Point of View

The novel is mostly told from an omniscient 3rd-person point-of-view, while a handful of chapters are told from the first-person perspective of a character (like the student in "Into the Woods". In the 3rd-person chapters, even though the the narrator is omniscient, it does not reveal certain information to the reader, such as Vlad's true identity, until about mid-way through the novel. The narrator also tells the narrative in past tense, implying that the events happened years ago. The first-person perspective chapters also tell the events of the novel in the past tense.

Language and Meaning

Many of the qualities of the language in the novel lies in dialogue. Essentially, the author uses the language in the dialogue in order to portray whether someone is a non-native English speaker or not. For example, in the chapters that center around Fidelma during her time in London...