Book Review: A Dangerous Climate by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

A Dangerous Climate (Tor: September 30, 2008) is the twentieth novel by author Chelsea Quinn Yarbro detailing an episode in the very long life of her benign vampire hero, Count Ferenz Ragoczy Saint-Germain. It would be understandable, after so many books, if the Saint-Germain stories fell into a pattern. Having long outlived the Etruscan civilization of his birth, Saint-Germain is the eternal outsider, making temporary homes for himself until xenophobia and suspicion force him to move on. When he does, he usually must leave behind the female lovers he has trusted and helped. Despite this repeating motif, the Saint-Germain novels have taken a variety of forms. In an interview for Blogcritics in May, 2008, Yarbro said that her hero surprised her in the fifth novel, Tempting Fate, “and he can still surprise me now.” Saint-Germain proves her right in several ways in A Dangerous Climate. I’ve been a fan of Yarbro’s Count for thirty years, and I found this outing one of the most enjoyable in the series.

The foundation of every Saint-Germain novel is a vivid and meticulously researched portrait of one or more times and places in world history, often one that is not commonly presented in fiction. A Dangerous Climate takes us to the year 1704 and the founding of the Russian city of Saint Petersburg (Leningrad from 1924 to 1991) at the mouth of the Neva River on the Baltic sea.

Piotyr Alexeievich Romanov, six feet, eight inches tall and known to history as Tsar Peter I or Peter the Great, reigned from 1689 to 1725. He was an energetic and progressive ruler who forcibly dragged Russia from the Medieval into the early modern age. An absolute monarch, he utilized Draconian tactics to achieve his ends. He even mandated that nobles shave their beards and dress in European style clothing. His tour de force, the city of Saint Petersburg, was built in a decade, thanks to the massive mobilization of workers and resources that Piotyr ordered to labor on it. Enthralled with Dutch culture, Piotyr gave his city a Dutch name, Sankt Piterburkh, and referred to himself by the Dutch name Piter.

A Dangerous Climate is set at the beginning of this endeavor, when the marshes and bogs at the river mouth were still being drained and the city itself was being hammered together as fast as possible from wood, soon to be replaced with stone. Workers, many of them convicts and prisoners of war, died by the hundred in the harsh weather, while upper class artisans, architects, engineers and other specialists enjoyed spartan comforts at best. Piotyr “was determined to create a Baltic Amsterdam,” Yarbro says in her “Author’s Notes” to the novel. But like all pioneers (voluntary and otherwise), the first residents of Sankt Piterburkh lived, as Yarbro puts it, “in conditions that resembled a survival camp in a construction zone.”

In such conditions, law enforcement tends to be less than efficient. Over the course of the Saint-Germain series, we have seen the Count suffer through horrendous physical injuries, torture and beatings, while barely escaping from far worse. Yarbro’s vampires enjoy very few supernatural powers or advantages over mortals. Like the humans they once were, they must evade misadventures through ingenuity and resourcefulness, which often aren’t enough. In most cases we see inevitable disaster looming, but in A Dangerous Climate, the disaster opens the book. In the first chapter, night watchmen discover Saint-Germain right after he’s been beaten so severely that he can’t remember exactly what happened. A living man wouldn’t have survived. Since Saint-Germain does, he spends the rest of the book trying to determine what happened, who wants him dead and when they’ll make another attempt. The opening chapters describe his slow recovery, complicated by his need to conceal how well he’s really doing from the physician and healers who are treating him.

We soon learn another unique aspect to Saint-Germain’s situation in this story: he is not in Sankt Piterburkh as a lone “foreigner.” The Count is visiting in disguise, pretending to be Arpad Arco-Tolvay, Hercegek Gyor, the missing husband of a Polish aristocrat, Zozia, Ksiezna Nisko. A gifted diplomat and spy for the Polish monarch, Augustus II, the Ksiezna must be escorted by a male relative in order to move freely among the foreign dignitaries in Sankt Piterburkh. With the agreement of Augustus II, Saint-Germain has taken on this role, presumably in name only. As the story progresses, their mutual needs draw Saint-Germain and Zozia into a much more intimate--and perilous--involvement than originally planned. Along with all the other concerns raised by Saint-Germain’s unorthodox lovemaking, there is always the chance that the Ksiezna’s real husband could turn up and expose the ruse.

In order to play the role of Zozia’s Hungarian spouse, Saint-Germain is obliged to change some of his normal habits. He abandons his signature style of black, red and white clothing to dress in the lavish fabrics and bright colors fashionable at the time. Guests at the Russian court were expected to feast to excess with their hosts, on pain of committing an unforgivable insult. We have always known that Saint-Germain is unable to consume food or drink--in A Dangerous Climate we find out what happens to him if he does.

Saint-Germain’s beating directly leads to his acquaintance with the independent Ludmilla Borisevna Svarinskaya, a Russian matron who has been rejected by her husband and is running a care house in Sankt Piterburkh. She earns Saint-Germain’s admiration and respect, and eventually a closer relationship. But even as he juggles clandestine liaisons and extremely delicate politics, Saint-Germain is confronted with a crisis in his own affairs. While he has gone underground to impersonate the Ksiezna’s husband, he learns that somebody else is impersonating him. His title, property and estates, under the care of a steward who sends regular reports to him in Sankt Piterburkh, are being claimed by an impostor. Now he has another problem to untangle, without unmasking his real identity to Piotyr and the other residents of Sankt Piterburkh or threatening the Ksiezna’s mission.

A Dangerous Climate features more in the way of complicated puzzles and elaborate maneuverings than raw action. The plot spins out against the finely described backdrop of newborn Sankt Piterburkh--crude, muddy, cold and inhospitable, and yet filled with high born diplomats and ambassadors displaying all the luxury expected in a royal court, because Piotyr insists upon it. By the end of the book, we feel as though we’ve lived in Piotyr’s city ourselves. As often is the case with Yarbro’s novels, we’re also deeply grateful that we don’t live there now. In a 2005 interview with Linda Suzane, Yarbro said, “The Saint-Germain novels are called historical horror novels for a reason: history is horrifying...I try to show the various periods as they saw themselves as much as I can, and to focus on the status and circumstances of women and the constraints of their societies.” In practical terms, this means that the Saint-Germain novels usually have rather grim conclusions, especially when it comes to the fates of the female characters. A Dangerous Climate diverges somewhat from this tendency, another pleasant surprise for me.

A Dangerous Climate takes its place among my favorite of the Saint-Germain novels. Saint-Germain, along with other characters in the books, consistently demonstrates that problems can be resolved without violence even in extremely violent environments. Although he has watched civilizations decline into barbarism countless times, he himself never abandons his own hard-won principles, and he seeks out those individuals who rise above their circumstances by their own inner light. The Saint-Germain novels always contain a note of optimism. No matter how grim the story and how great his loss, Saint-Germain remains determined to survive and look toward the future. In A Dangerous Climate he earns a happier reward for his resilience than he has sometimes seen. Fans of the Count and new readers alike will thoroughly enjoy this book.

Book Review: The Saint-Germain Memoirs by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

The Saint-Germain Memoirs is the third collection of stories featuring Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s popular vampire hero, Count Rogoczy Saint-Germain. The Saint-Germain novels are long, leisurely, meticulously researched books set in historical time periods ranging from dynastic Egypt to the twentieth century. Saint-Germain, who debuted in 1978 in the novel Hotel Transylvania, was among the first wholly sympathetic and moral vampire characters in literature, but his unique nature and his extremely long history (he is some 4,000 years old) make him challenging to depict fairly in a shorter work. The Saint-Germain Memoirs incorporates five tales of varying lengths: two short stories, two novelettes, and the book’s centerpiece, a 42,000-word novella. Of these, the novella is unquestionably the best piece in the book, encapsulating the finest elements of the Saint-Germain series as a whole.

I’ve read nearly all of the Saint-Germain novels, so I can’t gauge how a reader with no previous experience of Yarbro’s character would experience the stories in The Saint-Germain Memoirs. However, as I read them, I sensed that I was picking up on a lot of subtle hints and details that required extensive background information to appreciate. In her Introduction, Sharon Russell argues that the stories have something to offer readers regardless of their familiarity with Saint-Germain, but I remain unconvinced. Individuals who already have a good working knowledge of the character and his history will get the most from these brief glimpses into his life.

“Harpy,” originally published in the anthology, The Secret History of Vampires, is a good example of a story that is full of meaning for those who already know Saint-Germain, but may be puzzling to new readers. One of the Amazon reviewers for The Secret History of Vampires identified the enigmatic “Ragosh-ski” in the story as Dracula! Although “Harpy” presents an interesting character study of a historical person rarely given much thought--I can’t say who without spoiling the twist ending--it took me a while to pin down the time period based on the descriptions. This is a peril of setting a story in a location, Athens, that has been consistently occupied under the same name for 2,500 years. I also remained uncertain, by the story’s end, as to why Saint-Germain picked out this woman for assistance--whether he knew her by reputation or was able, as the story hints, to sense some special quality she possessed.

“A Gentleman of the Old School,” originally published in Dark Delicacies, is one of the very rare Saint-Germain tales set in the present-day. This story concentrates much more on its mortal characters, with Saint-Germain appearing as a wealthy man of mystery who feeds an eager female reporter some clues in a serial murder case. In her Afterword, Yarbro describes her writing process, explaining that her character “talks to her” and that “I’m one of those writers who has to have characters come alive before I can write about them...I immerse myself in the environment of the story, the history, the circumstances, and as much actual information we have regarding how people of the time saw themselves and their world.” I completely sympathize, because I write the same way. But some years ago I had a conversation with Ms. Yarbro and asked her why she hadn’t written a novel about Saint-Germain in the present day. She told me that for some reason, those stories just wouldn’t easily gel for her. “A Gentleman of the Old School” has that in common with the other modern-day Saint-Germain stories: somehow, Yarbro’s hero hasn’t quite found a natural place in the post-Y2K world.

The novelette “Intercession” was originally published in Repentants. Presented in epistolary style, “Intercession” consists of letters written by Saint-Germain’s manservant, Rogerio, in his efforts to free his master from incarceration in 17th century Spanish territory in the New World. Readers of the novels already know that Saint-Germain is imprisoned when his oldest friend, the vampire Olivia, dies in an explosion in Rome. This story includes that event. However, I found “Intercession” to be the weakest of the five pieces in this collection. To me, it merely seemed repetitive: the years go by as Rogerio writes letter after letter seeking answers or aid. The point--that in such historical times even a wealthy person could be unjustly imprisoned indefinitely without hope of redress--is made long before the story ends. Including Olivia’s death in that time frame without any mention of its effect on Saint-Germain leaves too large a gap. “Intercession” demands that the reader imagine how Saint-Germain must be feeling: helpless, cut off from all friendly communication and aware that Olivia is gone. This can be an effective device, but in “Intercession,” it simply doesn’t work for me.

The novelette, “Lost Epiphany,” doesn’t actually tell a story, but it delivers a highly entertaining account of how Saint-Germain maneuvers his way among several groups of colorful and hostile antagonists. Despite his vampiric state, Saint-Germain possesses few supernatural powers. He survives primarily through his own resourcefulness and his long knowledge of the human psyche. In “Lost Epiphany,” set in the early first millennium A.D., Saint-Germain’s merchant ship has been captured by pirates in the Mediterranean, and one of his only advantages, enhanced strength and endurance, is severely curtailed by starvation and exposure to running water. Given an opportunity to go ashore on an island and negotiate with a monastery there for supplies, Saint-Germain uses his wits to gain an edge for himself with the monks--who have some surprises of their own. “Lost Epiphany” is an ingenious object lesson in how an immortal might survive a crisis without any of the deus-ex-machina tricks that are usually associated with vampires.

The novella “Tales Out of School” forms the heart of The Saint-Germain Memoirs in every sense. I thoroughly enjoyed this story. Set in 14th century Padua (then Padova), Saint-Germain attempts to help a widow suffering from a terminal disease, as he negotiates the tricky political and social issues related to his teaching alchemy and herbalism to students at Padova University. “Tales Out of School” is rich with historical detail, colorful and interesting characters, and true human drama. Containing all the core elements of the novels, it is complete as is: any longer, and it would be over-stuffed and lose its strong narrative threads. It is worth the price of the book alone.

The Saint-Germain Memoirs was initially issued in a signed and numbered hardcover edition by Elder Signs Press. It includes a brief, but informative Afterword by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro discussing her character and how the series began and evolved, and an Introduction by Sharon Russell. I enthusiastically recommend it to any reader who has enjoyed at least some of the Saint-Germain novels. Those who are new to the character may be mystified by the stories, but can find some answers to their questions on Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s official website.