A Free Man of Color (1997)

Meh. Meh. Meh. I really thought I would like this book; but turns out I just about hated it. The writing is excellent; but I don't like the setting or the characters. I may try this as an audiobook. ( )

This is the first in a series that I will definitely be following. The POV character here is Benjamin January, the "free man of color" of the title. The main character, however, is New Orleans. I spent some time there when I was younger, and loved the French Quarter, the music, the food, and the culture. It's clear to me that the author, who lives there part of each year, also loves it. She has dug deep in the unique local history and culture, and written a book about a place and time that are magic.

1830s NOLA is a great setting. The city was only recently annexed by the US, and the new influx of Americans are changing the culture of the city. For January, these changes are all for the worse. He grew up in a world of creoles, French settlers, aristocratic refugees from Haiti/Santo Domingo, and Spanish grandees who have been there for generations. Their ties and interests are to Paris, where the wealthy send their children and do their shopping, not to the rest of the continent they are inhabiting. (Trivia: Josephine, empress of Napoleon Bonaparte, was a creole aristocrat.) Their comparatively tolerant racial attitudes (color matters, a lot) is being supplanted by the American assumption that all blacks are slaves, or should be. For the first time in his life, he has to carry papers showing that he is a free person, and if a white person should tear up the papers, his freedom will evaporate. Naturally he, and the rest of the colored population resent this, just as the long-time inhabitants resent the encroachment of the boorish and uncivilized Americans, who have no culture, only money.

Hambly has used the setting as the backdrop of a murder. The mystery is well-plotted, and her writing is excellent. I'm not giving this 5 stars because the human characters are less well developed than the city, but I'm hoping that changes as the series develops. ( )

A little too much description gets in the way of the plot occasionally, but I enjoyed it and am looking foward to trying the next in the series. ( )

Historical fiction isn't my favorite genre, but I'm much more willing to read it when it's mixed with mystery. I've read some of Hambly's work before and know her to be a fine writer, and I'd read good reviews of this series by people I respect, so I decided to give it a whirl.I suppose all the descriptions of people's clothing would have mattered much more to someone who cared about such things, but I do realize that they were important in the context of the story. Personally, I was relieved when the main character went on a journey! I would have been happier had his medical skills been utilized more frequently than they were, but I suppose his experiences were fairly true to life for a "colored" man of his time.I did learn quite a lot—things that I intend to verify in non-fiction sources shortly. The information about the black code, for instance, and the explanation of the distinction between "black" and "colored" people seemed too precise to be fabricated. I knew, too, that Louisiana is the only U.S. state whose laws are based on French rather than English common law, which seemed silly to me. Why wouldn't they go with the standard everyone else used? After reading this novel, I'm starting to realize that there may have been rights given to citizens under French law that were lost under English law.I'm not sure as to whether or not I'll go forward in the series, as I'm not sure that I can handle the unhappiness I can see foreshadowed even in some of the titles. However, I will say that this volume is well-written and well-plotted. I certainly didn't guess who the killer was or why the murder was committed before the big reveal, and that was a pleasant change! ( )

As others have said, it took a while for me to really get into this book but about halfway through the story began moving faster. Of course, much of the first chapters were setting the stage, explaining the New Orleans of the 1830's and why Benjamin January returned there and how he fit into the city's social structure. This was the first novel I've read set in pre-Civil War New Orleans that was told from the point of view of someone who wasn't a Creole which made it even more interesting. I will probably read the next book in the series.