Hotel Transylvania by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Book review
by Sandy Rainey

 

Rating:

 

Madelaine de Montalia, a lovely, intelligent and independent young woman from eighteenth-century Provence, travels to Paris to make her debut in society. There she turns many heads, but her heart belongs to the mysterious Comte de Saint-Germain, a debonair stranger whose elegant manner and sketchy past have the city talking.

Saint-Germain falls deeply in love with Madelaine, but there is a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to their passion: le Comte de Saint-Germain is a vampire. Yet Saint-Germain's nature is not the greatest threat Madelaine faces, for his is not the only eye she has caught: a secret Satanic cult whose members are well-known figures in Paris society plans to capture and torture her in a ritual of unspeakable repellence, and only Saint-Germain has a chance at stopping them.

There is surely no more attractive figure in all of vampire literature than Yarbro's Saint-Germain. His thousands of years have taught him tolerance, kindness, patience and selflessness. His vast knowledge extends to medicine, music, linguistics and alchemy, though there is scarcely a field in which he is not well-versed. His wit and impeccable attire (always variations on black and white touched with silver and red) serve him well in society, but he is equally at home on the very fringes of civilization, where his travels have often taken him.

Yet there is about Saint-Germain an unsoundable melancholy; his existence of necessity has been more often solitary than sociable. At times he is haughty; often he is distant; occasionally he is fierce. Because he does not kill when he feeds, because blood-drinking for him is sweeter when there are trust and love, he is one of our gentlest vampires; certainly he is one of our most sensual. Though he does not court danger, when circumstances demand he is breathtakingly heroic. If, in his own words, the Vampire Lestat is "the James Bond of the vampires," then Saint-Germain is perhaps the Indiana Jones.

There are several novels and a collection of short stories featuring Saint-Germain, and there are four novels dealing with two of Saint-Germain's dearest companions, Madelaine de Montalia and Atta Olivia Clemens. It is not easy to come by Yarbro's novels; the earliest ones are out of print and must be purchased used. But be persistent: the books never disappoint!

Fortunately it does not really matter in which order the novels are read. They were not written in chronological order, and each volume is more or less self-contained. Every novel is a lovingly detailed recreation of the age and place in which it is set, and Yarbro's prose is unfailingly exquisite. Incidentally, Yarbro's intimate scenes are delicious little miracles of tenderness and eroticism. Move these books to the top of your reading list; there are none better.