Come Twilight: A Novel of Saint-Germain

Rating:
Summary: Thirteenth in the Saint Germain series.
Review: Or fourteenth, if you count "Out of the House of Life", a spinoff novel primarily about the character of Madeline de Montalia, a vampiric "childe" of Saint Germain, but also including some flashback scenes featuring an early Saint Germain.

Or seventeenth, if you also include "A Flame In Byzantium", "Crusader's Torch", and "A Candle For d'Artagnan", a spinoff series about Olivia Atta Clemens, an earlier offspring.

Throughout the series, the best part of these novels is the character of the count Saint-Germain himself; he is an unmitigated hero, not the anti-hero that one usually sees in vampire novels, and that's a fascinating change of pace. He always explains that he wasn't always the urbane, elegant, even-tempered, kind and sensitive individual that he is now; four thousand years ago, when he became a vampire, he was a typical ravening beast, but he outgrew it. This is a marvellous and original perspective on vampirism, and a delightfully optimistic outlook on humanity: that given sufficient time, ANYBODY can grow up, even a bloodthirsty creature of the night.

As a result, what we have in this series is a series of historical novels, set at various points along the very long time-line of Saint Germain's life. We generally see very little of other vampires, other than occasionally seeing those who Saint Germain has made vampires in previous books. (Generally, we see even these only in their correspondence with Saint Germain; I cannot remember any book in which we see more of them than this except for "Tempting Fate", in which we see quite a bit of Madeline de Montalia, and one short story in the collection "The Chronicles of Saint Germain", in which we see the count in conflict with a more traditionally minded vampire.) This book is the exception to that rule, as well as the rule that each book covers a "point" on his time-line. This book is told in three sections, each a separate point of its own: one in the seventh century, one in the eighth, and one in the twelfth. This divergence from form is necessary in order to show the fact that interactions between vampires are by necessity very long-term things. The main conflict in this book is between Saint Germain and a woman who he makes into a vampire early in the book, and who refuses to accept him as a mentor on how to manage her new life and the powers that go with it.

This was an interesting change of pace, but resulted in a novel that was long on sub-plots, but had less primary plot than it might have. In addition, it made it difficult to see Saint Germain interacting with mortals as one normally would, because by definition, none of the mortals survived more than a third of the book. We did see interations, but there wasn't time to develop them as there normally would be, and that left them feeling rushed. Still, the loss of that aspect of the books was easily compensated for by the novelty of seeing other vampires, vampires who acted as vampires are expected to, for a change.

Not one of the best in the series, but far from the worst.

Rating:
Summary: Thirteenth in the Saint Germain series.
Review: Or fourteenth, if you count "Out of the House of Life", a spinoff novel primarily about the character of Madeline de Montalia, a vampiric "childe" of Saint Germain, but also including some flashback scenes featuring an early Saint Germain.

Or seventeenth, if you also include "A Flame In Byzantium", "Crusader's Torch", and "A Candle For d'Artagnan", a spinoff series about Olivia Atta Clemens, an earlier offspring.

Throughout the series, the best part of these novels is the character of the count Saint-Germain himself; he is an unmitigated hero, not the anti-hero that one usually sees in vampire novels, and that's a fascinating change of pace. He always explains that he wasn't always the urbane, elegant, even-tempered, kind and sensitive individual that he is now; four thousand years ago, when he became a vampire, he was a typical ravening beast, but he outgrew it. This is a marvellous and original perspective on vampirism, and a delightfully optimistic outlook on humanity: that given sufficient time, ANYBODY can grow up, even a bloodthirsty creature of the night.

As a result, what we have in this series is a series of historical novels, set at various points along the very long time-line of Saint Germain's life. We generally see very little of other vampires, other than occasionally seeing those who Saint Germain has made vampires in previous books. (Generally, we see even these only in their correspondence with Saint Germain; I cannot remember any book in which we see more of them than this except for "Tempting Fate", in which we see quite a bit of Madeline de Montalia, and one short story in the collection "The Chronicles of Saint Germain", in which we see the count in conflict with a more traditionally minded vampire.) This book is the exception to that rule, as well as the rule that each book covers a "point" on his time-line. This book is told in three sections, each a separate point of its own: one in the seventh century, one in the eighth, and one in the twelfth. This divergence from form is necessary in order to show the fact that interactions between vampires are by necessity very long-term things. The main conflict in this book is between Saint Germain and a woman who he makes into a vampire early in the book, and who refuses to accept him as a mentor on how to manage her new life and the powers that go with it.

This was an interesting change of pace, but resulted in a novel that was long on sub-plots, but had less primary plot than it might have. In addition, it made it difficult to see Saint Germain interacting with mortals as one normally would, because by definition, none of the mortals survived more than a third of the book. We did see interations, but there wasn't time to develop them as there normally would be, and that left them feeling rushed. Still, the loss of that aspect of the books was easily compensated for by the novelty of seeing other vampires, vampires who acted as vampires are expected to, for a change.

Not one of the best in the series, but far from the worst.

Rating:
Summary: Vampires and (real) history. What could be better?
Review: Thinking about what makes a good book, one that qualifies for inclusion in what to take to the desert isle, but isn't pap, and doesn't get boring on a re-read, leads me to Yarbro's work. St. Germain is sometimes a hero, and sometimes an anti-hero, but here he reveals a really human side. He makes a mistake, in the name of compassion and loneliness. He makes Csismenae. And, in the modern world, she could very well be engineering the next hostile take over. She's headstrong, immediately independent of him, and makes all the mistakes a young person (mortal or immortal) makes, but thinks, because of her position and her immortality, that she will always do the right thing. I see a lot of myself in her; not always a comfortable thought.

The beauty of any of Yarbo's work is her commitment to research and history. Come Twilight is historical fiction. And it's not an "easy" read, in the sense that you put it down, say "gee, that was great", and walk away from it unchanged. Come Twilight is disturbing. It will make you think about the nature of humanity, the evolution of culture, and the ways in which the non-human (or better put, formerly human) vampires show more compassion, (and sometimes less) than their human counterparts, but, while they cast no reflection, truly reflect their times and their cultures.

They also reflect the ability of humanity to learn from experience, and to grow, and they reflect the refusal of some of us to do that.

Recommended highly by this anthropologist!

Rating:
Summary: Some of the best
Review: This one is different in several respects. Unfortunately, as usual, the story gets slowed down by the endless letters. Scan those and go back to read them later if you must. Without these interruptions, this newest Count book has some surprises and gives our beloved vampire the unusual opportunity to be himself in the company of other creatures of the night. Mostly, Yarbro's die-hard fans will be thrilled at this presentation of the Count using all his powers to combat the evil he inadverdently instigated.

Rating:
Summary: I smell a sequel...
Review: This series is terrific. I read some of them a while ago, and am re-reading them now (and now there are even more in the series, so there's no danger of running out any time soon!)

There's some moral preaching, and the series does tend to be repetitive; the people follow trends. [...]

(Ok, I'm off my soapbox now.)

That said, that's my only beef with it. The writing is lovely, the letters to and from the characters and the notes describing what happened to the letters - weather they made it or not - are wonderful. The history comes to life and seems like a place just around the corner; you can see the mountains, touch the trees. You feel the differnt colors of the story.

This book represents a break from the series' tradition of plot: St Germain sets himself up in a place, meets people, gets himself a few friends and a few enemies, meets a lovely woman and sometimes an icky woman, gets into trouble and has to leave under bad circumstances. In this case, he makes a vampire out of a woman... and ooooh boy was that a mistake. It's sort of three related novelettes, taking place over some time. It isn't resolved completely at the end, thus the title of this review: I smell a sequel....

I actually like this book all the more for it's breaking from the traditional plot of her others. It's nice to know that while history may repeat itself, Chelsea Quin Yarbro doesn't have to.

Rating:
Summary: The plot is getting thin.
Review: Yarbro has developed quite a bit as a writer over the course of the Sanct Germain series. Her characters have more depth, and her sense of place is terrific. Her historical research is impeccable. However, she needs to come up with some different plot lines for the series because the novels have become predictable. The plots all seem to follow the same basic line: Sanct Germain is either already living someplace as a somewhat tolerated/accepted "outsider" or arrives and becomes a somewhat tolerated/accepted, he becomes involved with a local woman, he runs afoul of the local political hierarchy, he has to escape to somewhere else--sometimes twice in the course of the same novel. As much as I was intrigued by the picture of Iberia and its history that Yarbro presented, I put this book down before I finished a third of it because the story itself lacked something fresh about the characters or their interactions.