Stuff and things and stuff!

[sholio]

sga_legacy/sga_legacy is a new community for the SGA Legacy tie-in books -- for discussion of the books and also for posting Legacy-related fanfic and fanart and, I don't know, whatever other fan things people come up with. It's co-modded by tielan and me. Right now, since the first book of Legacy has just started shipping and almost no one has read it yet, there's just a welcome post and a discussion post for Death Game, should anyone have read that one and want to talk about it! (I, er, haven't read it. But the discussion post is up anyway!)

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I am almost done with my holiday fics, which is good, since I'm going out of town for Christmas. (I'm going to be Internetless when the Yuletide fics go live! I am SAD!) Also, it's cold. So cold. It's supposed to get near -40 this week. AUGH. This is karmic payback for the last couple of warm winters, isn't it? *bundles up*

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I have had my brain eaten by a new (to me) series of books - the Benjamin January mysteries by Barbara Hambly. They are AWESOME -- well, okay, I've only read the first one so far, A Free Man of Color, so I guess I'll say that the first one is awesome and I will be snapping up the next ones as soon as I can get my hands on them. The series takes place in New Orleans in the 1830s; the setting is richly and gorgeously depicted in its vivid beauty and equally vivid squalor, and the characters, oh, the characters. *bounces* I have no clue if these books would appear faily to eyes other than mine, but personally I thought Hambly does a really fantastic job of writing with both sympathy and empathy for all of her characters, who include black freedmen/freedwomen, mixed-race courtesans, plantation owners' wives; Americans and Creole French, working class and middle class and upper class; there's even a queer couple. I loved how the characters are all products of their society, each caught in their own kind of cage, each with their own prejudices and lives and loves and desires and plans. The plot is twisty and surprising, and did I mention that I love the characters to bits? (I can't really talk about all of them and how much I love them without getting spoilery, but basically, there are a lot of characters and I love them ALL. But ♥Shaw♥ gets some special hearts, because he is so totally Vimes that it's awesome. Vimes with a backwoods Kentucky accent. ♥)

Comments

[lastscorpion]

I love those books too!

[lastscorpion]

The Barbara Hambly ones; I haven't seen or heard of the SGA Legacy ones before.

[sholio]

They're great! I've had A Free Man of Color sitting around in my to-read pile forever -- I loved Hambly's books when I was a teenager, but I haven't read anything of hers after, oh, 1995 or so. And now I wish I'd read it long ago! I absolutely could not put it down, and I was delighted to go online and find out there are so many more of them! (I actually drove out to Barnes & Noble tonight to see if they had any more. Not even one! BOO! But the library does, apparently, so I'll be making a library run tomorrow!)

[lizbee]

I love the Benjamin January novels! I read them years ago, then revisited them last year, curious to see how they'd hold up post racefail. My conclusion was, very well, since Hambly approaches her characters with a lot of thought and consideration, and freely admits when she learns she's made an error.

This reminds me that I have the newest one ordered from bookdepository, and it should be arriving any day now. Hurrah!

[sholio]

Yeah, reading them post-racefail, I've been really impressed so far, especially given that she's not just writing about a heavily stratified, color-conscious society, but specifically writing about race and class relations within that society -- and she does a good job with it (at least to my eyes; there may be things that would jump out to someone who has a different racial/ethnic/class background than me). It's obvious that she put a lot of thought and effort into the books, and she also thanks Octavia Butler for advice in the afterword, so she apparently uses good sources too! But at the same time, the books don't get weighed down with the care that must have gone into researching them; the first one, at least, is fast-paced and engaging and ... oh damn, I want the next book now, and the library's not open yet. :D

[skieswideopen]

Ooh, the Benjamin January books sound very much up my alley! I'll have to check them out.

[sholio]

They are very good! I recommend them highly (well, based on the first one anyway, but I've heard good things about the whole series).