One of Yarbro's trademark historical novels featuring her vampire, Saint Germain. This is set in Russia at the founding of St Petersburg. Saint Germain is impersonating a Hungarian nobleman married to a Polish aristocrat; his wife is spying on Russia at the behest of the Polish king - but needs her husband to accompany her but he's vanished. Step in Saint Germain.

It's an interesting setting; the shanty town erected to house foreign craftsmen, merchants, Russian aristocrats and various embassies is built of wood. Even Peter the Great has only got a four-room house when he visits (mind you, he built it himself). The corvée labour force doing the actual building live in tents and die like flies.

In terms of the writing, the stock characters that seemed to be in recent outings are much muted; the unstable female character has been considerably toned down, the virtuous female is still there but isn't OTT. There's no identifiable villain of the piece; there is one - but we never really find out who he actually is. My main issue is the prose - there's a lot of rather poncy language which makes it look like somebody has gone overboard with a thesaurus.

If you enjoy historical vampire novels, this is OK. If I wasn't a Saint Germain fan, I'd probably say this is for the completist; it's one of the weaker ones.

150 pages of nothing happening except for ponderous descriptions of clothing, left me in no doubt that the book should be abandoned. What a shame given how much I had enjoyed many of the other SG novels. Ah well I suppose she is running out of story lines. ( )

Yarbro’s cultured, enigmatic, vampire Saint Germain is back. This time he’s in Russia during the construction of St. Petersburg, as a spy in the Russian court, pretending to be a duke, a husband and a human. As Saint Germain tries to uncover the fate of the man he is impersonating, a man claiming to be Count Saint-Germain comes to town, threatening the real Germain and all of his entanglements.

Exquisitely detailed and smooth, A Dangerous Climate is a vivid, complex tale of political intrigue, led by a fascinating character who is almost harder to figure out than the full scope of Yarbro’s plot. Yarbro is the author to go to for historical fiction. She packs amazing detail into the world, so that readers open the book and feel as if they are there, in the middle of a completely different time and culture, enthralled through Germain’s voice and intriguing stories. Highly recommended for permanent personal and library collections.

Reviewed for MonsterLibrarian.com ( )

This is the 21st novel in Yarbro's long running Saint-Germain series. I've been reading the series since the very first one was published back in 1978. I would venture to say that after so long I know the Count well. Throughout the series he is a monster, and yet he is truly the one that is humane. Humans are the true monsters. What we do to each other far exceeds the depravations of any monster.

In this installment the Count is sent to Saint Petersberg at the behest of the King of Poland. The one wrinkle is that he isn't going as himself, but posing as the Hungarian husband of a spy and diplomat, who's real husband has been missing for some time. As a woman though she cannot venture to the burgeoning city on her own, but must be accompanied by her husband or other male relative.

The story opens with Saint-Germain being found by the Watchmen. He's been beaten so badly he can't even remember his attacker. If he wasn't a vampire, he probably wouldn't have survived the attack. He's taken to the care-house where he meets Ludmilla (forgive me for not giving the full name. I don't have the book in front of me and would probably end up misspelling it.) and Van Hoek. Saint-Germain must conceal how well he is healing while keeping his somewhat capricious "wife" happy. His position is somewhat compromised when Stanislaus replaces Augustus on the Polish throne, and his "wife's" brother is sent to Saint Petersberg. Saint-Germain moves into the care-house to make room for the brother in the Polish household. Besides helping with the functioning of some of the construction equipment he takes on the care-house as a project to help. To add to his problems an Hungarian comes claiming to be Saint-Germain's heir. Saint-Germain can't refute the claim without jeopardising his mission with the Polish crown. He asks Niklos Aulirios, Olivia's former companion, to impersonate him, and refute the claim.

Yarbro's attention to historical detail make the time period come alive. It is true that some things must be altered for the sake of narrative flow, but overall the feeling is one of authenticity. Some may quibble about the amount of time taken to describe the clothing and such. The details though serve to show how difficult the environment was in the burgeoning city. Nobles used to the pomp and circumstance of palaces and manner estates were forced to endure living in houses barely above the level of a shack while keeping all the conventions diplomacy required. They were dealing not only with the intricacies of court politics, but had to deal with gang violence as well. The founding of Saint Petersburg was a difficult period.

Yarbro's convention of taking a monster, in this case a vampire, and showing the creature to be the hero was unique at the time the books were first published. Through the eyes of this monster we see that the real atrocities are inflicted by humans against humans. Yarbro has explored religious intolerance, racial inequality, women's rights and other themes where humans will visit upon each greater horrors than one creature drinking blood to survive could ever conceive. ( )