Book review: Yarbro

I’ve been spending a half hour or so reading every night, which means I’ve actually managed to finish a few new books around here! After an awesome trip to a FREE book place in Baltimore last winter, we stocked up on books to read and I’ve been working through my stash. I was especially excited to find a couple of books by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, who writes a really fun series of vampire/historical fiction novels. Yep, vampires + historical fiction… pretty much made for me, right? Also, I LOVE the cheesy covers:

Click here to buy the book through my Amazon link and make me a few pennies!

Seriously, how can you not love that artwork? This is the fourth book in the series about a vampire named St. Germain. I like the books because they’re reasonably well researched. This one is set in China during the Mongol invasion before moving on to India. I really enjoyed it, as I do all of her books, and I was excited to move on to the next one I’d found at the free bookstore, which just happened to be the one right before this one in the relatively lengthy St. Germain vampire series.

Click here to buy the book from my Amazon link and make me some pennies!

What’s that? Cheesy artwork AND a book set in Rome? Sign me up. This one comes right before Path of the Eclipse in the series, and introduces the character of Olivia, who ends up having her very own series of books by Yarbro. I love the in depth look into life in Rome during Nero, Vespasian, and the host of intermediate emperors who held the job for five minutes or so in between. There is a lot of discussion about arena life for charioteers, beastiarii, and the condemned. I just finished this one last night, and I really liked it. Now I’ve made a list of all of Yarbro’s Saint Germain novels and my plan is to slowly collect and keep them all. I’ve read one or two of them before, but it’s been more than a few years and I don’t remember which ones I’ve read anymore.

What are you reading right now? Do you have a series that tops your reading list this summer? What is your favorite book of all time?

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