Subject: A MATTER OF TASTE by Fred Saberhagen

From: [email-masked]
Date: 20 Aug 91 19:29:00 GMT

A MATTER OF TASTE
		    by Fred Saberhagen
		Review Copyright (c) 1991 Evelyn C. Leeper

[Bibloigraphic info at end.  --AW]

     This is the fifth of Saberhagen's "Dracula" series (also known as his
"Old Friend of the Family" series).  (The first four are THE HOLMES-DRACULA
FILE [1978], AN OLD FRIEND OF THE FAMILY [1979], THORN [1980], and DOMINION
[1982].)  The idea of a good vampire was certainly unusual when Saberhagen
wrote the first one, but Saberhagen had already toyed with the concept once
before.  His DRACULA TAPE [1975] was a retelling of Bram Stoker's DRACULA--
from Dracula's point of view.  For whatever reason (poor distribution may
have contributed), that work vanished after a couple of years.  When
Saberhagen revived the idea (so to speak), he started fresh, and in what was
certainly a good move commercially included Sherlock Holmes as well.
Whether Saberhagen initially envisioned a new Holmes series rather than a
vampire series is not clear.  This time the series persisted, at least
until 1982, when it went into hiding and has only now resurfaced, almost a
decade later, with A MATTER OF TASTE.

     Alas, the series, like the main character, may be getting a little long
in the tooth.  (Sorry, I couldn't resist that.)  Once again, the central
character is Dracula, under the name of Matthew Maule, still protecting the
same family we first met in THE HOLMES-DRACULA FILE.  The story is really
two interleaved stories--one of Dracula's origin and early life after death,
and one of the present, where bad vampires are threatening Dracula's
"nephew" and the latter's fiancee.  The origin story was by far the more
interesting of the two, though its historical setting seems influenced as
much by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's "Saint Germain" series and Les Daniels's
"Sebastian" books as by the Dracula legend.  This is interesting, since I
suspect that their success in the period between Saberhagen's fourth and
fifth books may be due to a revival in interest in vampires caused by
Saberhagen's series in the first place.

Even with this similarity in the historical story, however, I found the
modern story more an interruption to what I considered the primary story
than a story in its own right.  Had Saberhagen published the historical
story by itself as a novella (or even as a short novel), the story would
have flowed much more smoothly and achieved a higher level and a wider
appeal.  As it is, I can recommend A MATTER OF TASTE only for fans of the
rest of the series.  I might further note that this is the first to appear
in hardback.  If this were a great book, it might be worth getting in
hardback; as it is, you might as well wait for the paperback and have a
matching set.

%T      A MATTER OF TASTE
%A      Fred Saberhagen
%C      New York
%D      July 1990
%I      Tor
%O      hardback, US$16.95
%G      0-312-85046-8
%P      284pp
%S      Dracula
%V      #5

Evelyn C. Leeper   |   +1 908 957 2070   |   att!mtgzy!ecl or [email-masked]

From archive (archive)
From: [email-masked] (Evelyn C. Leeper)
Organization: AT&T, Middletown NJ
Subject: The Pilgrim Series by Fred Saberhagen
Date: 23 Feb 88 15:49:54 GMT

			 PYRAMIDS by Fred Saberhagen
		      Baen, 1987, 0-671-65609-0, $3.50.
		      AFTER THE FACT by Fred Saberhagen
		      Baen, 1988, 0-671-65391-1, $3.95.
		      A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper

     These are the fist two books in the "Pilgrim" series; things being what
they are today, I'm sure there will be more.

     In PYRAMIDS we meet Pilgrim, an interstellar time traveler of sorts who
needs 20th Century graduate student Tom Scheffler to help him recover part
of his ship from Pharaonic Egypt.  Well, sort of--one of the annoying
aspects of this series is that the concept of time travel is not only
different in the two books, it is actually contradictory.  Without giving
too much away, let me say that PYRAMIDS comes up with a unique way around
the Grandfather Paradox, and AFTER THE FACT seems to assume that the method
used in PYRAMIDS doesn't exist.  In AFTER THE FACT Pilgrim uses yet another
graduate student, Jerry Flint, to save President Lincoln from assassination.

     PYRAMIDS is interesting in the way it uses the ancient Egyptian gods
(reminiscent of Zelazny's CREATURES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS, I suppose) and
its descriptions of ancient Egypt.  AFTER THE FACT is more accessible, being
about a time the average reader knows better, but this very accessibility
makes it less interesting, and the denouement is singularly unsatisfying.
Saberhagen has the makings of a good series as soon as he settles on a
consistent rationale, and I hope he returns to more interesting and alien
settings with it.

					Evelyn C. Leeper
					(201) 957-2070
				UUCP:	ihnp4!mtgzy!ecl
				ARPA:	[email-masked]
					Copyright 1988 Evelyn C. Leeper