Present Writers: Barbara Hambly (Barbara Hamilton)

[mrissa]

This is the third post in this series; see the first post, on Marta Randall, for series details, or the second one, on Dorothy Heydt (Katherine Blake) for more cool Present Authors.

Earlier this month I was on a Readercon panel about authors who challenge the pigeonhole, who cannot be categorized into one tidy box or another. And when I started to make my notes for panel prep, one of the very first names that popped into my head was Barbara Hambly's. A quick glance at her bibliography shows a range not only all over the speculative sub-genres (historical fantasy! secondary world fantasy! vampires! Star Trek and Star Wars!), but also straight-up historical fiction, mysteries, things that are not speculative at all. She does it all. Short stories, novels, graphic novels, large press, small press, indie published...all of it. All. Backwards in high heels, I expect.

My personal favorites among Barbara Hambly's work are the Benjamin January mysteries. They provide everything I want in historical mysteries: depth of worldbuilding, characterization that's rooted in the place and time and yet deeply individual, thematic ties that make the setting the right place to explore these particular questions of life and death and human motivation. I am particularly fond of the women in these books, January's sisters and his wife especially but also the variety of other characters in the periphery. As with many of the best mystery series, the ensemble cast provides strength and suspense, preventing the detective's actions from becoming too formulaic. (Although I'm not sure that's something we should worry about from an author who goes as readily from subgenre to subgenre and idea to idea as Hambly does.)

Characters are central to everything Hambly does. The genre tropes that she draws out in her books are presented with full context for what they would mean to a variety of real people--and that variety has included axes of underrepresentation not only along the lines of race, but age and ability and other factors as well. I never know what Hambly will decide to do next, and I love that in an author--it makes me so grateful that she is so prolifically present with us now.

Comments

[themagdalen]

I love her! And I love Benjamin January! Yes, thank you for framing her in this category (of uncategorizabke awesomeness).

[ndrosen]

She’s great. I haven’t read that many of her books, having discovered her as a middle-aged adult with a demanding job, but what I’ve read is seriously impressive.

[sholio]

I love her too. :) She's so versatile and such an accomplished writer.

[sgac]

I will read anything she writes, but I have a particular love for her vampire novels, in which the vampires are genuinely scary.

[supergee]

Blogging this. Thanx

[vcmw]

Barbara Hambly makes me so very happy! I love the Benjamin January books. And her stories are full of practical people and fierce smart women and complicated emotions and there's often people being gentle with each other even when it's hard and I just <3 them.

[ethelmay]

I'm very fond of the Benjamin January books, but I thought the book about first ladies (Patriot Hearts) was...not great. Really did not like how she handled Sally Hemings and Jefferson.

[alchimie]

I recently reread Dragonsbane and was floored both by how much it is about being a woman with a career in the 1980s, and by how relevant I find the protagonist's struggles to my life today.