The Historian (part 8) and still no internet....

I read a lot over the Thanksgiving break, but still haven't finished the book. I'm over half way done though and things are really starting to get interesting. I've realized a couple of things as I read:

1. I probably should have read Dracula first. It's mentioned a lot in The Historian and I don't always get the references. In a passage I read last night, more letters from Rossi were found with Helen's mother. In them, he says how he and a guide made their way up to an abandoned fortress reconstructed by Vlad the Impaler, and how he almost wished they had gone at night so that he might see fires erupting from the ground and the packs of wolves encircling the wagon just as Jonathan Harker had seen on his way to Count Dracula's castle. (Luckily, I had read that part, so I understood the Dracula allusions.)

2. As I had predicted, Helen is a descendant of Vlad Tepes. Paul often says how she reminds him of Vlad throughout the story ever since Turgut showed them his life-size portrait of the man in Istanbul. With the appearance of Rossi's letters, my suspicions were confirmed.

Hopefully, I'll finish this book by the weekend and have internet again as well...