carrying an urn containing the ashes of one Stoyan Lazarov and spends the rest of the novel trying to give it back to his family, teaming up with a taxi-driver who turns out to be a poet and political activist. Eventually we learn that Lazarov was a gifted violinist and an unlikely dissident under Communist rule. And that his harrowing story could have echoes in the present...

Devoid of the Gothic and supernatural aspects which had given "The Historian" a particular twist, this novel gets off to a slow start, and (at least for me), it never really became a page-turner, even though it is, in its own way, a political thriller. At first I also felt that it was rather over-written - we get a description of the clothes of every new character and facts about Bulgaria are given to us in a style which is redolent of a tourist guide. It is, however, a novel which grows on you and I liked it much better as it progressed. I felt that it was at its best in the "historical" chapters containing Lazarov's. As a musician myself, I particularly appreciated the way musical works were described - it's never easy to convey the effects music has on its performers and listeners but Kostova manages to express the wonder and the healing power of music. This alone is enough to make the novel worth reading.

Overall I enjoyed the book, but there were some things that I wasn't craxy about. I found the way the narrative switched from third to first person a little jarring, it was hard to get a good rhythm. I liked the characters and the setting. I knew nothing about Bulgaria before so it was a refreshing change of pace. A little slow at times, but overall it was an intriguing read.