I haven't finished writing book reviews for the year, and now it's a new year! D:

Search the Seven Hills by Barbara Hambly. A mystery set in Imperial Rome. Marcus, the youngest son of an arrogant patrician, has renounced his family's money and power in order to become a philosopher. He's in love with his neighbor and childhood playmate Tullia, but unfortunately her father is a politician, and one more interested in arranging a marriage for her that will bring in money and alliances than one with a penniless scholar. Just before Tullia's marriage to a Syrian merchant, she is abducted by a vicious and notorious cult – the Christians! Marcus sets out to find her, along with the help of Arrius, a centurion of the Praetorian Guard; Sixtus Julianus, former governor of Antioch and currently writing an encyclopedia on eastern cults (and somewhat of a Sherlock Holmes cliche, though his character deepens in unexpected ways as the book goes on); and Churaldin, a Celtic slave.

Though Search the Seven Hills (alternatively titled The Quirinal Hill Affair in some editions) was one of the first books published by Hambly, originally appearing in 1983, it bears a striking resemblance to her later writing. There's a focus on underrepresented groups - slaves, women, members of minority religions – the skillful use of modern language styles to represent historical dialects, and the recreation of a vivid and well-researched past world (though I did catch one mistake - the common misconception that rich Romans had "vomitoriums" for puking during feasts.) Hambly is also particularly good at using dramatic irony to highlight the differences between historical norms and modern assumptions; I never got tired of laughing at various Romans being terrified by the mere mention of Christians or passing on weird rumors about them. And, as always, her writing is skillful, characters three-dimensional and sympathetic, and plot nicely twisty and surprising.


1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline. A nonfiction book about the Late Bronze Age, written by one of the foremost scholars of the period but intended for a general, if well-informed, audience. The Late Bronze Age was a time of global interconnections from southern Europe through the Near East to northern Africa: Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians, Cypriots, Mitannians, Mycenaeans, and Minoans shared trade connections, political marriages, diplomatic conventions, art styles and prestige goods. And then, one by one, these far-reaching empires collapsed (though the single year named in the title is a bit of hyperbole; the process actually took at least a century, and maybe as much as three hundred years) leading to a long dark age. The cause is not entirely clear, and quite likely wasn't any singular event. It was a time of climate change, earthquakes, war, invaders from the outside, and increasing numbers of refugees. Clive also suggests that the very interconnectedness of the period may have been its downfall; when one city went, it took its trading partners with it, who then spread the chaos to their political allies, and on and one in a widening circle.

It's a fascinating time period, but I'm not sure Clive's writing is well-suited to the public he seems to be aiming for. 1177 B.C. would benefit from having a single clear narrative thread through the many places and centuries it covers; instead Clive jumps around from one intriguing moment to another, and it's not always obvious how they all hang together. On the other hand, there are a lot of wonderfully intriguing moments in this book, from a possible historical source for the Trojan War of the Iliad and Odyssey, an analysis of the Book of Exodus's account of Jewish slavery and the ten plagues, an analysis of the Uluburun shipwreck, and, my personal favorite, the time a widowed Egyptian queen sent a letter to multiple foreign kings asking one of them to please marry her as soon as possible.

Ultimately a great story, but one which could have been much better told.

Only a few more book reviews until I'm caught up

Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners by Therese Oneill. A hilarious, sarcastic, but nonfictional account of the worst parts of being a woman in the 1800s. Well, not the worst parts; Oneill is refreshingly upfront about focusing on white, young, and relatively wealthy women. ("Refreshingly" because too many history books focus on exactly that category of people without acknowledging that they're doing so.) Oneill's subject is, in other words, the sort of woman who stars in romantic period movies. Unmentionable is meant to be an antidote to light, shallow fantasies of the past by introducing all the parts of history that usually don't get brought up in romances: the smells, the pooping, the crotchless underwear, the lack of sex ed, the inability to go anywhere by yourself. A few of the chapter titles, to give you a sense of the tone of the book and its topics:
Menstruation: You're Doing It Wrong
Getting Dressed: How to Properly Hide Your Shame
Birth Control and Other Afronts to God
Conclusion: I Miss Pants

Most of the actual information probably isn't new to anyone familiar with history, but it's told in an incredibly engaging voice, which made me laugh out loud frequently. I also enjoyed the use of contemporary pictures with new captions on most pages. It's written in direct address to you, the reader, from an older, more informed woman here to assist and guide you through this time-travel experience. Oddly, Unmentionable seems to be getting a lot of negative reviews for this element, despite it being central to the gleefully snarky tone that I adored. I can't really understand that, since the cover is a photo of a butt; I feel it's signaling pretty strongly exactly what sort of book it is, and it's not one with a scholarly style.

Not an essential book in any sense, but one I had a great time reading.


Murder in July by Barbara Hambly. The 15th book in the Benjamin January series of historical murder mysteries. In July 1839, New Orleans, the body of an Englishman is found in the canal. The British Consulate asks Ben to investigate, revealing that the dead man is linked to a theft of money and secret papers. Ben, wisely, wants nothing to do with international spies and the trouble therein, but soon after he refuses his sister Olympe convinces him to get involved after all, since an innocent black woman has been accused of the murder and is certain to hang for it if no better suspect is uncovered. As Ben begins to follow the clues, he suspects that he once knew the dead man under another name: back in July 1830 in Paris. There, during the July Revolution, Ben came across another dead body, one which didn't belong on the barricades with the students and workers. It was the boyfriend of Daniel Ben-Gideon, a good friend of Ben's. When Daniel's wife Anne (who is entirely uninterested sexually in her husband, their marriage being purely political, and who in fact quite liked the boyfriend) is imprisoned for the murder, Ben must again find the real killer to save her from the guillotine. The narrative moves back and forth between the two mysteries, that of 1839 and 1830, until they reach their climaxes simultaneously, revealing that the murders are linked in more ways than one, and are tied not just to Ben's past, but to Hannibal's – who was himself in Paris in July 1830 – as well.

It's a book about the unforeseen consequences of past actions, about the past as a foreign country (sometimes literally), and how regret and hope can mix together into a single emotion. You can't step twice into the same river, Ben repeats to himself many times, and that is the fundamental thread of this story. It's a fantastic depiction of loss and memory and gray, rainy mornings, a mood that lingers even when the mystery is solved, and Hambly's writing is as lovely and evocative as always.

It's a Benjamin January book, so obviously I loved it. It's got all the usual Ben January elements: rich historical detail, attention to underrepresented groups (Murder in July, in addition to the usual suspects, has a great deal about homophobia and anti-semitism), and vivid secondary characters. Among those newly introduced, Anne is just incredible, and I'd love to read so much more about her.

However, the frequent switching between the two time periods made it difficult for me to follow the separate plots. On the other hand, I did love the way their themes paralleled by the end, and I'm not sure how anyone could have told this story except by running through them concurrently, but that didn't make keeping straight the many, many minor characters and red herrings less of a slog.

But, you know, it's still a Benjamin January book, and that means I could never recommend it highly enough.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.