16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Morose, Verbose, St. Germain Trudges On, February 10, 2007
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.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent period novel, January 28, 2007
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.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
St. Germain in Peril Once Again, October 12, 2006
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.
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