Fever Season

Oh gosh is this 4.5 or 5.0? I'm just so reluctant to give 5.0 to books I haven't loved for years.

But I do love it. I love the series. I love it so much that I want to read all of them RIGHT NOW, but the thought of having read them all and not having more to look forward to is intolerable.

It's rare to find a series that does everything as well as this one does: character, plot, setting. All three are vivid and believable and create an immersive experience. I want to live in this world despite all its darkness. And I feel like I'm learning about a very distinctive culture I knew nothing about before. The themes are strong, the insights into human behavior and how we order our societies are sharp. What's not to like?

I was eager to read this second book in the Benjamin January series, and it did not disappoint; indeed, I found myself drawn into the story more quickly than by the previous volume in the series, "A Free Man of Color." Hambly has done her homework and is skilled at bringing her setting to life; you can almost feel the heat and humidity, smell the stench of death in the yellow fever hospitals, experience the sting of prejudice and injustice. The mystery itself is sophisticated and thoroughly linked to the historical setting and some real people who lived in New Orleans at that time.

Second in the Benjamin January series. This sophomore outing has a better plot line than the first, but it's almost smothered to death by the author's repetitive style and unnecessary incidents illustrating points that no longer need to be made. If it had been sharply edited and cut by about 50 pages, it would have made a truly suspenseful read. As it was, I nearly gave up entirely around the 200th page and the 30th iteration of the main character's need to watch his tongue when speaking to whites. There's a good story in there, and it's based in part on an actual event. Perhaps if I hadn't had my reading time fractured of late, I would have sailed over the sloggy bits and not minded them so much. It picked up smartly at the end. This show more author has a lot of potential, and I will probably return to this series after giving it a good rest. I can't imagine she wrote 8 more books that all have that bloat in the middle. But if she does it to me one more time, that will be the end.
Review written in November 2011 show less

I'm wondered, while reading this book, whether mysteries might change the world more than the other books I am reading, which are profound and scholarly reflections on justice and history.
Here's a quote: (p.185 in paperback)
"Men don't need to be evil, Mademoiselle. They just have to be bad enough to say, 'There's nothing I can do.'"
I was talking to someone about a man I knew who won awards for designing the delivery system for napalm. "Was he a good man?" she asked. You tell me.

Masterfully crafted, the events follow necessities imposed by the stratification of pre-Civil War New Orleans' society. Benjamin January ends up detective because he is a free man of color, and cannot count on the white authorities. Following disappearances, a murder that is not what it seems, and the strange behavior of one of the most powerful women in the city, January risks his life and his freedom to find answers.

Thematically, and dramatically focusing on the tenuous nature of freedom for colored people, Hambly creates a heartbreaking world that manages to be as hopeful, cruel, inexplicable and odd as the human beings who occupy it. Emphasis on active cruelty as well as casual disdain, but some nice looks at love and hope too.

This is the second Benjamin January historical mystery set in 1830's New Orleans. It's also good, if a bit grim. Barbara Hambly is amazing in her storytelling and her historical insight. The story picks up more or less where A Free Man of Color left off, increasing the realness of its feel as a window into the past. This story centers around a runaway slave and features a notorious historical figure. Hambly adds notes providing details of the historical sources and a very clear statement that this is a work of fiction.

Good sense of setting that doesn't shy away from the horrors and complications of 1830s New Orleans.