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Yarbro, Chelsea Quinn (1942– )
There is no question that the work for which
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro is best known is her SAINT
GERMAINvampire series, which began with Hotel
Transylvania (1978) and continues today. Saint
Germain is a benevolent vampire, an intellectual
who deplores cruelty and takes blood without
killing, usually concealing his true nature and liv-
ing as a productive member of society. Each novel
takes place in a different historical period, and the
stories are as much about the times and places as
they are about the vampire, whose special condi-
tion is sometimes irrelevant to the plot. In this se-
ries as well as in her other fantasy and supernatural
fiction, Yarbro often underlines the violence and
cruelty that dominate our history, and her charac-
ters sometimes seem to accept their travails as just
a necessary part of life rather than as wrongdoing.
Yarbro began writing professionally in the late
1960s, and most of her work for the next 10 years
was science fiction or detective stories. Her first
nonseries horror novel was an adaptation of the
film Dead and Buried(1980), in which a renegade
coroner finds a way to restore the dead to life and
turns an entire community into zombies. She later
novelized another horror film, Nomads(1984). Her
next, Sins of Omission(1980), in which a woman
struggles to control her psychic abilities, is murky
and slow paced. It was her last attempt to write
book-length contemporary horror for seven years.
The Godforsaken(1983) attempts to adapt the
Saint Germain formula to werewolves, in this case
suggesting that the condition is caused by a curse

during the age of the Spanish Inquisition. The lack

of a likable protagonist and a sometimes slow-mov-

ing plot weaken the novel considerably, and her

next historical horror novel, A Mortal Glamour

(1985), set in a 14th-century convent, is only

marginally more interesting. Yarbro returned to a

contemporary setting with Fire Code(1987), in

which a supernatural entity equivalent to a basilisk

is set free to attack and destroy using the power of

fire. It is one of Yarbro’s fastest paced novels and

considerably better than her other nonvampire su-

pernatural fiction.

Yarbro devoted most of her writing time to

Saint Germain during the 1990s but eventually

tried another historical horror novel. The Angry

Angel(1998) is the origin story of one of Dracula’s

wives, describing a young girl’s reaction to a disem-

bodied voice that she initially believes to be that of

an angel, although she later has reservations. Soul

of an Angel(1999) similarly describes the fate of an

aristocratic young woman who flees from her fam-

ily to avoid an arranged marriage and falls under

the influence of Count Dracula.

Yarbro’s first fantasy novel was To the High Re-

doubt(1985), a typical magical world adventure in

which a young woman discovers, with mixed feel-

ings, that she possesses the potential to be a sorcer-

ess. A Baroque Fable(1986) is a complete change of

pace, a lightly humorous fantasy that includes sev-

eral of the usual devices, including a troublesome

dragon, a feisty young woman, and a wizard who is

not entirely in control of his spells. Dark Light

(1999) is standard sword and sorcery fare, although