Sustenance: A Saint-Germain novel

Long the Grande Dame of historical fiction, letting us see the past through the sympathetic, superlatively intelligent eyes of her ethical Vampire, Yarbro takes us now into a world of overhyped counter intelligence. Following the Second World War, the latest incarnation of our observer, the Grof Szent-Germain, and his assistant, now Rogers, are in Copenhagen. And the anti-communist hysteria of some parts of the American government is seeping through the expatriate community. Often simply advocates for civil liberties, sometimes sympathetic to what they saw as the goodness of communism, that group, in the majority, were academics. Szent-Germain’s publishing houses, just regaining their footing after the war, become refuges for some of the expats, barred from print and income elsewhere. Among them is Professor Charis Treat, whose research into historical property solutions has seen her hounded from her university, her family, and her country. Her relationship with the Grof is a true romance, with more than the usual openness regarding his obligate vampirism.

Always superlatively researched and detailed, Yarbro’s novels are worth reading just for the history. Here, the different points of view slow the read down and do confuse a bit. I will reread none the less.