A Flame in Byzantium (written in 1987) is the first book in a spinoff series of Yarbro's popular "Saint Germain" series, about a "good" vampire who survives not by killing his victims, but on the occasional love bite and - well - the warm and fuzzy feelings he gets from cuddling while doing it. Yep, it's a pretty damn bizarre premise for a vampire, but it makes for a great series because Saint Germain dates back to ancient Egypt and brings a lot of experience to each historical period the books are set in. I've read books in the series covering periods ranging from the months before World War I to the Middle Ages to Ancient Egypt, and given Yarbro's skill at writing in historical periods and the terrific perspective such a commentator provides. Her books have none of the overwrought nature of Ann Rice's vampire novels - the protagonist's nature is not center stage, it is his relationships with those around him (or her) and, once you accept the premise, they're a lot more realistic - essentially the same tale told over and over of human intolerance and frailty, as seen by a being who has hundreds, if not thousands of years of perspective on such things.
As I said, this is a spinoff based on one of Saint Germain's lovers, a Roman widow named Atta Olivia Clemens, who he brought over in around AD 50 or so (I'm sure this was covered in a book I haven't read yet). She has the mandatory ghoul manservant (like SG she has a servant who was reanimated after death - he's not a vampire, but what exactly he is I'm not sure. Well, what he is is a convenient person she can talk to to provide necessary exposition for the story, so I'm not complaining. Like his SG counterpart Roger (variously Rogerious and other name across the centuries), he's a immensely likable guy who just eats the occasional raw goat). Anyway, the story is set in the late 500s when Byzantine armies sent by the emperor Justinian oblige Olivia to leave her villa outside Rome and seek refuge in Constantinople.
The story is essentially the same one of a stranger in a strange land trying to keep a low profile because if she is ever imprisoned - for whatever reason - eventually her true nature will be discovered, and she can be killed (by breaking her spine). Yarbro's oddball little riffs on vampire powers - needs native earth to stay well, sickened by running water, weakened during daylight, are good reminders that being a vampire is somewhat inconvenient, and the need for cooperative lovers is always a concern. Since she will not bring harm to anyone willingly, and cannot drink (it's really tasting, not drinking) very many times from the (cooperative) same person without risking bringing them over, she generates a lot of compassion - same as SG in his books. She is the sympathetic character vampires can be, without the evil nature. In facts she's always the best and kindest of the people in the book. She has seen too much death and killing to want to cause anyone any suffering.
One problem that I had with this book is that it got the nomenclature wrong. Nobody ever called themselves a Byzantine (as I've posted on before) - they called themselves Roman or "Romaioi" in Greek, so the prejudice against Olivia would have been because she was Latin (although I don't know if the prejudice against "Latins" per se was there this early) or suspected of really being pagan, or, in reality, because she wasn't Orthodox Christian enough. Not because she was "Roman". I don't doubt that the emperor's censor would have been as intolerant of her as the story posits - largely for political and religious reasons - but it was irritating to keep seeing people identifying themselves as Byzantine versus Roman.
The story itself was a little slow - vampire is in dangerous situation - eventually she's arrested and ordered executed and is saved by her servant to move on to a new situation. But there seemed to be no reason that the story went anywhere other than that the end of the book was coming up. There was nothing that triggered her arrest, and no reason why Belisarius didn't try to save her. Basicaly, the story ended because it had gone on long enough. Now that may actually be the way life works - logical story arcs are rarely present in real life, and the story followed the largely accurate description that life - as a general rule - is nasty, brutish, and short, but I expected a little more. Simply getting Olivia from point A to point B wasn't quite enough. And why I have no problem with anybody slandering the Byzantines' way of doing things (seeing the hypocrisy and cruelty of Byzantine court life was as necessary to the story as it was accurate), it was a little sad that the story didn't provide a broader showing of life in "Constantinopoulis." It didn't need to to tell the rather compartmented little story it told, but I was hoping it would - that was why I got it. But that underscores the overall theme of the two series. Both Saint Germain and Olivia are of necessity focused on keeping a low profile and simply surviving across the centuries. The higher profile they are the more obvious it becomes that they do not age, and the more difficult it is to stay in one place very long. And at this point in the story (and generally through the Middle Ages at least) superstition is so strong that they have to keep their "true nature" well-hidden. The least indication that they are different - for whatever reason - the more likely it becomes that the weight of religious authority will see to their destruction. This perspective on the mores and beliefs of different periods is one thing I like about the books - learning what societies abhor and how they deal with that abhorrence is interesting, although (and I think this is a true observation Yarbro makes) intolerance is depressingly routine no matter what society or period you live in.