Glen Engel-Cox reviewed Hotel Transylvania by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Worthwhile
4 stars
A re-reading of this book which I first read in the early 1980s after springing for the first five Saint Germain books because of an offer in the Science Fiction Book Club. (An aside: I miss the SFBC. While I understand the volumes have no collectible value, the catalog and cheap prices enabled me to try so many books that I might have missed due to the lack of genre shelf space in my local bookstores.) On the re-read, I was surprised by depiction of the sexual abuse of two of the characters, which I surely read and yet didn’t recall being shocked by as a teen. It’s not that the events are described in graphic detail, and perhaps that’s where time has changed them for me. As a fifteen-year-old, I had no experience with sex, so I likely didn’t fully understand what was happening on the page.
The book …
A re-reading of this book which I first read in the early 1980s after springing for the first five Saint Germain books because of an offer in the Science Fiction Book Club. (An aside: I miss the SFBC. While I understand the volumes have no collectible value, the catalog and cheap prices enabled me to try so many books that I might have missed due to the lack of genre shelf space in my local bookstores.) On the re-read, I was surprised by depiction of the sexual abuse of two of the characters, which I surely read and yet didn’t recall being shocked by as a teen. It’s not that the events are described in graphic detail, and perhaps that’s where time has changed them for me. As a fifteen-year-old, I had no experience with sex, so I likely didn’t fully understand what was happening on the page.
The book holds up. What I admire about Yarbro is her historical accuracy, especially in her clothing details and the transport of the day. Saint Germain here is at his most urbane (the four books following this trace his live backwards, and he increasingly becomes more savage and animalistic). The romance between him and Madeleine is quite nice, and Yarbro perfectly captures Madeleine’s innocence as well as her desire to be something more than just a wife or trophy. I look forward to re-reading the next books in this series, which I remember being some of my favorites as a teen.
