Roman Dusk: A Novel of the Count Saint-Germain [Hardcover]

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro (Author)

Book Description

Series: Count Saint-Germain | Publication Date: September 19, 2006

Rome is crumbling. The child-emperor, Heliogabalus, diverts the Roman populace with parties, circuses, and celebrations, while his mother and grandmother jockey for power behind the scenes. The government is riddled with scandal and no business is conducted without bribes which grow ever larger. Religions joust for prominence, with factions of Christians seeking to overthrow the ancient Roman pantheon. Courtesans, once honored for their skills and protected by special guards, have become targets of opprobrium.
The vampire Ragoczy Germanius Sanct' Franciscus, already subject to extra taxes and regulations because he is a foreigner, falls under the maleficent eye of Telemachus Batsho, a minor functionary who dreams of power and wealth. When Franciscus thwarts his attempts to extort ever-increasing sums from a young Roman of good birth, Batsho swears revenge. Franciscus finds his activities closely monitored and is accused of treason and conspiracy. His friends, threatened with similar scrutiny, abandon him to Batsho's mercies or urge him to leave the Eternal City.
But Franciscus has many ties to Rome. He has taken under his protection a beautiful courtesan who was brutally beaten by the very men who should have been protecting her. She has been the vampire's sustenance for many months.
Franciscus is also held in the city by the plight of the family Laelius. The Domina's health is failing despite the vampire's great medical skills; her son has converted to Christianity and rails against his mother's beliefs; her daughter Ignatia, who has sacrified her own life to care for her mother, realizes that when her mother dies, her fate will rest in the hands of her increasingly fanatical brother.
Determined to claim pleasure for herself, Ignatia invites Franciscus's attentions, inflaming him with the power of her untapped sexuality. Unfortunately, they are not unobserved, and their simple yet powerful act of love sparks a conflagration that destroys Ignatia's family and nearly brings about the vampire's True Death.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Set in decadent third-century C.E. Rome, Yarbro's 19th volume in her majestic fantasy series (after 2005's Dark of the Sun) is one of her finest yet to feature heroic vampire Saint-Germain, here known as Ragoczy Germainus Sanct-Franciscus. Despite his wealth, discretion and careful observance of the social niceties, Sanct-Franciscus must be careful as a foreigner. All his precautions, however, can't prevent an official from placing a spy in his household and targeting him for tax evasion and worse. Even as Sanct-Franciscus shelters and aids an abused courtesan, doctors a dying noblewoman and befriends her virginal daughter, he must contend with a fanatical young follower of one of the many religions of the day, Christianity. Sensuous scenes are lush with language ("her sumptuous body still quivering in apolaustic abandon") rather than the explicitly erotic. Meticulous attention to historic detail and vivid writing bring an ancient era to life. Unlike most generic vampiric novels that can be quaffed in a quick if entertaining gulp, this book should be savored like a fine wine. (Sept.)
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From Booklist

The new Saint-Germain yarn unfolds in the Decadence--the second-century period of Roman boy-emperor Heliogabalus' reign. Saint-Germain comes to Rome as, ostensibly, a learned, wealthy merchant. His riches attract a particularly corrupt tax collector, and when he attempts to help an ailing noblewoman, he is accused of corrupting her daughter, whose zealous Christian-convert brother threatens to destroy Saint-Germain with fire. All accounts are settled before the vampire leaves Rome. Yarbro's interpretation of the period is extremely plausible, ensuring that this installment of the long, long series appeals equally to vampire, history, and romance fans. Frieda Murray
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; First Edition edition (September 19, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 076531391X
• ISBN-13: 978-0765313911
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,339,942 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Morose, Verbose, St. Germain Trudges On, February 10, 2007

By 

Lisa Small - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Roman Dusk: A Novel of the Count Saint-Germain (Hardcover)

The structure of the series is so well-established that a spoiler would be impossible, so no warnings here. Yarbro has returned to Rome, and that's fine with me -- I enjoy any history, anywhere, through her eyes, though I confess to preferring the novels set in less well-known times and places, such as early colonial South America. I can never fault her research, but I'm ready to start faulting her writing.

"Roman Dusk" contains several of her well-worn plot elements: an ungrateful recipient (or two, or more) of undeserved but unflagging charity; a woman repressed, intimidated, exploited by a sexually-peculiar man whom she cannot avoid, escape, or contest; St. Germain's own chronic depression; futility in the face of official corruption; no good deed going unpunished; and a herd of angry male adolescent religious zealots getting their ya-yas by abusing people who have lives more (carnally) satisfying than their own (as in the St. Germain book set in the reign of Lorenzo de Medici).

I'm ready to forgive her all of that but I have finally had it with her killjoy sex scenes. In book after book, scene after scene, she labors mightily to achieve erotic escalation and then CANNOT resist throwing a cinderblock into the bubblebath by flaunting a term so arcane, so rare, so strange, that the thread of tension snaps. Though the reader can be certain that the characters will find satisfaction sometime in the next five sentences, the hapless observer is no longer along for the ride, being forced to go look up... let's see, what is it this time? "Amplectant" on page 105 (which brought up the decidedly non-erotic image of the tropical toads I used to raise forming amplexus, which is erotic to the toads, I'm sure, but not so much to the average human observer) and here, on 248, a pair of lovers are "savoring the inscience of their flesh." That translates to "lack of knowledge of their flesh." "Amplectant" means clinging to, as with the tendrils of a vine. (Points off also for misuse of "insouciant torment" on the same page in the same scene; however pleasant erotic suspense may be, it hardly qualifies as "nonchalant torture.")

A few books back, "apolaustic" was the big ol' word-brick tossed into the heated bed; more than once, if I recall correctly. There's always something. Ms. Yarbro, knock it off. Put down the antique thesaurus and write a sex scene with some flow to it. We know where you're going, and we're willing to go there with you, so quit being such a spoilsport by intrusively displaying arcane erudition instead of doing something to gently elevate the eroticism. It's ANNOYING. And it's obvious that you're doing it on purpose; the vocabulary lessons are never as obnoxious elsewhere in your books.

Speaking of which, many rather obscure deities of the Greco-Roman pantheon get a mention in "Roman Dusk," and are kindly identified in a glossary at the conclusion of the book -- Carna, Copia, Fraus, Phobus, Mania, Somnus, the Parcae, Verplaca and Vertumnus, et al. And that's part of what makes the series so good -- the reader always learns something while being allowed to revel in sensuous descriptions of spectacular jewels, glorious fabrics, the height of period style (and let's give her props for keeping descriptions of garments that are invariably red, black, and silver fresh after all this time). It is the consistently velvety texture of Yarbro's prose that makes the crude interruptions of the more passionate passages so conspicuous, suggesting an inner Puritan in this author that is entirely dissonant with the rest of her presentation.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent period novel, January 28, 2007

By 

Patrick Curtin "Bookaholic" (Cape Cod MA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Roman Dusk: A Novel of the Count Saint-Germain (Hardcover)

I enjoy the St. Germain novles not just for the vampire element, which is actually quite small, or the romance, which is there but understated. The one thing that draws me again and again to this series is the level of historical detail and color that Yarbro brings to the table. Roman Dusk is no exception.

Yarbro brings the declining phase of the Roman Empire to life in this book, showing how waste and bureaucratic excess has drained the blood of the Empire more than anything St. Germain would ever do. It is fascinating how St. Germain is actually the most human subject in the book, and the living are the true vampires. This novel is a great read for those who enjoy history and would like to vicariously feel what life in Rome would have been like as it started its slow decline into chaos.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars St. Germain in Peril Once Again, October 12, 2006

By 

Mark R., Whittington "author of Children of A... (Houston, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Roman Dusk: A Novel of the Count Saint-Germain (Hardcover)

Roman Dusk was everything one can want in a St. Germain novel. There is scrumptuous historical detail. There are the usual erotic sex scenes (with the Count's perculiar kind of love making/feeding.) There are villins, ranging from the over officious tax man to the fanatical Christian who is pretty sure that St. Germain is the spawn of Satan. The Christians in this novel are not the nice people from Sunday School who are always having beautific smiles on their faces while the lions approach and Peter Ustinov (aka Nero) looks on bemused from the Imperial Box. These Christians are nasty people, somewhere between Al Qaeda and over zealous frat boys. Roman Dawn is set in the third century, when the Roman Empire was starting to go to hell in a hand basket, but doing it with lots of parties, games, and other entertainments. A must read for St. Germain fans.