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I'm going to have to 'fess up, here. I am quite simply in awe of Barbara Hambly. She has created works in any number of genres --- science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and horror --- with equal aplomb, creating in the process worlds so real that they threaten to displace this one.
Now, I happen to believe that it is much more difficult to write a historical novel than it is to create a universe out of whole cloth. With the latter, you can make it up and change things as you go along, stick the square pegs in the round holes, and as long as you paint it and sand it down in the end so that it is all nice and neat, no one will be the wiser that your first draft was so full of contradictions that you had to write it over three or four times. But historical fiction... You're dealing with a well-examined template and you can't really change the rules. You've got to do your research and stay true to your topic and to the events. You're putting characters who never existed into places and situations that did. If you're going to carry it off, you better have your research done correctly and have a cast of characters who are not only interesting but also believable, interacting in a story that will keep your audience engrossed whether they are familiar with the setting or not. And if you are doing it in the context of a series, you have to be able to backtrack and explain what has gone before well enough that readers who have been with you from the beginning will not be bored but provide enough background so that new readers can climb aboard. Absolutely no one combines these elements better than Barbara Hambly does. And no set of books illustrates this ability better than her Benjamin January novels.
Benjamin January is a Free Man of Color in New Orleans in the 1830s, a surgeon by education, a musician by profession, a conflicted and complicated man of faith and morals who tries to do the good and right thing in a time and place that mitigated against such an attitude. SOLD DOWN THE RIVER, the fourth of the Benjamin January novels (after A FREE MAN OF COLOR, FEVER SEASON, and GRAVEYARD DUST) begins with January's past as a slave coming back to haunt him when he finds Simon Fourchet, his former master, in his mother's parlor. Fourchet, as cruel a slavemaster as ever existed, requires Benjamin's assistance. Someone is attempting to destroy Fourchet's plantation and Fourchet in the process. His mill has been set afire, his butler murdered, and his field hands poisoned --- and voodoo cursemarks are appearing everywhere. Fourchet wants Ben to go undercover on the plantation as a slave, and spy, to discover who is responsible. Initially, not even the promise of money, which Ben so desperately needs, is enough to persuade him to aid the man he hates perhaps more than anyone living. It is only the realization that there will be dire consequences for all of the slaves if the responsible party is not apprehended that persuades Benjamin to reluctantly agree to aid Fourchet.
Benjamin soon finds himself immersed in a life and a horror that he had left behind long ago. And while he is appalled at the conditions under which the slaves reside, he slowly comes to realize how truly fortunate he was that his mother was purchased, then freed, and that the same was done for him. For whatever difficulties he experiences as a free person in New Orleans are nothing as compared to the tribulations of a slave. Ben soon finds that solving the mysteries of Fourchet's plantation may be relegated to second place as he uses every bit of his energy and intelligence to simply survive in a hostile environment and era. And what of the biggest mystery of all? What became of Benjamin's father, the strong but gentle man that Benjamin remembers only in fits and snatches?
SOLD DOWN THE RIVER is labeled as a novel of suspense. It is that; it succeeds, however, on so many levels and across so many genres --- as a mystery, as a historical novel, as a romance --- that to classify it under any one of these would do it an injustice. It is nothing less than a major work of fiction. Highest possible recommendation.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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