lack of tonal variety; Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times that the book was "ponderous" and had a "contorted narrative structure". Jane Stevenson of The Observer agreed, noting that the multiple timelines and narrators of the novel were not sufficiently differentiated. Several reviewers complained that the climax of the novel was a disappointment and that Dracula was not terrifying. 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. ... there's a curious holding back here as elsewhere from a really probing look at the seductive appeal of vampirism, particularly the sensuality at its core." 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. Ong Sor Fern of The Straits Times criticized Kostova's portrayal of women, writing that her unnamed female narrator "feels even more drab and colourless than Stoker's idealised female, Mina Harker". Sturgis criticized Kostova's characterization in general, contending that the major characters seemed more like "disembodied tour guides". Polly Shulman of Newsday also argued that the book "fail[s] to grapple with its supposed themes: evil, death and history". She saw "little of the terror of these periods" in the novel and little of the tension between the Islamic East and the Christian West. Awards Adaptations Audio book 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). Boutsikaris' voicing of Paul has been called "flat" while Publishers Weekly complained that it was "nonchalant and impersonal". They also singled out the voicing of Dracula for criticism, writing that "his accent and delivery is exactly the stereotypical vampire voice used by everyone from Bela Lugosi to Sesame Street's the Count". There is swelling orchestral music at the beginning and end of each chapter, of which the reviewers approved.Kim Bunce, "Review: Audio", The Observer (7 August 2005). LexisNexis (subscription required). Retrieved 7 May 2009. The 26-hour unabridged audio book, released by Books on Tape (a division of Random House), is narrated by Justine Eyre and Paul Michael. According to Booklist'', they "do an incredible job voicing an array of characters with European accents ranging from Dutch, French, and