In many ways he seems a more scientific historian; he checks his sources, does not have supernatural explanations for events. 

But also, like many Silver Latin authors, a rhetorical writer, his prose aimed not only for special effects, but also to with creating a mood and image. He create vivid, dramatic, almost theatrical images. He thus can be dishonest; shows Tiberius as totally evil from the beginning, which is false picture, but rhetorically more satisfying. His Latin is abrupt, condensed, varied, not smooth. 

He seems quite pessimistic, describes how Senate and People of Rome have become servile and degraded. Old Augustan Optimism gone.