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Finished Pale Guardian, 7th and latest in Barbara Hambly's James Asher Vampire Novel series. This is apparently what Severn House has decided to call these historical paranormal espionage thrillers, which kind of gives the false impression that Asher is the vampire in them. Which may perhaps happen yet, as once again, the Edwardian ex-spy is threatened and tempted.
This one actually initially focused more on his wife Dr. Lydia Asher, who's volunteered as medical help in France now that we're far enough down the timeline that WWI is actually underway. And of course there's the obligatory stumbling across a nefarious secret government plot to enlist the powers of the vampires into their spy games. Which after having been toyed with for the entire series with needing to be thwarted before it leads to new and terrible forms of wartime destruction, is nice to finally see unfolded as an actual consequence, albeit relatively briefly before the obligatory thwarting happens yet again. And I liked seeing how the war affected the vampires of various countries affected, becoming refugees as the invasion advanced.
Anyway, although after a certain point the basic premise of the series has gotten somewhat repetitive (probably not as noticeable if you didn't just do a binge cram reread of the earlier novels like I did), this was an entertaining enough variation on the theme and a pretty decent continuation. Even if certain handwringing character beats about feeling bad about the relative ethicality of the human cost of not destroying their obligate human-killing vampire allies (TBH, I think they should angst more about the ruinous effect of their privileged British Empire lifestyle upon the downtrodden underclass and colonies exploited to support it) seem to be repeated yet again at unnecessary (and probably hypocritical) length, after just having had their own lives saved by said murderous allies.
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