and frightening edge" to the character, according to scholar Stine Fletcher. Despite its Gothic roots, The Historian is not suffused with violence nor is it a horror novel. Kostova aimed to write a "chilling" Victorian ghost story, and her realistic style is what creates this effect. Marlene Arpe of The Toronto Star praises Kostova's imagery in particular, quoting the following passage: As Peter Bebergal explains in The Boston Globe, "Instead of fetishizing blood, Kostova fetishizes documents (manuscripts, maps, letters) and the places that house them (libraries, archives and monasteries)." As one critic explains, "the real horror rests in the possibility of what Dracula truly is". For example, the narrator comments: The novel's tone and structure place it within the serious literary tradition for which Kostova was aiming. For example, the alternating timelines are suggestive of A. S. Byatt's Possession (1990) and the intermingling of academia and the occult suggests Arturo Perez-Reverte's The Club Dumas (1993). 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. I'm still surprised when people make this comparison, I'm very grateful my publisher has never pushed it." Moreover, the only real historical personage in her novel is Vlad Țepeș and she changed the name of some locations "fearing some readers might confuse fantasy and reality, as they have with Brown's novels". 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. Themes History and questions about its role in society pervade The Historian. In particular, the novel argues that knowledge of history is power, particularly as it is written in books. The title can refer to any of the major characters, including Dracula. 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. As one critic explains, the novel is specifically about the love of scholarship. At the heart of the novel is an exploration of "the power and price of scholarly obsession". As Paul explains in the novel: The