Dead & Buried by Barbara Hambly

You know, I do, sometimes, also, read books which I actually enjoy!

I'm a huge Barbara Hambly fan. Though I won't say that I own everything she's written (there are definitely some short stories I haven't gotten my hands on), I will say that I own—and have read—nearly everything she's written, including obscurities like the Beauty and the Beast tie-in novel. I am a Barbara Hambly fan.

So there was much rejoicing in the land when I heard that the British publisher Severn House was picking up a new Benjamin January book (hopefully with more to come) and even more joy when I got my hands on my own copy of Dead & Buried.

If you've been reading this journal at all lately, you know I've been struggling through a number of books that have left me less than happy. The Husband, too, because he has to hear me growling about it. So Dead & Buried was really good for both of us. On Twitter, I compared it to aloe on sunburned skin and yes, it really was that great a relief to me.

For those not in the know, the Benjamin January books are historical mysteries set in pre-Civil War New Orleans (largely). Benjamin January is a free man of color, a surgeon and a musician who returns to Louisiana after a long absence in Paris. Hambly has an advanced degree in History and it shows in her work. Her great love for New Orleans comes through with equal transparency, both the city itself and the deep-reaching, complicated culture that is its background and backbone.

In reading D&B, there was a pleasure, of course, in seeing again characters like Ben, Rose, Hannibal and Abishag Shaw. But there was also a familiar pleasure in just reading again those names which we only know in passing, like Bernadette Metoyer and Crowdie Passebon. It's a quiet but clever illustration of the world Ben lives in, to give the reader that experience of vague but neighborly connection, the familiarity of the faces and personalities that surround him and inform his reality.

On a more personal level, one of the reasons I love the series so much is that I feel like Hambly really gets both the complications of family life and that of Southern families, in particular. I feel such an odd sense of nostalgia as I read the books, bittersweet reminders of my own relatives and relationships with them. I can see my own family peeking through the pages and it's a rare thing for me to find an author that can or does evoke that, let alone so well.

I also always enjoy the construction of Hambly's mysteries, similar to a Hidden Picture puzzle, where all the pieces are present but require the right focus and context to put together. I like that they can be put together, by the reader, given enough thought and I like that, even so, they don't always turn out like I thought they would.

(spoilers beneath the cut)

Specifically, I'd figured out pretty early on that Germanicus Stuart was Hannibal's son. But the circumstances which I'd constructed around how he came to be conceived were vastly different than the reality.

(Which may just be an indication that my slash goggles are on tighter than I'd ever realized, because—especially with the reference to Achilles and Patrocles at the end—I'd been vaguely convinced that Derryhick and Germanicus's father were lovers and that Hannibal and Germanicus's mother ended up having an affair on the side, rather than the much simpler solution that Hannibal is the former Viscount and Gerry's father. Clearly, I have officially been in fandom too long.)

It's funny to me because I actually finished Dead & Buried well before I finished Soul Bonds and yet it's the review that took me longer and was intrinsically more difficult to write. While I seem to have quite a lot to say about those books that have made me miserable—and why—it seems much harder to talk fairly or cogently or logically about something that gave me such great pleasure. So perhaps it'll just have to be enough to say that it did, and that I recommend the entire series highly, and that I think everyone should go and buy Dead & Buried, dammit, so Severn House will publish lots more.