A Free Man of Color (Hambly)

3+/5. I think this is a very good book and worth reading, and I'm definitely going to pick up the rest of the series! I do think that it may have suffered from my reading it at maybe not quite the ideal time. For example, I kept mixing up a lot of the minor characters who don't get much screen time, which really isn't ideal when there's a mystery to be solved (or, well, really in general but particularly for a mystery). I also found the last third a lot more compelling than the rest of it.

However.

Augustus Mayerling is made of awesome. I have a total crush on Mayerling. (I also quite admire, after the fact, the part where Hambly keeps referring to Mayerling as "the Prussian." The fact that this helped to blindside me, I feel, is making Hambly's point for her.)

Also: Barbara Hambly was one of the authors (along with Diane Duane and John M. Ford) that I originally found, as a kid, through her Star Trek novel. Apropos of nothing, really, but it always makes me smile when I see a book by her, remembering that.