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A Reccomendation
Oh my God, you guys. I have a new series of books that I am obsessed with, and I want you all to read them because they are just that good. Also, then maybe there would be fanart.
I'm speaking of the Benjamin January series by Barbara Hambly; the first one is A Free Man of Color and the most recent- the 12th in the series- is Good Man Friday, which is coming out next month, omg yay. I am particularly happy because I have already devoured 8 of the series in less than three weeks, and am obviously going to run out soon.
So, why should you read them? I have a lot to say on that topic. The series is set in early 1830s New Orleans, and deals primarily with the culture of free blacks that existed at that place and time. It's a mystery series, though I can't really comment on that aspect of it, not being a mystery fan in particular; as far as I'm concerned, the mysteries exist in order to have the amazing characters interact with each other and with the setting. Many of the books take up a particular aspect of the world and focus on that (A Free Man of Color- the famous quadroon balls! Graveyard Dust- voodoo! Die Upon a Kiss- opera! Wet Grave- pirates!), but regardless of the individual focus, there is just so much historical detail and realism. The fictional characters interact with real historical personages- Marie Laveau, Madame LaLaurie (note: don't read that wikipedia page unless you want the plot of the second book spoiled. If you already know who she is, well, haha, I guess the plot was spoiled for you anyway, which is what happened to me), Jean Lafitte, etc. So much of this series is like id-candy for me: it's a setting that I have generally found to be completely fascinating, and with an author who has clearly done unbelievable amounts of research. Plus, descriptions of food! of music! of clothing! of landscape! ladies disguised as guys! characters who are total geeks! gay couples (okay, only in minor characters. But still)! ghosts! con-men! Additionally, this particular setting allows for my two irrational phobias: alligators and cholera. (Irrational not because they are not terrible things, but because I'm unlikely to ever actually be in danger of either. And I'm not afraid of anacondas or plague or lions or polio or whatever. Just these two. But seriously you guys, did you know cholera can take you from healthy to dead in less than 24 hours? And sometimes you turn blue, the dehydration is so bad?) And yet, I think the writing is too good to call it id-fic. Particularly the way race and class and color and gender and language all play out is so thoughtful, and well-done, and moving. They're just really, really good books.
Anyway! The characters. Because they are my favorite part.
Benjamin January is, as you could probably guess from the name, the main character. He's the son of a placee- that is, a woman of color who functions as a mistress/courtesan/secondary wife to a white man, as was the custom at the time. However, Ben was born before his mother became a placee, and in fact they (as well as his father) were slaves until Ben was 8. His mother's new protector (St.-Denis Janvier, from whom the family gets their last name) then paid for him to be educated, and trained as a pianist and surgeon; however, Ben currently is making a living as the former only, as people are more willing to pay a black guy to be a musician than a doctor. He also spent 16 years living in Paris, returning to New Orleans only just before the beginning of the series. He is brilliant, and funny, and kind, and gentle. He is not, however, dealing so well with a combination of returning from Paris and the changes in New Orleans since he was last there; by the 1830s, there was a hardening of racism, and the existence of a community of free blacks is more tenuous than it was before. He generally gets involved in solving the mysteries because no one else cares enough, and he wants to see justice done, or protect who he can.
Olympe - Ben's full sister. She is angry, and smart, and hard, and cynical, and I love her. She resented their mother for becoming a placee, and ran away at 16; their mother has since basically refused to acknowledge her. Olympe is now a voodoo, which involves more nursing and midwifery than it does love spells and curses.
Dominique - Ben's half-sister, the daughter of St.-Denis. Dominique is now herself a placee, and is utterly concerned with fashion and gossip and parties and so forth, but is much tougher than she looks.
Rose - Benjamin's sort-of girlfriend. Rose is also the daughter of a placee, but refused to become one herself. As a child, she was stubborn enough to get herself the standard classical education (by which I mean, standard for boys), and now variously makes her living translating Greek and Latin, grading math papers, and trying to run a school for free colored girls. She is particularly interested in natural science, and runs her own chemical experiments. She is also super tough, and occasionally dresses as a man to go have adventures and help solve mysteries.
Abishag Shaw - Lieutenant of the New Orleans police. Shaw is a Kentuckian (a lot of the series is taken up with the conflict between the "Americans" and the "Creoles", New Orleans having very recently become part of the US at this time), and he looks just as unwashed, illiterate, and generally coarse as is expected of him, but is actually incredibly clever. He and Ben have worked their way around to a sort of friendship.
Hannibal Sefton - HANNIBAL IS MY FAVORITE CHARACTER, YES. Hannibal is formerly part of Anglo-Irish gentry, attended Oxford, and is currently living in the backrooms of brothels in New Orleans while being an alcoholic, an opium-addict, and dying of consumption. He also is the best violin player in the city. He can't speak a line of dialogue without quoting someone- Shakespeare, Dante, Plato, etc. (Ben does this too, though to a lesser extent)- often in the original language. He is always charming, even if unreliable. One time he ran off with a opera diva to Mexico City. He's good friends with both Ben and Rose (who he has nicknamed 'amicus meus' and 'Athene', respectively).
Let me post a couple of excerpts, so you can see if you like the style or not. I've got three bits I particularly liked: one funny, one sad, and one just pretty.
This first one is from the third book, Graveyard Dust. Obviously it has to do with the mystery of the book, but don't need to know who the people mentioned are, as every single thing after the ellipse is completely imaginary, as January and Hannibal make up stuff to amuse themselves.
***
“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” Hannibal coughed, one hand holding himself upright against the crumbling stucco and the other pressed to his side. “If you ever find out how to make consumption good by thinking, please let me know. I’ve been trying for years. Did you ever track down the map your cut-armed friend brought to Isaak, by the way? Find where the meeting place was, if it was a meeting place?”
“I’m sure it was.” January waited, listening, watching the alley from which the cat had fled.
[...]
Hannibal drew a pair of thin-nosed pliers and a length of bent wire from his pocket and set to work on the carriage-gate lock. “And did you find the teacup Mathurin Jumon served Isaak the arsenic in?”
“I found a teacup with arsenic stains in it,” replied January gravely, his eyes moving ceaselessly up and down the dark streets. “I didn’t attach much importance to it because the teacup was Sèvres pâte dur instead of Palissy ware. Oh, and there was a copy of Laurence Jumon’s will impaled on the tree trunk with an Arabian dagger, and one of Isaak’s visiting cards. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious. And up she comes.” He pushed the wrought-iron gate inward a little, then closed it behind them, pulling out the black ribbon that tied his hair to bind the gate loosely shut again. “Was the visiting card also impaled on the tree trunk with a dagger?”
“On the other side of the tree,” extemporized January, scratching a lucifer and shielding the candle he took from his bag. “Separate dagger.”
“Also Arabian?”
“Venetian.” Their whispers echoed in the arch of the flagged carriageway. “Quattrocento. Cellini, I think.”
“Cellini made good daggers.” Hannibal nodded wisely. “An excellent choice. Tasteful.”
“Which would argue that it had to have been Mathurin. I mean, I can’t see Hubert Granville having the refinement to buy a Cellini dagger.” They emerged into the dark courtyard, the closed and shuttered bulk of the slave quarters looming before them against the sooty sky. The fountain muttered softly; the candlelight showed up a cat’s eyes, hunting frogs among the banana plants.
“A point, my friend. A most distinct point.”
“All daggers”, said January, in a tone of deep solemnity, “have a point,” and Hannibal went into a fit of coughing from trying to stifle a laugh.
***
Now a sad bit. Ayasha is Ben's first wife, who died of cholera in Paris (not a spoiler, since it happens before the first book). This is also from Graveyard Dust.
***
He reached the house on Rue Burgundy with barely time to bolt down what was left of the beans and rice Gabriel had brought last night, and change into his respectable garb of biscuit-colored trousers, linen shirt, and black coat. “Give your sister my regards,” whispered Hannibal, lying waxen as a corpse under the tent of mosquito-bar. He’d been violently sick—January could see the signs of it in the ill-cleaned slop jar—and January thought, Not the fever. Not now.
He felt his friend’s hands and face, and they were cool. But all the way through the streets to the Cabildo he remembered Ayasha, lying dead in their rooms on the Rue de l’Aube. Remembered the smell of the sickness as he climbed the stair. Remembered opening the door and seeing her.
Some part of him, he thought, would never recover from that. Some part of him would always be trapped in that moment, like a ghost returning to repeat endlessly one single action in the same corner of the same house forever: opening the door and finding her. Opening the door and finding her.
***
Now, just a straight-up pretty bit. This is describing the bayous and swamps south of New Orleans itself. This is from Wet Grave
***
Past Crown Point the true marshes began. The ciprière thinned from an unbroken forest to a succession of wooded islands in wide beds of reeds and alligator-grass. The sedges towered head high, navigable only when a man would stand up to look out across the reeds, and not always then. January had never felt easy in this country: here, he was always conscious of how tenuous was man's occupation. The very earth and water and sky conspired to trade places, shallow bayous shelving to mud and flottants—floating blankets of grasses riding unsupported on the water's surface—masquerading as islands to trick the stranger.
No wonder the American Army had never been able to come in and deal with Lafitte.
A world of birds and dragonflies, silent but for the plop and whisper of oars or pole, and the peeping choruses of frogs. Turtles basked on logs, arranged neatly in order of size, largest to smallest, with smaller turtles perched on the larger ones' backs. Now and then the water would slurp and January would look down and see a six-foot gar-fish that could take a man's arm off, sliding so close to the boat he could count the teeth in its ugly undershot jaw, or gators blinking sleepily in the reeds. Olympe had given them oil of citrus mixed with aromatics, which kept some of the mosquitoes at bay, but even in the brutal heat of the day they were everywhere. At night they would settle on Jim's little tent of netting like a thirsty cloud.
The spaces of water got larger, between the squiggly islands of grass and mud. The sky grew huge. Clouds moved across it like traveling cities in the afternoons, and in the mornings the first sun on the water was a sounding cymbal of brass.
Whatever is happening in New Orleans, thought January, we are out of it now. Slave revolt and betrayal; Uncle Veryl's grief, and Artois lying in his crypt... Whether Henri would return to Dominique, when he came back to town with his bride in the fall, or whether she'd have to raise her baby alone... These are no longer our concerns. They will all go on without us. He would think this, and look back at Natchez Jim, like Charon poling lost souls across the Styx, brass-gold multitudes of dragonflies hanging in the air about him thick as the falling leaves of Vallombrosa.
***
So. Has anyone already read these? Do you want to talk to me about them? Yes? Awesome! They are all available as ebooks as well, so everyone has no excuse for not reading them immediately.
I'm speaking of the Benjamin January series by Barbara Hambly; the first one is A Free Man of Color and the most recent- the 12th in the series- is Good Man Friday, which is coming out next month, omg yay. I am particularly happy because I have already devoured 8 of the series in less than three weeks, and am obviously going to run out soon.
So, why should you read them? I have a lot to say on that topic. The series is set in early 1830s New Orleans, and deals primarily with the culture of free blacks that existed at that place and time. It's a mystery series, though I can't really comment on that aspect of it, not being a mystery fan in particular; as far as I'm concerned, the mysteries exist in order to have the amazing characters interact with each other and with the setting. Many of the books take up a particular aspect of the world and focus on that (A Free Man of Color- the famous quadroon balls! Graveyard Dust- voodoo! Die Upon a Kiss- opera! Wet Grave- pirates!), but regardless of the individual focus, there is just so much historical detail and realism. The fictional characters interact with real historical personages- Marie Laveau, Madame LaLaurie (note: don't read that wikipedia page unless you want the plot of the second book spoiled. If you already know who she is, well, haha, I guess the plot was spoiled for you anyway, which is what happened to me), Jean Lafitte, etc. So much of this series is like id-candy for me: it's a setting that I have generally found to be completely fascinating, and with an author who has clearly done unbelievable amounts of research. Plus, descriptions of food! of music! of clothing! of landscape! ladies disguised as guys! characters who are total geeks! gay couples (okay, only in minor characters. But still)! ghosts! con-men! Additionally, this particular setting allows for my two irrational phobias: alligators and cholera. (Irrational not because they are not terrible things, but because I'm unlikely to ever actually be in danger of either. And I'm not afraid of anacondas or plague or lions or polio or whatever. Just these two. But seriously you guys, did you know cholera can take you from healthy to dead in less than 24 hours? And sometimes you turn blue, the dehydration is so bad?) And yet, I think the writing is too good to call it id-fic. Particularly the way race and class and color and gender and language all play out is so thoughtful, and well-done, and moving. They're just really, really good books.
Anyway! The characters. Because they are my favorite part.
Benjamin January is, as you could probably guess from the name, the main character. He's the son of a placee- that is, a woman of color who functions as a mistress/courtesan/secondary wife to a white man, as was the custom at the time. However, Ben was born before his mother became a placee, and in fact they (as well as his father) were slaves until Ben was 8. His mother's new protector (St.-Denis Janvier, from whom the family gets their last name) then paid for him to be educated, and trained as a pianist and surgeon; however, Ben currently is making a living as the former only, as people are more willing to pay a black guy to be a musician than a doctor. He also spent 16 years living in Paris, returning to New Orleans only just before the beginning of the series. He is brilliant, and funny, and kind, and gentle. He is not, however, dealing so well with a combination of returning from Paris and the changes in New Orleans since he was last there; by the 1830s, there was a hardening of racism, and the existence of a community of free blacks is more tenuous than it was before. He generally gets involved in solving the mysteries because no one else cares enough, and he wants to see justice done, or protect who he can.
Olympe - Ben's full sister. She is angry, and smart, and hard, and cynical, and I love her. She resented their mother for becoming a placee, and ran away at 16; their mother has since basically refused to acknowledge her. Olympe is now a voodoo, which involves more nursing and midwifery than it does love spells and curses.
Dominique - Ben's half-sister, the daughter of St.-Denis. Dominique is now herself a placee, and is utterly concerned with fashion and gossip and parties and so forth, but is much tougher than she looks.
Rose - Benjamin's sort-of girlfriend. Rose is also the daughter of a placee, but refused to become one herself. As a child, she was stubborn enough to get herself the standard classical education (by which I mean, standard for boys), and now variously makes her living translating Greek and Latin, grading math papers, and trying to run a school for free colored girls. She is particularly interested in natural science, and runs her own chemical experiments. She is also super tough, and occasionally dresses as a man to go have adventures and help solve mysteries.
Abishag Shaw - Lieutenant of the New Orleans police. Shaw is a Kentuckian (a lot of the series is taken up with the conflict between the "Americans" and the "Creoles", New Orleans having very recently become part of the US at this time), and he looks just as unwashed, illiterate, and generally coarse as is expected of him, but is actually incredibly clever. He and Ben have worked their way around to a sort of friendship.
Hannibal Sefton - HANNIBAL IS MY FAVORITE CHARACTER, YES. Hannibal is formerly part of Anglo-Irish gentry, attended Oxford, and is currently living in the backrooms of brothels in New Orleans while being an alcoholic, an opium-addict, and dying of consumption. He also is the best violin player in the city. He can't speak a line of dialogue without quoting someone- Shakespeare, Dante, Plato, etc. (Ben does this too, though to a lesser extent)- often in the original language. He is always charming, even if unreliable. One time he ran off with a opera diva to Mexico City. He's good friends with both Ben and Rose (who he has nicknamed 'amicus meus' and 'Athene', respectively).
Let me post a couple of excerpts, so you can see if you like the style or not. I've got three bits I particularly liked: one funny, one sad, and one just pretty.
This first one is from the third book, Graveyard Dust. Obviously it has to do with the mystery of the book, but don't need to know who the people mentioned are, as every single thing after the ellipse is completely imaginary, as January and Hannibal make up stuff to amuse themselves.
“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” Hannibal coughed, one hand holding himself upright against the crumbling stucco and the other pressed to his side. “If you ever find out how to make consumption good by thinking, please let me know. I’ve been trying for years. Did you ever track down the map your cut-armed friend brought to Isaak, by the way? Find where the meeting place was, if it was a meeting place?”
“I’m sure it was.” January waited, listening, watching the alley from which the cat had fled.
[...]
Hannibal drew a pair of thin-nosed pliers and a length of bent wire from his pocket and set to work on the carriage-gate lock. “And did you find the teacup Mathurin Jumon served Isaak the arsenic in?”
“I found a teacup with arsenic stains in it,” replied January gravely, his eyes moving ceaselessly up and down the dark streets. “I didn’t attach much importance to it because the teacup was Sèvres pâte dur instead of Palissy ware. Oh, and there was a copy of Laurence Jumon’s will impaled on the tree trunk with an Arabian dagger, and one of Isaak’s visiting cards. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious. And up she comes.” He pushed the wrought-iron gate inward a little, then closed it behind them, pulling out the black ribbon that tied his hair to bind the gate loosely shut again. “Was the visiting card also impaled on the tree trunk with a dagger?”
“On the other side of the tree,” extemporized January, scratching a lucifer and shielding the candle he took from his bag. “Separate dagger.”
“Also Arabian?”
“Venetian.” Their whispers echoed in the arch of the flagged carriageway. “Quattrocento. Cellini, I think.”
“Cellini made good daggers.” Hannibal nodded wisely. “An excellent choice. Tasteful.”
“Which would argue that it had to have been Mathurin. I mean, I can’t see Hubert Granville having the refinement to buy a Cellini dagger.” They emerged into the dark courtyard, the closed and shuttered bulk of the slave quarters looming before them against the sooty sky. The fountain muttered softly; the candlelight showed up a cat’s eyes, hunting frogs among the banana plants.
“A point, my friend. A most distinct point.”
“All daggers”, said January, in a tone of deep solemnity, “have a point,” and Hannibal went into a fit of coughing from trying to stifle a laugh.
Now a sad bit. Ayasha is Ben's first wife, who died of cholera in Paris (not a spoiler, since it happens before the first book). This is also from Graveyard Dust.
He reached the house on Rue Burgundy with barely time to bolt down what was left of the beans and rice Gabriel had brought last night, and change into his respectable garb of biscuit-colored trousers, linen shirt, and black coat. “Give your sister my regards,” whispered Hannibal, lying waxen as a corpse under the tent of mosquito-bar. He’d been violently sick—January could see the signs of it in the ill-cleaned slop jar—and January thought, Not the fever. Not now.
He felt his friend’s hands and face, and they were cool. But all the way through the streets to the Cabildo he remembered Ayasha, lying dead in their rooms on the Rue de l’Aube. Remembered the smell of the sickness as he climbed the stair. Remembered opening the door and seeing her.
Some part of him, he thought, would never recover from that. Some part of him would always be trapped in that moment, like a ghost returning to repeat endlessly one single action in the same corner of the same house forever: opening the door and finding her. Opening the door and finding her.
Now, just a straight-up pretty bit. This is describing the bayous and swamps south of New Orleans itself. This is from Wet Grave
Past Crown Point the true marshes began. The ciprière thinned from an unbroken forest to a succession of wooded islands in wide beds of reeds and alligator-grass. The sedges towered head high, navigable only when a man would stand up to look out across the reeds, and not always then. January had never felt easy in this country: here, he was always conscious of how tenuous was man's occupation. The very earth and water and sky conspired to trade places, shallow bayous shelving to mud and flottants—floating blankets of grasses riding unsupported on the water's surface—masquerading as islands to trick the stranger.
No wonder the American Army had never been able to come in and deal with Lafitte.
A world of birds and dragonflies, silent but for the plop and whisper of oars or pole, and the peeping choruses of frogs. Turtles basked on logs, arranged neatly in order of size, largest to smallest, with smaller turtles perched on the larger ones' backs. Now and then the water would slurp and January would look down and see a six-foot gar-fish that could take a man's arm off, sliding so close to the boat he could count the teeth in its ugly undershot jaw, or gators blinking sleepily in the reeds. Olympe had given them oil of citrus mixed with aromatics, which kept some of the mosquitoes at bay, but even in the brutal heat of the day they were everywhere. At night they would settle on Jim's little tent of netting like a thirsty cloud.
The spaces of water got larger, between the squiggly islands of grass and mud. The sky grew huge. Clouds moved across it like traveling cities in the afternoons, and in the mornings the first sun on the water was a sounding cymbal of brass.
Whatever is happening in New Orleans, thought January, we are out of it now. Slave revolt and betrayal; Uncle Veryl's grief, and Artois lying in his crypt... Whether Henri would return to Dominique, when he came back to town with his bride in the fall, or whether she'd have to raise her baby alone... These are no longer our concerns. They will all go on without us. He would think this, and look back at Natchez Jim, like Charon poling lost souls across the Styx, brass-gold multitudes of dragonflies hanging in the air about him thick as the falling leaves of Vallombrosa.
So. Has anyone already read these? Do you want to talk to me about them? Yes? Awesome! They are all available as ebooks as well, so everyone has no excuse for not reading them immediately.
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Also, yes, the books look interesting!
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Dogs: they leap, bark, and bite, it's like everything that is bad and nothing that is good.
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Thank you for this.
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THEY ARE A+ MYSTERIES
:D
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THEY ARE SO GOOD YOU SHOULD READ MORE OF THEM. I JUST NEED TO FIND SOMEONE TO TALK ABOUT THEM WITH.