Roman Dusk
by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Published by Tor
368 pages
November 2006
Hardcover
ISBN: 0-765-31391-X

Roman Dusk is the 19th novel in the Count Saint-Germain series, in which a two-thousand-year-old vampire consorts with third-century Romans.

The story surrounds the count, or as he's called here, Ragoczy Germain Sanct-Franciscus, who is working as a physician outside the walls of Rome in his villa. His principle patient, Domina Laelius, is a mean-spirited old bitch who is cruel to everyone, even her caretaker daughter Ignatia, though we are supposed to believe she is justified in her nasty ways because she's had a stroke and is dying. Ignatia, 25, is a timid, virginal and, of course, lovely young woman who takes a shine to the Count, and spends a great deal of the book being a complete wimp about asking him for her first sexual experience.

Meanwhile, the Count, ever the gentleman, saves a courtesan from permanent scars after a beating by zealous Christians, and saves a thief from being disemboweled by a variety of wild animals in the Roman arena. The Count is under scrutiny by an avaricious and evil Roman official named Telemachus Batsho (and yes, it's inevitable that your brain will translate that last name to “Batshit” during the course of the novel) who desires to make a name for himself on the downfall of the rich “foreigner,” the Count. Through a series of unhappy events, readers are allowed to see early Christians as terrorists of the rankest sort, late Romans as greedy, corrupt, moral-free pigs, and vampires and prostitutes as the epiphany of all that is good about humanity; courageous, kind, generous, intelligent and adept at sensuality and sexuality in its cleaner forms.

It became apparent to me early in the book that I needed to have read all the other Saint-Germain novels to fully understand the main character in this one, as the author never actually has the Count drinking blood. I was two-thirds of the way through the novel when he finally spilled blood (of some nasty Christians who'd burned down houses and burned the vampire nearly to death) and even then, he tells the Christian he's killing that he won't drink his blood because this Christian is such a slime bag he wants nothing from him. Prior to this, I'd assumed that the Count was some sort of succubus, taking life force instead of blood from the courtesan/prostitute when he helped her reach orgasm.

Unfortunately, I am still not certain that he didn't derive some sustenance from her psychically, because he maintains, throughout the book, that he only derives pleasure from the woman's orgasm, and he apparently never uses his penis for intercourse, instead using his fingers or his mouth for stimulating his prostitute and Ignatia, into orgasm. But these instances of rather antiseptic sex are few and far between because we spend a majority of the book mired in horrifically detailed letters, written in a stiff and formal style, detailing the Count's shipping and textile business. These letters, which fall every couple of pages, are to the text what a mudslide is to a road full of commuters; they bring it to a full stop.  Unfortunately, the plot has crawled, inched and puttered like an old geezer up to the letters anyway, so once we are treated to elaborate descriptions of every single piece of clothing that the main characters wear, including their foot gear, we've almost forgotten what was happening anyway.

Though he seems so gentle, sweet and patient as to be unbelievable, the Count is also vague as a character. I assume that his personality and thoughts are delineated in previous novels, but they aren't shown here enough to keep the reader interested in what happens to him. The prostitute is somewhat interesting, but also vain and slightly dim, yet at least she shows more backbone than the simpering Ignatia, who really nauseated me by the end of the book. She allowed herself to be pushed around and bullied by everyone in the book except for the Count, and even after having what passes for sex between them, is still a twit who allowed herself to be forced nearly into exile. Even the thief the Count saves turns out to be a double-dealing cretin, and yet the ever-patient count forgives him and continues his employment, eventually setting the thief up with a pension for his retirement.

Yarbro is a seasoned writer, so her prose is elegant and tight, with only a few spots of excess, generally when she's describing clothing.

This book did not impress me as paranormal romance at all, rather as a historical fictional tale with a bit of romance thrown in (only three times do we hear of any real romantic relations between the Count and the two women in the book) to keep the reader from nodding off. As it is, I found Roman Dusk to be a great soporific, particularly the meticulously detailed letters about Roman commerce.

Several long-term St Germain readers have told me that Yarbro has a standard plot that she follows in the books, of the Count relocating from one place that was persecuting him to another place, where he gets involved with a woman who is socially ostracized because of the gender prejudice of that particular society, then he falls for the woman, but their affair ends badly, usually with the woman dead or transformed into a vampire. This novel did follow that standard plot almost to the end, where the woman is transformed, not into a vampire, but into financial independence. The Count almost dies in this novel, so I suppose that is why Ignatia and the prostitute both lived.

by DeAnn Rossetti
reprinted from BOFFM #4 (forthcoming)