Saint Germain revisits Rome

[bibliogramma]

Roman Dusk, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

As much as I adore Yarbro's great creation, the vampire Saint Germain, I must admit that some aspects of the novels become repetitive - Saint Germain's endless difficulties with troublesome civil servants who just don't trust him and want to extort money from him while preparing to expose him for whatever it is that they suspect him of being being a very large entry on that list. Usually, the repetitive aspects are, for me, more than cancelled out by the richness of historical detail, the twists and turns of the current chapter in Saint Germain's long life, and more often than not, the character and constraints surrounding the women who are an essential part of the vampire's life.

However, this time around, the setting - Rome during the time of the Emperor Heliobagalus - is not all that deeply explored, and we have seen both Saint Germain and Olivia in Rome before, and facing exactly the same kinds of bureaucratic persecution before. Yarbro does explore the growing presence, activism and persecution of Christians in this volume - in fact, that's a significant element of the difficulties faced by both of Saint Germain's significant female companions in this book - and the decadent fusion of sex and sadism of not just the Imperial court but much of Roman culture of the time, and her attention to detail is as always comprehensive and precise. But... I think next time I'd prefer to see Saint Germain in some place and time a bit further removed from the settings of earlier novels.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it - just not quite as much as many of her other Saint Germain books.

Comments

[glaurung-quena.livejournal.com]

She really needs to write more St Germain novels that are _not_ set in Europe sometime in the last 2000 years.