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Jul. 16th, 2018 03:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhCold Bayou by Barbara Hambly. The sixteenth book in the Benjamin January series.
I realize it's been a while since I posted about Ben January, so let me take a moment to give an overview of the series. They are some of my favorite books of all time, and I can't recommend them highly enough. Set in New Orleans in the 1830s, they focus on Benjamin January, a free black man trained as a surgeon and classical piano player. Despite the 1830s being pre-Civil War, at the time New Orleans boasted a large population of 'gens de couleur libres ', or free people of color. It was a category of (often but not always) mixed race people, often (but not always) descendants or family members of women who served as mistresses to white men. In Spanish and French colonies, mistresses and children were (often but not always - do y'all get the sense that it's hard to put lines around this kind of thing yet?) freed and given money or employment, whereas in British colonies the color line tended to stay stronger, and mistresses and children were (often but not...) kept in slavery. This resulted in a system where British colonies had two groups of people – black and white – but French and Spanish ones had three – black, white, and "colored" – where the middle group was seen as distinct but containing some qualities of both the others. In New Orleans itself, this became codified in the "placée" system; interracial marriage was illegal, and so women of color in long-term romantic/sexual relationships with white men were described as being "placed" with him.
Anyway, all of this is just background to fun, well-written murder mysteries. Benjamin January was born into slavery, but freed as a young child when his mother became a placee. As a result, he was raised in relative privilege – highly educated (he speaks something like seven languages, including Latin), interested in music theory and scientific advances and Shakespeare, sent to France for schooling in medicine – but has never gotten over the violence and terror of his childhood, particularly his fear of potentially losing anyone he cares about at any time – and indeed, after he was freed he never saw his father (who remained enslaved) again. Ben's in his 40s in the books, when he stands 6'3 with broad shoulders to match and is very dark-skinned; this means everyone who meets him automatically assumes he's a field slave rather than a free man, which doesn't exactly help him get over his fears. Ben is such a fantastic main character; he's smart and cynical but with a deeply good heart (he literally saved puppies as a kid!), he loves meeting people and talking to them, he's snarky and sweet and gentle and also frequently gets to have adventure scenes like punching a giant alligator in the middle of a hurricane. Since the series are mysteries, he's repeatedly called on to investigate unusual deaths. At first this is usually to prove his own innocence – or that of a relative or close friend – who's been accused of murder, but as the books go on he's often asked to help simply because he now has a reputation for it.
The books are remarkable not just for Ben himself, but for his community. My favorites of the other characters are Rose and Hannibal. Rose is a free woman of color, born into that status but who has suffered in her own way, as a woman who more interested in math and microscopes than fashion or flirting. She's determined to open a school for girls of color, despite several setbacks. She's gawky and wears glasses and Ben is head-over-heels in love with her. Hannibal is their best friend, the only white man in New Orleans who isn't insanely racist (though even he makes mistakes sometimes). He works as a musician with Ben, and is clearly from some sort of aristocratic background, but has chosen to change his name and spend his days homeless and addicted to alcohol. He's also dying from TB (well, "dying"; 16 books and counting and he's still around), which means he is the designated woobie of the series, frequently being poisoned or kidnapped so that Ben has someone to rescue.
Ben's family is also fundamental to the series, including his mother (a heartless, awful person, but a stone-cold survivor down to her bones), his sister Olympe (a Voodoo Queen, and voodoo is taken seriously as a religion in these books, not just oooh zombies), and his half-sister Dominique (also a placee, she comes off as flighty and gossip-obsessed, but she's clever and loyal to a fault). Another important character is Abishag Shaw, a white police lieutenant who is sympathetic to Ben's attempts to find real justice and often provides off-the-books assistance.
The series is everything you could ask for in terms of diversity. As is obvious above, most of the characters are black or mixed race, but there are also important Native Americans, Muslims (including Ben's first wife), Latin@s, Jewish people, and gay characters. Hambly also uses the setting to discuss issues of discrimination that fall along the lines of gender, colorism, religion, language, class, disability, nationality, and more. The historical detail of 1830s New Orleans has obviously been incredibly well-researched and is depicted in great detail. But it's also just so much fun! Ben, Rose, and Hannibal in particular are immense nerds who spend a lot of time joking around with one another, there's adventure, there's suspense, there's immense amounts of competence porn, there's hurt/comfort, there's everything you could want. But the series is especially good for Found Family; Ben's efforts to gather and protect a community around himself is the central arc of the series, and breaks my heart every time. I mean, when it's not giving me joy.
In summary: READ THEM PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
Anyway. Back to Cold Bayou.
The sixteenth book in the Benjamin January series, Cold Bayou begins with the engagement of Veryl St-Chinian – sixty-seven, eccentric, and hermit-like – to an eighteen-year-old illiterate Irish former prostitute. The St-Chinian family is, unsurprisingly, extremely upset by this, since everyone assumes Ellie, the bride, is a gold-digger. That would still be Veryl's choice, but due to vagaries of French colonial law, the family holdings are operated more like a shareholder-owned company than individual plantations. As one of the few still-living members of the oldest generation, Veryl holds a one-third vote over any matter relating to the family business, and as his wife – or widow – Ellie will hold an equal vote. Which means she could, theoretically, decide to sell off all the land and waltz away with the money – all the dozens of plantations, townhouses, business operations, and more owned by the St-Chinians – leaving hundreds of family members and their dependents destitute. Which, you know, it' hard to have much sympathy for a slave-owner losing his sugar plantation, but any such abrupt shift in ownership would put the slaves themselves in danger too.
Such is Ellie's ostracism from New Orleans high society that Veryl decides to hold the wedding on Cold Bayou, a small, remote plantation. Benjamin and Hannibal are hired to provide music for the ceremony; Chloe attends as Veryl's beloved niece, which means she brings Henri, which means he brings Dominique; Livia Levesque, Ben's mother, receives an invitation and would never refuse a chance to show off her social connections; Selwyn Singletary (previously appearing in Good Man Friday comes along as a Veryl's fellow old man who's more interested in Plato and calculus than business or family; and Rose is invited as perhaps the only person Veryl actually, simply, likes.
And so they all head off to isolation in Cold Bayou, where there's not enough guest rooms or food and everything immediately goes wrong. The priest doesn't show up on time, suitors of various young women make dramatic arrivals, spoiled young white men challenge one other to duels, Ellie's maid is having an affair with a fieldhand, the overseer is embezzling from the plantation, Ellie's uncle shows up to threaten anyone insulting his niece, and through it all the St-Chinians are doing everything they can to stop the wedding.
Matters escalate when Ellie's maid claims that Ellie holds the papers on a debt long-ago incurred by Simon Fourchet, Ben's former owner. If she's telling the truth, it means that Ben, his mother, his siblings, and all of their children are still legally enslaved. Ben tries to investigate this claim, but he doesn't get far before the maid is killed that night, presumably in a case of mistaken identity for Ellie herself. And as if things weren't bad enough, a storm causes the Mississippi to flood, trapping everyone on the plantation.
I absolutely loved this book. It has a really fun twist on the country-house genre (flooded sugar plantation is about as far as you can get from British country house, but they serve the same purpose!), and it was wonderful to see characters we hadn't gotten to spend time with in the most recent books, particularly Livia. She's so awful, but her scenes are some of my favorites.
I don't want to spoil the mystery, but the resolution is incredibly well-done. It speaks to how we can all be short-sighted, as readers and people; we – and Ben, at least at first - assume we know who's the main character in the story and who's only secondary, but the truth turns out to be very different.
I'm not sure I'd recommend this book as an introduction to the series, there's too many characters fans already know playing important parts. But if you're familiar with Ben January and co. already, you're sure to love this.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
I realize it's been a while since I posted about Ben January, so let me take a moment to give an overview of the series. They are some of my favorite books of all time, and I can't recommend them highly enough. Set in New Orleans in the 1830s, they focus on Benjamin January, a free black man trained as a surgeon and classical piano player. Despite the 1830s being pre-Civil War, at the time New Orleans boasted a large population of 'gens de couleur libres ', or free people of color. It was a category of (often but not always) mixed race people, often (but not always) descendants or family members of women who served as mistresses to white men. In Spanish and French colonies, mistresses and children were (often but not always - do y'all get the sense that it's hard to put lines around this kind of thing yet?) freed and given money or employment, whereas in British colonies the color line tended to stay stronger, and mistresses and children were (often but not...) kept in slavery. This resulted in a system where British colonies had two groups of people – black and white – but French and Spanish ones had three – black, white, and "colored" – where the middle group was seen as distinct but containing some qualities of both the others. In New Orleans itself, this became codified in the "placée" system; interracial marriage was illegal, and so women of color in long-term romantic/sexual relationships with white men were described as being "placed" with him.
Anyway, all of this is just background to fun, well-written murder mysteries. Benjamin January was born into slavery, but freed as a young child when his mother became a placee. As a result, he was raised in relative privilege – highly educated (he speaks something like seven languages, including Latin), interested in music theory and scientific advances and Shakespeare, sent to France for schooling in medicine – but has never gotten over the violence and terror of his childhood, particularly his fear of potentially losing anyone he cares about at any time – and indeed, after he was freed he never saw his father (who remained enslaved) again. Ben's in his 40s in the books, when he stands 6'3 with broad shoulders to match and is very dark-skinned; this means everyone who meets him automatically assumes he's a field slave rather than a free man, which doesn't exactly help him get over his fears. Ben is such a fantastic main character; he's smart and cynical but with a deeply good heart (he literally saved puppies as a kid!), he loves meeting people and talking to them, he's snarky and sweet and gentle and also frequently gets to have adventure scenes like punching a giant alligator in the middle of a hurricane. Since the series are mysteries, he's repeatedly called on to investigate unusual deaths. At first this is usually to prove his own innocence – or that of a relative or close friend – who's been accused of murder, but as the books go on he's often asked to help simply because he now has a reputation for it.
The books are remarkable not just for Ben himself, but for his community. My favorites of the other characters are Rose and Hannibal. Rose is a free woman of color, born into that status but who has suffered in her own way, as a woman who more interested in math and microscopes than fashion or flirting. She's determined to open a school for girls of color, despite several setbacks. She's gawky and wears glasses and Ben is head-over-heels in love with her. Hannibal is their best friend, the only white man in New Orleans who isn't insanely racist (though even he makes mistakes sometimes). He works as a musician with Ben, and is clearly from some sort of aristocratic background, but has chosen to change his name and spend his days homeless and addicted to alcohol. He's also dying from TB (well, "dying"; 16 books and counting and he's still around), which means he is the designated woobie of the series, frequently being poisoned or kidnapped so that Ben has someone to rescue.
Ben's family is also fundamental to the series, including his mother (a heartless, awful person, but a stone-cold survivor down to her bones), his sister Olympe (a Voodoo Queen, and voodoo is taken seriously as a religion in these books, not just oooh zombies), and his half-sister Dominique (also a placee, she comes off as flighty and gossip-obsessed, but she's clever and loyal to a fault). Another important character is Abishag Shaw, a white police lieutenant who is sympathetic to Ben's attempts to find real justice and often provides off-the-books assistance.
The series is everything you could ask for in terms of diversity. As is obvious above, most of the characters are black or mixed race, but there are also important Native Americans, Muslims (including Ben's first wife), Latin@s, Jewish people, and gay characters. Hambly also uses the setting to discuss issues of discrimination that fall along the lines of gender, colorism, religion, language, class, disability, nationality, and more. The historical detail of 1830s New Orleans has obviously been incredibly well-researched and is depicted in great detail. But it's also just so much fun! Ben, Rose, and Hannibal in particular are immense nerds who spend a lot of time joking around with one another, there's adventure, there's suspense, there's immense amounts of competence porn, there's hurt/comfort, there's everything you could want. But the series is especially good for Found Family; Ben's efforts to gather and protect a community around himself is the central arc of the series, and breaks my heart every time. I mean, when it's not giving me joy.
In summary: READ THEM PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
Anyway. Back to Cold Bayou.
The sixteenth book in the Benjamin January series, Cold Bayou begins with the engagement of Veryl St-Chinian – sixty-seven, eccentric, and hermit-like – to an eighteen-year-old illiterate Irish former prostitute. The St-Chinian family is, unsurprisingly, extremely upset by this, since everyone assumes Ellie, the bride, is a gold-digger. That would still be Veryl's choice, but due to vagaries of French colonial law, the family holdings are operated more like a shareholder-owned company than individual plantations. As one of the few still-living members of the oldest generation, Veryl holds a one-third vote over any matter relating to the family business, and as his wife – or widow – Ellie will hold an equal vote. Which means she could, theoretically, decide to sell off all the land and waltz away with the money – all the dozens of plantations, townhouses, business operations, and more owned by the St-Chinians – leaving hundreds of family members and their dependents destitute. Which, you know, it' hard to have much sympathy for a slave-owner losing his sugar plantation, but any such abrupt shift in ownership would put the slaves themselves in danger too.
Such is Ellie's ostracism from New Orleans high society that Veryl decides to hold the wedding on Cold Bayou, a small, remote plantation. Benjamin and Hannibal are hired to provide music for the ceremony; Chloe attends as Veryl's beloved niece, which means she brings Henri, which means he brings Dominique; Livia Levesque, Ben's mother, receives an invitation and would never refuse a chance to show off her social connections; Selwyn Singletary (previously appearing in Good Man Friday comes along as a Veryl's fellow old man who's more interested in Plato and calculus than business or family; and Rose is invited as perhaps the only person Veryl actually, simply, likes.
And so they all head off to isolation in Cold Bayou, where there's not enough guest rooms or food and everything immediately goes wrong. The priest doesn't show up on time, suitors of various young women make dramatic arrivals, spoiled young white men challenge one other to duels, Ellie's maid is having an affair with a fieldhand, the overseer is embezzling from the plantation, Ellie's uncle shows up to threaten anyone insulting his niece, and through it all the St-Chinians are doing everything they can to stop the wedding.
Matters escalate when Ellie's maid claims that Ellie holds the papers on a debt long-ago incurred by Simon Fourchet, Ben's former owner. If she's telling the truth, it means that Ben, his mother, his siblings, and all of their children are still legally enslaved. Ben tries to investigate this claim, but he doesn't get far before the maid is killed that night, presumably in a case of mistaken identity for Ellie herself. And as if things weren't bad enough, a storm causes the Mississippi to flood, trapping everyone on the plantation.
I absolutely loved this book. It has a really fun twist on the country-house genre (flooded sugar plantation is about as far as you can get from British country house, but they serve the same purpose!), and it was wonderful to see characters we hadn't gotten to spend time with in the most recent books, particularly Livia. She's so awful, but her scenes are some of my favorites.
I don't want to spoil the mystery, but the resolution is incredibly well-done. It speaks to how we can all be short-sighted, as readers and people; we – and Ben, at least at first - assume we know who's the main character in the story and who's only secondary, but the truth turns out to be very different.
I'm not sure I'd recommend this book as an introduction to the series, there's too many characters fans already know playing important parts. But if you're familiar with Ben January and co. already, you're sure to love this.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-16 10:58 pm (UTC)WHOA WAIT WHAT I HAD NO IDEA THIS WAS HAPPENING.
And it sounds great, since I was just reading the short stories where Rose and Dominique and Livia take center stage, also I like Chloë. Also flooded sugar plantation country house mystery is the kind of thing that happened a lot in earlier books in the series and has somewhat faded in recent installments, so I respect its sheer existence.
Dare I ask how long I have to wait for the actual book?
no subject
Date: 2018-07-17 12:09 am (UTC)It's out! It came out in May. I've actually had my copy for ages and was just procrastinating on writing this review; I've even read it twice already.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-17 12:12 am (UTC)Awesome! I appreciate the warning for minimal Rose and Hannibal (sigh) and look forward to the worldbuilding.
It's out! It came out in May.
I saw you had an ARC and assumed it was forthcoming! Damn it, I didn't even see it at Readercon!
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Date: 2018-07-17 01:42 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2018-07-21 11:32 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2018-07-21 11:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-22 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-06 12:10 am (UTC)Having finally acquired the book, seconded.
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Date: 2019-07-20 11:45 pm (UTC)