States of Grace by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
A novel of the Count Saint-Germain set in 1530 Venice. It is set a few decades after the events of ‘The Palace’ and reveals the fate of Saint-Germain’s unfortunate love interest from that book.
Anyway now Saint-Germain runs a printing press and shipping business while people sneer at him for being a “foreigner”, in every single book he is sneered at for being a “foreigner” and it is wearing a bit thin. Anyway he is wooing his latest love interest Pier-Ariana Salier, which guarantees bad things will happen to her.
Saint-Geramin’s life gets difficult when religious turmoil, theft and a spy all threaten what he has built. This was good. Pier-Ariana comes across as a bit of a whiner while Olivia comes across via her letters as someone who only cares about horses and her latest lover.
One question that has seemingly never been answered, at least in the limited number of Saint-Germain books I’ve read, is why Roger is content to be a man-servant for eternity to Saint-Germain. Apparently he is a ghoul and content to be a lackey forever.
He’s been with Saint-Germain since before the time of Charlemagne (as depicted in ‘Night Blooming’) and is still hanging around with his boss at the time of the Great Depression (as depicted in the woefully boring ‘Midnight Harvest’). Why does he stay? Why? Also this novel reveals that Saint-Germain literally has no stomach, so what happens to the blood he drinks?
Nitpicks aside I enjoyed this and look forward to reading more Saint-Germain novels like ‘Blood Roses’, ‘A Feast In Exile’, ‘Better in the Dark’, ‘Dark of the Sun’, ‘Roman Dusk’ and ‘Come Twilight’.