I confess Barbara Hambly is one of my favourite spec fic authors. She also writes historical crime fiction, in the Benjamin January novels, which I have reviewed on this site. When I first discovered them, I was a bit disappointed, as I had been reading and loving her fantasy. But they quickly became among my favourite of her fiction.
However, this A to Z is focussing on speculative fiction, so let’s get on with it. Fortunately there is plenty of that to enjoy. And most of her books are in a series of one kind or another. I will keep to a few individual books and series, or this post will be novel length in itself.
The first of her works I read was Dragonsbane. It was wonderful! It starts with a young man coming to find John Aversin, a knight who once slew a dragon and ask him to do it again, on a dragon menacing his own area. He is shocked to see him as a middle aged bespectacled man with a regional accent. He also discovers that John killed the dragon because it was necessary and did it with a harpoon, with the help of his partner, Jenny, a witch. It was beautiful and he regrets having had to kill it. But the current dragon is not a villain.
It’s the first of the Winterlands series.
I read what was then the Darwath trilogy(she has written more since then). Two people from our world, Rudy and Gil, turn up in another universe, Darwath. Rudy begins to train as a wizard. The woman, Gil, becomes a soldier. However, she is a historian, and it’s her research on what happened in this world that saves the day. I won’t go into detail, because spoilers, but the original trilogy is amazing. There are a number of shorter stories set in the Darwath universe.
Barbara Hambly wrote three Star Trek novels and some Star Wars books. She got into trouble about one of the Trek books, Ishmael, over copyright issues as it was not entirely Star Trek, but if you can find a copy second hand it’s well worth a read. It’s very funny.
She is also a great Doctor Who fan, which led to her Antryg Windrose series. Three of them were published by regular publishers, as well as a novel set in the same universe, and she has self published several novellas and novelettes that continued the adventures of Antryg and his partner - “companion”? - Joanna. Antryg Windrose is a wizard who once was studying with a villain. That has kept poor Antryg imprisoned in a tower that locks up his magic, in the first novel The Silent Tower. Joanna, a computer expert from our world, comes into his life when it turns out that the villain is not so dead as thought, and her boyfriend is used to build a giant computer in which the baddie can put his mind.
Basically, Antryg is the Tom Baker Doctor, with cheap jewellery instead of a long scarf. The author has admitted it, but I certainly noticed it when I first read it. This is my favourite series of all her books, but I love them all. I’ve been buying the self published titles as well.
The James Asher books are horror fiction, starting with a book called Those Who Hunt The Night in the US, and Immortal Blood where I live. I have reviewed some on this site, so I won’t go into detail here, but they are very readable stuff. It starts with James Asher, a spy agent in the Victorian and Edwardian era, being approached by Spaniard Simon Ysidro, on behalf of the vampire community in London to find out who has been killing them…or else they will have a go at his intelligent wife, Lydia. Simon falls in love with her, so in the books that follow - there are eight - he helps James for her sake. This series is the only one I have read that makes the point that, while vampires can love, they can’t actually have sex, or at least the men can’t, for obvious reasons. In this universe, vampires are what they are because they want to be vampires. They are selfish, as Simon admits. If a vampire bites you, you just die, you don’t become one of them, unless you have requested it.
The first two books in the series are available in audiobook. You might need to get the rest second hand from ABEBooks. There is a self published novella in this series in ebook.
I have mentioned Bride Of The Rat God on this site, also only available in audiobook. It’s worth buying, great fun, set in 1920s Hollywood. The reader is excellent.
I have just started reading The Ladies Of Mandrigyn, the first of the Sun Wolf And Starhawk series, but I bought it second hand from ABEBooks. You can get it in audiobook, but I listened to a sample and don’t recommend that.
There is so much Barbara Hambly to enjoy, I’ll leave it here.
I’ll just give you a link to the Wikipedia article, which has a list of her works and a biography.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Hambly
PS I know I promised a post on The Handmaid’s Tale, but this is such a long post, I’ll see if I can slip it into my X “Extras”.
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