Hôtel Transylvania (Saint-Germain, volume 1) by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

[james_davis_nicoll]

Poor Madelaine de Montalia! The only person between her and Clotaire de Saint Sebastien's ruthless cult of Satanists is the charming Le Comte de Saint-Germain... vampire!

Hôtel Transylvania (Saint-Germain, volume 1) by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Comments

[glaurung]

I disagree with your characterization of St Germain as sexless. He is very interested in giving pleasure to the women he seduces throughout the series. He just isn’t capable of orgasm himself any longer (due to being undead), but he’s definitely still a sexual being.

[jreynolds197]

Ah, I read the first few of these quite happily back in the day.

Then younger-me noticed how formulaic they were. Every book was the same! Different setting, yes, but the plot was always virtually identical.

1) Le Comte is attracted to a woman [and it's always a woman, but Saint-Germain at least mentions assignations with guys]
2) woman's libido gets her together with S-G.
3) Lots of happy sexing (often, but not always off-screen).
4) Bad dude becomes suspicious of S-G. And also wants the Good Girl.
5) Roger tells S-G throughout the book that things are becoming increasingly dangerous wherever they are, and they should get out of Dodge. S-G ignores him.
6) Some perilous peril at the end. S-G proceeds to get out of Dodge.
7) Lots of descriptions of clothing.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

I recently saw one of the later books in a used bookstore. It went from the front of the store, to the basement (half-off!) to a cart on the sidewalk in front of the store (super-cheap). I didn't see the need to buy it. Not even for old-times sake.

[oursin]

It's years since I revisited these - except I did pick up a very late entry in the series at Wiscon a few years ago. They did tend to be formulaic - and got longer and longer and longer, as I recall - but I did give them points for being in, on the whole, less visited niches of history. 1743 in France is, after all, neither the court of the Sun King, nor is it the guillotine impends if not the Terror raging, even if it is wall to wall evil aristos.

[kaffy_r]

I read the first Saint Germain novel as a young post-teen and really loved it. I think I read the second, and liked it - I mean, who can resist at least liking and respecting the man himself? After that, though, I think I had no interest in finding the subsequent novels.

I loved the clothing descriptions unreservedly. Heh.

[dragoness_e]

This was the novel that hooked me on the series. I read a lot of them, but at some point, lost interest as they started being harder to find or came out less often. Also soured a bit on devout Christians always being bad guys in them.

[jreynolds197]

Heh. The one I saw in the used book store is set in Rome in the time of Elagabalus. And according to the dust jacket, the baddie is... a devout Christian!

[ba_munronoe]

The "pagans good, Christians bad" meme in fantasy is annoying, and kinda disrespectful of pre-Christian peoples, who have the right to be just as awful as anyone else. Sort of a form of chronological Orientalism.

[kgbooklog]

What annoys me these days is explicit Christianity in high magic secondary worlds. Storm-goddess avatars should not be quoting Psalms, not even under duress.

[dragoness_e]

Yarbro avoided that one in the St. Germain stories. Almost everywhere was shown to be stunningly intolerant of strangers, no matter what their religion.

[bolindbergh]

Surely somebody has filked this already?

🎶 They stab it with their wooden stakes
🎵But they just can't kill the beast