Reviews

A Free Man of Color by Barbara Hambly

reikista's review

4.0

Benjamin January, free man of color of New Orleans, returns home from Paris when his Moroccan wife dies, and finds integrating into the changing rules for people of African descent difficult. Then he is accused of a murder of a , and his white, former pupil seems to be involved. A god teacher of history and social relationships, with an exciting story and much action- more dense than I am used to.

Learn about race relations in New Orleans and Louisiana, when the French ways are being taken over by Americans, and New Orleans was an enclave for free blacks, but a tenuous one once you step out of town.

tawallah's review against another edition

dark informative mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

Reading a historical mystery novel set in early nineteenth century in Louisiana at Mardi Gras during Lent made for quite the experience. The strengths in this book were the constant dichotomies that existed in New Orleans. Creoles, Americans, free and the enslaved live in a fragile state. There is an underlying sense of irrevocable change which everyone is resisting. Into what is meant to be a time of solemnity and introspection, comes the murder of a black woman. Angelique doesn’t live up to the sweet nature of her name and there are many suspects. Into the mix comes Benjamin Janvier, a freed man mourning the death of his wife in a city that feels foreign barely making out a living. 

Hambly crafts a believable setting full of tension with a mystery that seems to lag until the last 100 pages. Despite the uneven storyline, history lovers may enjoy the social commentary more than those who came for the mystery and its final denouement. 

xor's review

5.0

I absolutely loved this book. The sense of place is incredible, the research that went into it is remarkable, the characters are all messy and vivid and memorable, the themes and the mystery and the setting all fit perfectly together. I picked this book basically at random -- it happened to be available at my library -- and I couldn't put it down (I read the final pages while hiding the book under my desk at work). Upon finishing it, I immediately recommended it to everyone I know and bought the sequel.

karireads's review

mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

yasdnilr's review

4.0

Beautifully written with an eye for historical and linguistic detail. The characters are beautifully drawn. I quite fell for Benjamin Janvier, Ben January, musician, surgeon, a free man of colour. Smart, brave and honourable, he gets himself mixed up in melodrama that leads to murder.

But we know what January knows so we don’t know much until a very exciting finish. Will be reading the next for sure.

Trigger warnings: there’s a great deal of racism and threat of slavery as well as descriptions of slaves and buying and selling of and there is use of the n word. She explains why in a foreword

kitnotmarlowe's review against another edition

challenging mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

A Free Man of Color is a story about property. Not just enslaved people as property as the title implies, but also territory as national and individual property, personal property, women as the property of their husbands, and history itself as the property of the hand documenting it. 

Barbara Hambly does better at evoking a specific time and place than crafting a mystery. The plot is engaging, with enough twists and turns to allow readers to formulate theories without being entirely out of the loop. However, too much of the execution relies on information the reader is not privy to until the conclusion and the ending feels rushed. 

A Free Man of Color is immersive but not always enthralling. The level of detail (characters, different names for characters and groups of people, material culture specificities) borders on claustrophobia. Hambly's research is meticulous but dense. It sometimes suffocates and even obscures the mystery at its heart. Similarly, while the characters are vivid and the relationships are complex, the prose occasionally borders on purple. To be generous, I will ascribe this intricacy to being the first book in a series and thus having to lay a ton of historical and narrative groundwork. I hope this problem is solved in later books, but I've also heard that they get both formulaic and silly (I hope not simultaneously).

Recommended for serious historical fiction readers who are either interested in learning about 1830s New Orleans or already have some knowledge of it.

 

Also, yay for this book, written in 1997 and set in 1831, correctly gendering a trans character! There is a bit of confusion on the part of Ben & Co., and they briefly understand his relationship with Madeleine as sapphic due to a lack of other vocabulary, but it's clear from how Augustus talks about himself that he's trans.

 

At the very least, I will probably read the second book because I am interested in Yellow Fever (what a weird sentence), but there are currently 19 Benjamin January books, and I do not have that kind of time. 

ewalrath's review

5.0

The work Barbara Hambly has done on this series amazes me. And the mysteries are good too.

hekate24's review

4.0

Finally got through this one (like [b:Katherine|33609|Katherine|Anya Seton|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1405116658s/33609.jpg|2372397], I put this book down somewhere in the middle and never got back to it.) This was an extremely dense, meticulously researched mystery that was packed full of moral ambiguity. The ending is a bit rushed but still in keeping with everything that came before. I'll definitely read more of this series.

smemmott's review against another edition

informative mysterious medium-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

staticdisplay's review

4.0

this brought history alive for me. it gave me an idea what it would be like to live in a place with such different social and political conditions from modern Louisiana (I love New Orleans). I thought the mystery and characters were both interesting, with depth. I didn't love the "thriller" type elements, where the main character was imperiled, because I get stressed out reading about it.