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

[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.