skygiants

For the first time in many years, I only wrote one fic for Yuletide this year, and barely managed to finish that (with much appreciation for agonistes and ep_birdsall for coming to the rescue with my EXTREMELY last-minute requests for beta help). October/November/December were just murderous months for me in terms of free time and the absence thereof.

(Relatedly, I have only made my way through a very fractional portion of the archive, but January should be much more chill so hopefully I will have more time for it soon!)

Anyway, the fic I wrote was The Affair of the Necklace, for the Benjamin January books; my recipient had several prompts, including an exploration of Dominique's relationship with Olympe and casefic about Dominique solving a mystery with Chloé, so this fic is an attempt at doing both those things.

This was a challenging story to write for a lot of reasons, but it did give me the excuse to reread three of my favorite Benjamin January novels. For those unfamiliar, these books focus on a free black pianist/music teacher/surgeon who also finds himself frequently fighting crime in 1830s New Orleans (I have written about them a few times before.)

The books I reread:

Die Upon A Kiss, Hambly's Phantom of the Opera riff and MY FAVORITE MESS. I'm just going to list off subplots until I forget them:

- an angry opera genius attempting to get revenge on his plagiarist
- the financial rivalry between two theater impresarios
- one of whom might unrelatedly be an Austrian spy
- a ring of slave smugglers
- a cold case in which a man murdered his mistress five years ago
- an opera diva attempting to poison her rival
- at least two separate love polygons involving opera personnel
- unrelatedly, the actual main protagonists progressing from a friendship to a romance
- the mysterious attempted murder of a ballet mistress who happens to be the protagonist's friendly ex
- angry Italian nationalists trying to blow things up
- the kickoff of the ongoing subplot about Henri's marriage to Chloé, which was my excuse for rereading the book
- EXPLODING THEATER VOLCANOES

Is that only 12? I'm definitely forgetting some. Anyway, it's nonsense, and I love it. One thousand percent OPERA!!!! ( spoilers )

Wet Grave, which starts off slow and sad with a lot of relationship drama and the sad death of a sympathetic youth, and ends with a band of rogues taking advantage of a slave rebellion during a monsoon to hunt for secret! pirate! treasure!!! An amazing book for Benjamin's sister Dominique and also the proper introduction of Chloé and thus very important for my purposes, but also just a great book in general; in addition to all the other plots, I really appreciate how Ben January spends the whole book in a huff refusing to help his sometime-detecting-partner Abishag Shaw with solving a murder among the upper crust because he's so annoyed no one is working on the other murders that he actually cares about, and then accidentally solves it at the end anyway. Relatedly, GREAT Shaw stuff in this book.

Good Man Friday, a Benjamin January Traveling Adventures book, which usually I don't like so much as the ones set in New Orleans, but this one has a few very important features: a.) Dominique and Henri and Chloé are all there in DC with him and doing interesting things, which means Benjamin's family stuff remains front and center; b.) the emotional dynamics of the B-plot about an alcoholic Kentucky politician and his enslaved half-brother have really good painful sharp edges; c.) Hambly is having SO much fun with 1830s politics and historical baseball nonsense and joyfully self-indulgent cameos. ( spoilers )

I probably should also have reread The Shirt On His Back, because it covers the time period during which my fic is actually set, but a.) I ran out of time and b.) I don't like that one as well anyway.

There are at least two new books since I last checked in back in 2017 -- the last one I got around to was Drinking Gourd -- so catching up on the series will certainly be something I do in the new year!

Barbara Hambly's Dragonsbane was one of the first books I ever put on my Kindle but I only got round to reading it last week, I don't know why, it just felt like the stars had aligned.

Dragonsbane, definitely written in the eighties, is a fairly intentional deconstruction of Heroic Dragonslaying Tropes, ft. as protagonist Jenny Waynest, a middle-aged witch who is constantly having Relatable Struggles Between Her Career and Her Family, which is to say between having enough study time to complete her dissertation become truly excellent at magic and the distractions of her boyfriend and their two kids. Aforementioned boyfriend, John Aversin, happens to be the lord of a fairly impoverished region and also the only living person to have ever slain a dragon (with significant assist from Jenny.)

This becomes relevant when a naive baby knight named Gareth comes riding up demanding help to slay a dragon.

NAIVE BABY KNIGHT GARETH: I am here to request the aid of the GREATEST hero in ALL THE LAND --
JOHN: Yes sorry pardon all the mud etc. but we are a very small holding here and I am busy with the pigs?
JENNY: Hey babe, long time no see, how are the kids?
JOHN: Oh, fine, fine, hope your months alone studying witchcraft in the woods went well?
NAIVE BABY KNIGHT GARETH: Pigs? Witches? Illegitimate children?
JENNY: Kiddo do you maybe need a moment to go off and clutch your pearls --
NAIVE BABY KNIGHT GARETH: YES, WITCH HARLOT, YES I DO.

Anyway, although John is reluctant to leave the pigs etc. to go kill somebody else's dragon, baby knight Gareth promises gratitude and significant financial aid from the king for the impoverished region if the quest is completed, so Jenny & John & naive baby knight Gareth ride off a-questing!

The first approximate third of the book after this is basically just The Road Trip That Shattered The Last Of Poor Baby Gareth's Illusions. However it soon turns out that what is ACTUALLY plaguing the land is the king's evil sorceress mistress who is evil, very evil, one hundred percent evil, you never can trust the pretty ones (my one complaint with the book) and the dragon is just sort of a byproduct to this, although still a byproduct that needs to be sorted out one way or another.

But, I mean, the whole political/magical plot is kind of all just a narrative excuse to force Jenny to resolve the central question of her life anyway -- whether to pursue various opportunities at power & magical knowledge & freedom (including ( dragon-y spoilers )) or whether she can continue with the life she's currently leading, constantly torn between her personal potential and the needs of the people who love her, whom she loves as well, but also can't help but resent.

Which: it sucks that this is a binary choice, but I can't say the dilemma isn't real. The choice is never easy and the answer is never obvious, and I spent most of the book unsure myself what I wanted Jenny to do, which really is the biggest mark of success for this book.

A sidenote: I am told this book has sequels that should NEVER, EVER BE READ. So I am not going to read them, but the people who have read them and explicitly told me not to read them (I'm looking at you, rachelmanija and coffeeandink) could maybe make it easier for me by satisfying my horrible curiosity in detailed ROT13 or something in comments. >.>

While we're on the topic of Barbara Hambly, I should probably also write up the other Hambly book I read recently, Bride of the Rat God.

. . . actually, to give the full impact of the title, I think you need to see the cover:



AW YEAH.

I mean, this is totally deliberate; Bride of the Rat God is a novel-length homage to wacky pulp silent movies. A GLAMOROUS ACTRESS in PERIL from an ANCIENT CURSE! POSSESSION! DRUGS! LIQUOR! MURDER! SINISTER FOOTSTEPS IN THE NIGHT!

. . . of course, because it's Barbara Hambly, the actual protagonist is the glamorous actress' sister-in-law Norah, a sensible young British widow who takes care of her dogs and makes sure Glamorous Christine gets home safely after her wild parties. And the actual character arc, kind of hilariously, is Norah finding out that while she's doing that, she might as well become really good at everything to do with making movies that isn't acting. She helps with camera work! She does make-up! She does script rewrites! GO GO GADGET NORAH. Obviously, all the technical details of the early Hollywood film industry are deeply relevant to my interests, and Barbara Hambly has done her research. Learning how to swap out film reels in the dark YES GO!

The other part of Norah's arc is working through her grief about losing the husband she loved in WWI and having a low-key romance with a sweet Jewish cameraman, who is a little bit bland as a character, but, you know, very nice! (Their romance is a lot of Barbara Hambly telling us "AND THEN THEY TALKED FOR A LONG TIME AND ENJOYED HANGING OUT WITH EACH OTHER," which is . . . not super specific, but which is still deeply preferable to romances that don't take the time to inform us that they talked for a while and enjoyed hanging out with each other.) And while Christine at first comes across very much as a flighty pretty face of a diva, she is not villainized for that, and also turns out to be a complex and sympathetic character, and her relationship with Norah is a very affectionate one. All good!

. . . all good except, of course, OH BARBARA HAMBLY ANCIENT CHINESE CURSE OF THE RAT GOD HUMAN SACRIFICE DID YOU HAVE TO. ;_____; I mean, it is a pulp homage, and that is totally what a pulp would do, but ALL THE SAME.

silveraspen is a kind person who enjoys furthering my education, which you know from the fact that she is responsible for sending me a copy of The Fire Rose to reread and review. Along with this masterpiece, she also sent along a few Barbara Hamblys, one of which I have not yet read and the other of which was Stranger at the Wedding.

Stranger at the Wedding is basically an adorable high-fantasy-of-manners romp that ends up revolving around a super dark and creepy backstory secret trauma, so I'm just going to come out in advance and give a warning for ( spoilers ) before I go back to talking about the romp.

That said: probably about 70% of the book is hijinks! The plot basically goes like this:

KYRA: I have had a dark premonition that if my baby sister gets married SHE WILL BE DOOMED! So I will ride home to my estranged parents and STOP THE WEDDING. BABY SISTER I AM COMING!
ALIX: But . . . I mean it's really nice to see you but . . . I'm basically fine? Have some cake?
KYRA: Then why do you look SO DEPRESSED? And who is this jerkface who you clearly don't care about that you have been SOLD IN MARRIAGE TO?
THAT JERKFACE: Hi, I'm a sensible, practical, surprisingly reliable merchant who has awesome swashbuckling sea adventures for a living. Nice to meet you!
KYRA: . . . WHAT A JERKFACE. (<3____<3)

So then Kyra runs around deploying all her wily magical hijinks to delay the wedding until she can figure out WHY HER BABY SISTER IS DOOMED, wearing ever-more ridiculous outfits in the process -- I'm not sure if Kyra's fashion sense is explicitly supposed to be terrible, or just DRAMATIC AND INTERESTING in the Claudia Kishi tradition, but it is by far the funniest part of the book. See this front cover?



That purple-and-yellow Batgirl ballgown: TOTALLY CANON. And that in itself would be enough to make me love Kyra.

Now 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! )

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?

So I read Sold Down the River, the fourth Benjamin January book, a while back, and decided to hold off on reviewing it until I got the next one so as not to completely spam my flist . . . and now it is going to get totally shortchanged because the next one, Die Upon a Kiss, is the Benjamin January book that was written for me. It is full of (literally) operatic drama and wildly labyrinthian revolutionary plots and people agonizing about the director's terrible artistic choices in between trying not to get killed! There is lots of musing on Shakespeare, and awesomely hardcore ladies, and the LEADER OF THE CORPS DE BALLET IS NAMED MARGUERITE. I maintain that she is Madame Giry's grandmother. I could not in any way keep track of the actual murder plot, which is probably as it should be in a meta-opera, but I really enjoyed the SUPER DRAMATIC cast of characters. (I kept picturing Montero as played by Wilhelmina Slater. Yes, she is that fabulous.) Sold Down the River is, I think, actually a much better book - it's the one where January has to go undercover as a plantation slave, and really doesn't shy away from how awful that was, while keeping all the characters involved very much three-dimensional. But Die Upon A Kiss is totally my favorite so far. VIVA L'OPERA!

I was actually 3/4 of the way done with Die Upon a Kiss yesterday when I went to go see The Princess and the Frog, so it was a bit jarring to go from a fairly gritty picture of the complex segregated society of nineteenth-century New Orleans to Disney Fantasy 1920's New Orleans. Not that I am complaining about Disney Fantasy New Orleans - I really liked the movie, and I actually thought they did a pretty good job subtly alluding to the societal issues without having them at all overtake the gleeful Disney escapism. Also, Tiana is definitely up there among the Most Awesome Disney Princesses, and to add to that, actually has a supportive mom! And female friends! And passes the Bechdel test a whole lot! I could have wished for a couple things, namely ( spoilers ) but overall I came out pretty Pleased With That Film Experience. Also, jazz music: an excellent soundtrack choice!

I tend to have trouble getting all the way through lengthy mystery series - I think the last I tried to read all the way through were the Amelia Peabody books, and I only got about three or four into those before losing track - but I liked both Barbara Hambly's first Benjamin January book, A Free Man of Color, and Walter Mosley's first Easy Rawlins book, Devil in a Blue Dress, a great deal, and am determined not to let my usual laziness with figuring out what comes next stop me!

(Heroic pose goes here, yes.)

Anyway, last week I read the second book of both of these series. Reviews are going under spoiler-cuts because technically anything could count as a spoiler for the first book, for example, BENJAMIN JANUARY DOES NOT DIE. (NEITHER DOES EASY RAWLINS. The spoiler mob can come after me now!)

Fever Season: ( The short version - Benjamin January vs. the cholera, also kidnappers, also a poisoner, also slander, also students who do not practice their lessons! )

A Red Death: ( The short version - Easy Rawlins vs. the tax man, also the Communist Jews, except maybe not actually vs. the Communist Jews but in fact sort of in favor of the Communist Jews despite being required to be vs. them by the tax man? )