My Goodreads review: Sustenance

[ankh_hpl]

Sustenance by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Number 27 in the blessedly long-lived Saint-Germain series finds the Count in post-WW II Paris, acting as publisher and friend (and, in one case, much more) to a group of American academics driven into exile by the House Un-American Activities Committee. When their lives become entangled with a shadowy CIA operation organized by a corrupt agent, no good can come of it -- and, pretty much, it doesn’t.

Yarbro’s take on the anti-Communist witch-hunt is detailed and fascinating. As usual, she provides a preface of historical information – always worth the time when starting out on one of her novels. Regular readers of this series will also find much information about how vampirism “works” in Yarbro’s world (some of this was new to me, & I’ve read the majority of these books) and discover the fates of several characters from previous novels.

That said, this still wasn’t one of my favorites. Although I enjoyed the postwar atmosphere and probably learned a great deal, I had trouble seeing how all the plot threads wove together. Perhaps this is due to my own unfamiliarity with the history, but the CIA operation and the misadventures of the Ex-Pats’ Coven never quite meshed -- and there were a few too many members of the Coven to keep track of. Though Saint-Germain proved to have some particularly lethal enemies, their motives remained obscure. Given the level of espionage and paranoia, though, perhaps this isn’t surprising.

I’m uncertain whether to make this a three-star or a four-star review, but I’m afraid I’ll have to go with three this time. This is no reflection on Yarbro’s writing, or indeed on the series as a whole. I’ll be preordering the Count’s next adventure, but his brush with the Cold War left me a little cold.





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