Little, Brown and Company heavily promoted the book and it became the first debut novel to become number one on The New York Times bestseller list in its first week on sale.

Rossi traveled as far as Istanbul; however, the appearance of curious characters and unexplained events caused him to drop his investigation and return to his graduate work.

He also reveals that he is part of an organization formed by Sultan Mehmed II from the elite of the Janissaries to fight the Order of the Dragon, an evil consortium later associated with Dracula.

Upon reaching the monastery they find Rossi's interred body in the crypt and are forced to drive a silver dagger through his heart to prevent his full transformation into a vampire.

Paul and Helen are pursued to the monastery by political officials and by the vampire librarian – all of them are seeking Dracula's tomb, but it is empty when they arrive.

In the epilogue, which takes place in 2008, the narrator attends a conference of medievalists in Philadelphia, and stops at a library with an extensive collection of material related to Dracula.

She accidentally leaves her notes and the attendant rushes out and returns them to her, as well as a book with a dragon printed in the center, revealing that either Dracula is still alive or one of his minions is imitating the master.

She found a vampire-killing kit at the Mercer Museum, which included a pistol, silver bullets, a crucifix, a wooden stake, and powdered garlic.

Publishers Weekly explained the high price as a result of a bidding war between firms' believing that they might have the next Da Vinci Code within their grasp.

One vice-president and associate publisher said, "Given the success of The Da Vinci Code, everybody around town knows how popular the combination of thriller and history can be and what a phenomenon it can become.

[5] She was inspired by Victorian writers such as Wilkie Collins; his novel The Moonstone (1868), with its plot twists and bevy of narrators, was "a major model".

Moreover, the blend of the fictional Dracula and the historical Vlad "adds a sinister and frightening edge" to the character, according to scholar Stine Fletcher.

[25] Marlene Arpe of The Toronto Star praises Kostova's imagery in particular, quoting the following passage: A smell rose from its pages that was not merely the delicate scent of aging paper and cracked vellum.

[27] Although many reviewers compared The Historian to Dan Brown's historical thriller The Da Vinci Code (2003), Kostova has said her book "is part of a tradition where literary craft and experiments in form are all as important as action ... the only overlap is this idea of people searching for something in history.

[28] Reviewers praised Kostova's lush descriptions of the setting and the fascinating European cities and countries which the story traverses: Amsterdam, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, France, Oxford, Switzerland and Italy.

[31] As Nancy Baker explains in The Globe and Mail, the novel is "about the love of books" and the knowledge and comfort they offer the characters – even Dracula himself is a bibliophile.

Over drinks with other faculty members, he told me in no uncertain terms how he despised Hitler's crimes and wanted to expose them in the greatest possible detail to the outside world.

[32] As Michael Dirda explains in The Washington Post, the novel conveys the idea that "Most of history's worst nightmares result from an unthinking obedience to authority, high-minded zealotry seductively overriding our mere humanity.

[35] In fact, the narrator is never named in the novel, suggesting, as one critic explains, "that the quest for the dark side of human nature is more universal than specific to a concrete character".

[36] The portions of the novel set in Istanbul, for example, highlight the extent to which the real Vlad detested the Ottomans, waging holy war upon them.

[37] Taheri emphasizes that the novel highlights that "Western civilisation and Islam have common enemies represented by 'vampires' such as postmodernism in Europe and obscurantism in the Muslim world".

[37] The Historian amounts to something profound, messy, and wondrously mathematical at times ... We encounter obsession, possession, and the struggle against the brevity of life.

[39] In what Publishers Weekly called a "carefully calibrated advertising campaign",[40] 7,000 advance copies were sent to booksellers, and in January 2005 Kostova began her book promotion tour six months before the novel's publication.

She appeared on ABC's Good Morning America on 28 June,[41] and there were stories about the novel in USA Today, Entertainment Weekly and Newsweek.

)[44] Little, Brown and Company also released an edition of Dracula in September 2005 with an introduction by Kostova, thinking her readers would want to delve into the original novel after reading hers.

[27] According to Paul Wagenbreth of The News-Gazette, the novel's fundamental weakness is that after the slow buildup, "there is a final shying away from a full rendering of the nature of the beast. ...

"[49] Susanna Sturgis, agreed, writing in the Women's Review of Books that the plot dragged and that "the reader loses interest" in the core mysteries of the novel.

[52] The 12-hour abridged audio book, released by Time Warner, is narrated by six different actors (Joanne Whalley, Martin Jarvis, Dennis Boutsikaris, Jim Ward, Rosalyn Landor and Robin Atkin Downes).

According to Booklist, they "do an incredible job voicing an array of characters with European accents ranging from Dutch, French, and German".

Noting that the book is particularly suited for audio because it is told in letters, they praise Eyre's "earnest and innocent" tone in her voicing of the narrator and Michael's "clear characterizations".