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Aug. 19th, 2010 11:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsNow that I've finished Dead Water and Dead and Buried, I have officially read ALL the Benjamin January mysteries, making this the first Really Long Mystery Series that I have completely read my way through from start to finish since before I started college. As accomplishments go maybe this is maybe not the most exciting one ever, but I am proud of myself anyway. (It also means that I can allow myself to start a new series. Up next: Mrs. Pollifax!)
With the vantage of hindsight, I can now say that I really would recommend the series all the way through - Dead and Buried, the latest one, actually turned out to be one of my favorites even though too much time was spent on Hannibal's angsty manpain. My favorites are always the ones set in New Orleans, just because the cast of recurring characters is so strong. And now I am going to talk a bit about them:
Benjamin January/Janvier: The protagonist of the books, a trained surgeon and classical pianist who eventually becomes a trained surgeon classical pianist DETECTIVE; in A Free Man of Color he's just come back to 1830's New Orleans after spending decades teaching music in Paris, and is trying to readjust to the hazards of life as a dark-skinned black man in a slave-owning and very racially stratified society when all of a sudden he is also asked to fight crime (due to being accused of crime.) January is fully aware of just how messed up New Orleans is, and has enough perspective to be aware of all the axes involved - race, class, gender, culture, nationality, and so on - even the ones that aren't actively working to make his life harder. It helps that Hambly also has a deft touch with showing how these various prejudices interact and work with and against each other.
Rose Vitrac: The series love interest, free colored bespectacled bluestocking Rose is introduced in the second book. Her dream is to run a school for colored girls; when she can't do that, she ekes out a living translating Latin. As a character, Rose sometimes gives me the impression of having been magically transplanted into the book from a time period about sixty years later - she would make a great suffragette - but she's definitely intelligent, active and independent.
Hannibal Sefton: Hannibal is January's consumptive opium-addicted violinist sidekick and useful white-guy-on-call in case January needs to investigate somewhere that a black man really can't go alone. Hannibal tries hard, but he's really not a heroic type due to his habit of collapsing for various health-and-drugs-related issues at various points in the narrative. He's great with providing handy quips in Latin, though. I like Hannibal - and he's never in danger of usurping January's narrative, which I also appreciate - but I am kind of amazed he's still alive at this point in the series since he seems about ready to keel over of consumption in every book. (On the other hand, after all the clinging that Hannibal and January and Rose do in Dead Water, I am about ready to start shipping OT3.)
Livia Levesque: January spends a lot of time complaining about his mother, but I kind of think she is awesome - though I can understand how it would be difficult living with her. Livia started life as a slave, and managed to steer herself and her children first into freedom and then as far into the respectable upper class as is possible for a woman of color. She knows everything about everyone and is always in control; she may or may not have an actual heart, but we know for sure that she has a spine of pure steel.
Olympe: January's full sister, one of New Orleans' prominent voodooiennes. Dark-skinned like January, she's completely estranged from their light-skinned society mother, but just as much a woman of steel; January loves her and is kind of terrified of her at the same time, which is reasonable given that she could and would totally poison someone she didn't like. She's also happily married with a couple of adorable kids!
Dominique: January's much younger half-sister, the established mistress of a wealthy white man, who likes ruffles and kittens and the latest fashions and will if necessary spend two days poling her way through a swamp, while pregnant, and then settle cheerfully back to share the latest gossip. If you couldn't tell, I love Dominique a lot. In fact I pretty much just love January's whole family and how it is entirely composed of very different strong women of color, which is not something you are going to get in most series.
Abishag Shaw: One of my other favorite characters, Shaw is the policeman from Kentucky whose tobacco-spitting, bath-eschewing exterior covers a mind like a steel trap - and, more impressively, one that's actually fair. Shaw and January have a lot of respect for each other and my favorite books are the ones where they act as partners.
So yes - in short, I have become a Barbara Hambly convert. Which brings me to my next question! I am aware that Barbara Hambly has written FIVE MILLION books in at least a million different genres; if I was going to move on to some of her other books, o wise flist, where should I start?
With the vantage of hindsight, I can now say that I really would recommend the series all the way through - Dead and Buried, the latest one, actually turned out to be one of my favorites even though too much time was spent on Hannibal's angsty manpain. My favorites are always the ones set in New Orleans, just because the cast of recurring characters is so strong. And now I am going to talk a bit about them:
Benjamin January/Janvier: The protagonist of the books, a trained surgeon and classical pianist who eventually becomes a trained surgeon classical pianist DETECTIVE; in A Free Man of Color he's just come back to 1830's New Orleans after spending decades teaching music in Paris, and is trying to readjust to the hazards of life as a dark-skinned black man in a slave-owning and very racially stratified society when all of a sudden he is also asked to fight crime (due to being accused of crime.) January is fully aware of just how messed up New Orleans is, and has enough perspective to be aware of all the axes involved - race, class, gender, culture, nationality, and so on - even the ones that aren't actively working to make his life harder. It helps that Hambly also has a deft touch with showing how these various prejudices interact and work with and against each other.
Rose Vitrac: The series love interest, free colored bespectacled bluestocking Rose is introduced in the second book. Her dream is to run a school for colored girls; when she can't do that, she ekes out a living translating Latin. As a character, Rose sometimes gives me the impression of having been magically transplanted into the book from a time period about sixty years later - she would make a great suffragette - but she's definitely intelligent, active and independent.
Hannibal Sefton: Hannibal is January's consumptive opium-addicted violinist sidekick and useful white-guy-on-call in case January needs to investigate somewhere that a black man really can't go alone. Hannibal tries hard, but he's really not a heroic type due to his habit of collapsing for various health-and-drugs-related issues at various points in the narrative. He's great with providing handy quips in Latin, though. I like Hannibal - and he's never in danger of usurping January's narrative, which I also appreciate - but I am kind of amazed he's still alive at this point in the series since he seems about ready to keel over of consumption in every book. (On the other hand, after all the clinging that Hannibal and January and Rose do in Dead Water, I am about ready to start shipping OT3.)
Livia Levesque: January spends a lot of time complaining about his mother, but I kind of think she is awesome - though I can understand how it would be difficult living with her. Livia started life as a slave, and managed to steer herself and her children first into freedom and then as far into the respectable upper class as is possible for a woman of color. She knows everything about everyone and is always in control; she may or may not have an actual heart, but we know for sure that she has a spine of pure steel.
Olympe: January's full sister, one of New Orleans' prominent voodooiennes. Dark-skinned like January, she's completely estranged from their light-skinned society mother, but just as much a woman of steel; January loves her and is kind of terrified of her at the same time, which is reasonable given that she could and would totally poison someone she didn't like. She's also happily married with a couple of adorable kids!
Dominique: January's much younger half-sister, the established mistress of a wealthy white man, who likes ruffles and kittens and the latest fashions and will if necessary spend two days poling her way through a swamp, while pregnant, and then settle cheerfully back to share the latest gossip. If you couldn't tell, I love Dominique a lot. In fact I pretty much just love January's whole family and how it is entirely composed of very different strong women of color, which is not something you are going to get in most series.
Abishag Shaw: One of my other favorite characters, Shaw is the policeman from Kentucky whose tobacco-spitting, bath-eschewing exterior covers a mind like a steel trap - and, more impressively, one that's actually fair. Shaw and January have a lot of respect for each other and my favorite books are the ones where they act as partners.
So yes - in short, I have become a Barbara Hambly convert. Which brings me to my next question! I am aware that Barbara Hambly has written FIVE MILLION books in at least a million different genres; if I was going to move on to some of her other books, o wise flist, where should I start?
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Date: 2010-08-19 04:05 pm (UTC)One: the Darwath Trilogy. Time of the Dark, the Walls of Air, the Armies of Daylight. Follow-on sequels are the Mother of Winter and Icefalcon's Quest.
Two: Those Who Hunt the Night. How a vampire nook should be done!
Three: Dragonsbane. :D. Jenny Waynest and Lord John Aversin are Made of Win, and just wait until you see the dragon...
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Date: 2010-08-19 04:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-19 04:25 pm (UTC)Oh then you must read Dragonsbane! It is also the start of a... Trilogy I think, but maybe four. Whatever. Excellent dragon development!
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Date: 2010-08-19 04:33 pm (UTC)I mean in the long run this obviously is a good thing for me, but in the short run it is a bit overwhelming!
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Date: 2010-08-19 05:54 pm (UTC)The Darwath trilogy is great. I am not so big on the follow-on sequels, which are depressing.
The vampire novels are excellent.
I also love The Silent Tower and The Silicon Mage: charming, heartfelt fantasy about a crazy mage and a computer programmer. There are two follow-on sequels (do you sense a trend) which are okay but not as good as the first two.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-19 06:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-19 06:20 pm (UTC)SECOND: I have moved on to feeling as though Rose is the poor woman's Harriet Vane, and since Harriet Vane is also a self-insert... yeah.
THIRD: If I can't have the Shaw story from Yuletide, I want TIME-TRAVELING HIJINKS where Benjamin January and Peter Wimsey work together.
THE END
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Date: 2010-08-19 06:28 pm (UTC). . . in fact I support BOTH these requests. *____* (Perhaps the Doctor can be involved in time travel hijinks? Perhaps Benjamin January can beat it into the Doctor's head that YES RACISM ACTUALLY DOES MATTER? If anyone could!)
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Date: 2010-08-20 01:09 am (UTC)And I adore the Darwath Trilogy. Just, the characters are interesting, and she twists them, and she's not afraid to have them *shockhorror* end up getting scared and thin and looking terrible. Also, I think you'd like the twist on why the Dark is rising.
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Date: 2010-08-20 02:00 am (UTC)But oh do I ever second the recommendation of those two! And the third, though I can't speak for the fourth. Although I find that reading them now makes for some unintended amusement: the sequences that take place in our world, because they involve computer tech from the 1980s, seem very nearly as charmingly dated as the sequences in the Other World -- which, she added for
no subject
Date: 2010-08-20 03:40 am (UTC)As, uh, you may be able to tell, I really do like what I've seen of Barbara Hambly's characterization, so I'm definitely excited to see what she does with high fantasy tropes.
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Date: 2010-08-20 03:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-20 04:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-20 04:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-20 05:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-20 12:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-20 12:08 pm (UTC)