littlemissattitude
Super Moderator
Midnight Harvest is one of the best in Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s series of novels about Count Saint-Germain, her four-thousand-year-old vampire with a conscience. In this novel, we see Saint-Germain dealing with a more nearly modern world, the late 1930s in Spain and the United States. It’s harder, now, to be a vampire. Passport photos are a requirement for travel between nations. The police use things like fingerprints to identify criminals and other persons of interest. New technologies and more rapid communications are making it much easier for governments - and others - to keep track of people, both live and undead.
Those aren’t Saint-Germain’s only problems as the world makes its way relentlessly toward World War II. He has been living in Spain as the owner of an aircraft manufacturing company. But civil war has broken out and the Spanish fascists want his plant so that they can use it to make warplanes. Further, they want Saint-Germain out of the way because he is adamant that his property not be used for this purpose. After being injured by a “stray” bullet, Saint-Germain and his manservant, Rogerio, find it necessary to leave Spain. They make their way to the United States, first to Boston and then eventually to San Francisco. But they don’t find the peace they had hoped for. The winery Saint-Germain has been financing as one of his business ventures, owned by an Italian, is under attack by a group of white supremacists. There is a mysterious man making inquiries, trying to find Saint-Germain. Oh, and there’s an old lover of Saint-Germain’s in San Francisco, one who knows his true nature, and she’s trying to figure out whether she wants to join Saint-Germain as one of the undead.
This entry in the saga of Saint-Germain has a much different atmosphere to it than the others. It is more immediate, due no doubt to it’s setting in a time so much closer to our own. It is easier to identify with the problems Saint-Germain has in simply existing as a vampire in a world that mostly doesn’t believe in that kind of creature any more, but views the mysterious and unconventional with at least as much suspicion as the less scientifically advanced, more religious past. At the outset, I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy the book, because I had become so used to Saint-Germain’s dealings in more remote times. But the truth is, it has turned out to be one of my favorites in the series.
Yarbro has managed to bring Saint-Germain to the technologically modern world without compromising the character she has so meticulously created over the course of the series. She has also managed to create another engrossing story that does not repeat earlier plots, does not skimp on the detail that has come to characterize her writing, and does not stint in the full characterization of even minor characters. I’ve you are a fan and haven’t found this book (published in 2003) yet, find it and read it. You won’t be disappointed. And if you haven’t yet discovered Saint-Germain, this book would be a good introduction to a fascinating character.
Those aren’t Saint-Germain’s only problems as the world makes its way relentlessly toward World War II. He has been living in Spain as the owner of an aircraft manufacturing company. But civil war has broken out and the Spanish fascists want his plant so that they can use it to make warplanes. Further, they want Saint-Germain out of the way because he is adamant that his property not be used for this purpose. After being injured by a “stray” bullet, Saint-Germain and his manservant, Rogerio, find it necessary to leave Spain. They make their way to the United States, first to Boston and then eventually to San Francisco. But they don’t find the peace they had hoped for. The winery Saint-Germain has been financing as one of his business ventures, owned by an Italian, is under attack by a group of white supremacists. There is a mysterious man making inquiries, trying to find Saint-Germain. Oh, and there’s an old lover of Saint-Germain’s in San Francisco, one who knows his true nature, and she’s trying to figure out whether she wants to join Saint-Germain as one of the undead.
This entry in the saga of Saint-Germain has a much different atmosphere to it than the others. It is more immediate, due no doubt to it’s setting in a time so much closer to our own. It is easier to identify with the problems Saint-Germain has in simply existing as a vampire in a world that mostly doesn’t believe in that kind of creature any more, but views the mysterious and unconventional with at least as much suspicion as the less scientifically advanced, more religious past. At the outset, I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy the book, because I had become so used to Saint-Germain’s dealings in more remote times. But the truth is, it has turned out to be one of my favorites in the series.
Yarbro has managed to bring Saint-Germain to the technologically modern world without compromising the character she has so meticulously created over the course of the series. She has also managed to create another engrossing story that does not repeat earlier plots, does not skimp on the detail that has come to characterize her writing, and does not stint in the full characterization of even minor characters. I’ve you are a fan and haven’t found this book (published in 2003) yet, find it and read it. You won’t be disappointed. And if you haven’t yet discovered Saint-Germain, this book would be a good introduction to a fascinating character.
