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100 days of enemy recs: 62. Asher Vampire Stories
The Asher books by Barbara Hambly, and the James/Lydia/Simon OT3, are one of the tiny fandoms that is deepest in my heart, and I don't know how to do them justice?
Dr. James Asher is, to all appearances, a nondescript Oxford don whose only interesting attribute is his pretty young wife. But in fact he has spent more than a decade traveling the world spying for the British Empire in some of the world's most dangerous places, under the cover of his language and folklore research. He quit the spy part after he killed one too many innocents for reasons he couldn't believe in anymore, and came back to Oxford to marry Lydia.
Dr. Lydia Asher is a beautiful, fashionable socialite. She married James against the wishes of her family, who wanted to see her with any of her many richer, more dashing suitors. Also against the wishes of her family, she trained as a research pathologist, and is just as comfortable elbow-deep in corpses as in society tea-rooms. She has a tendency to worry about Science first and prudence and morality second if she isn't careful with herself. She and James are madly in love and impossibly well-suited.
Don Simon Ysidro is a vampire. He came to Britain on a diplomatic mission in the reign of Mary Tudor, was turned, and never went home. He is very good at being vampire - so good he tends to disconcert other vampires, if only by his utter refusal to take part in any of their petty power games. He may or may not be the second oldest vampire in Europe. When something monstrous starts to stalk and kill the vampires of London, a day-walker they can't hunt themselves, he uses a threat to Lydia's life to blackmail James into tracking down and destroying the killer, and his neutral position to force the other vampires to cooperate as well.
He has deeply underestimated both of the Ashers, however - and himself - and in the course of what becomes a much more balanced team-up than he planned, the three of them end up in an inextricable tangle of loyalty, debt, trust, honor, and, eventually, helplessly, love.
This series ruined me for all other versions of vampires because her vampires are, at core, people who were given the choice to kill, and live; or not kill, and die. And the ones who stay alive a long time are the ones who keep making the choice to live, and who know what they are for doing that, and make it anyway, because their powers, psychic or physical, are balanced by such terrible weaknesses that the only way they can live is to watch for their safety every minute, and kill for it every night. But the core plot of every book is the Ashers having to team up with vampires to fight humans who - in the context of the leadup to WWI - are trying to use vampires as tools to do things more horrible than any vampire ever dreamed of or wished for or could possibly imagine - and every time the Ashers, or the reader, wants to condemn all the vampires wholesale, they are reminded that the evil the vampires do because they must, the humans around them do because they can. And yet there are the Ashers, both of them blood on their hands, fighting to stop it, to hold the fragile balance between humans and the dark. And Simon, fighting beside them, and then quietly going off alone to drink the death of an innocent where they won't have to watch and remember.
Anyway it's a very good series, and the vampires are very good, and the taking turns with h/c and rescuing from peril are epic, and the enemyship OT3 is extremely good and only about two millimeters away from canon (James and Lydia are in love, in canon; Lydia and Simon are in love in canon, and James knows, and accepts it; Simon and James have perhaps not said it in so many words - but only because it's pretty clear James can't let himself admit it, and Simon loves him too much to make him.)
Dr. James Asher is, to all appearances, a nondescript Oxford don whose only interesting attribute is his pretty young wife. But in fact he has spent more than a decade traveling the world spying for the British Empire in some of the world's most dangerous places, under the cover of his language and folklore research. He quit the spy part after he killed one too many innocents for reasons he couldn't believe in anymore, and came back to Oxford to marry Lydia.
Dr. Lydia Asher is a beautiful, fashionable socialite. She married James against the wishes of her family, who wanted to see her with any of her many richer, more dashing suitors. Also against the wishes of her family, she trained as a research pathologist, and is just as comfortable elbow-deep in corpses as in society tea-rooms. She has a tendency to worry about Science first and prudence and morality second if she isn't careful with herself. She and James are madly in love and impossibly well-suited.
Don Simon Ysidro is a vampire. He came to Britain on a diplomatic mission in the reign of Mary Tudor, was turned, and never went home. He is very good at being vampire - so good he tends to disconcert other vampires, if only by his utter refusal to take part in any of their petty power games. He may or may not be the second oldest vampire in Europe. When something monstrous starts to stalk and kill the vampires of London, a day-walker they can't hunt themselves, he uses a threat to Lydia's life to blackmail James into tracking down and destroying the killer, and his neutral position to force the other vampires to cooperate as well.
He has deeply underestimated both of the Ashers, however - and himself - and in the course of what becomes a much more balanced team-up than he planned, the three of them end up in an inextricable tangle of loyalty, debt, trust, honor, and, eventually, helplessly, love.
This series ruined me for all other versions of vampires because her vampires are, at core, people who were given the choice to kill, and live; or not kill, and die. And the ones who stay alive a long time are the ones who keep making the choice to live, and who know what they are for doing that, and make it anyway, because their powers, psychic or physical, are balanced by such terrible weaknesses that the only way they can live is to watch for their safety every minute, and kill for it every night. But the core plot of every book is the Ashers having to team up with vampires to fight humans who - in the context of the leadup to WWI - are trying to use vampires as tools to do things more horrible than any vampire ever dreamed of or wished for or could possibly imagine - and every time the Ashers, or the reader, wants to condemn all the vampires wholesale, they are reminded that the evil the vampires do because they must, the humans around them do because they can. And yet there are the Ashers, both of them blood on their hands, fighting to stop it, to hold the fragile balance between humans and the dark. And Simon, fighting beside them, and then quietly going off alone to drink the death of an innocent where they won't have to watch and remember.
Anyway it's a very good series, and the vampires are very good, and the taking turns with h/c and rescuing from peril are epic, and the enemyship OT3 is extremely good and only about two millimeters away from canon (James and Lydia are in love, in canon; Lydia and Simon are in love in canon, and James knows, and accepts it; Simon and James have perhaps not said it in so many words - but only because it's pretty clear James can't let himself admit it, and Simon loves him too much to make him.)
- Shades of Twilight (4804 words) by Sheila_Snow
Fandom: Those Who Hunt the Night - Barbara Hambly, James Asher Vampire Series - Barbara Hambly
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: James Asher, Simon Ysidro
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe
Series: Part 1 of Shades of Twilight
AU after the first book, Simon and James get a chance to talk. - Love's Weight In Knowing (2352 words) by icarus_chained
Fandom: James Asher Vampire Series - Barbara Hambly
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: James Asher/Lydia Asher, James Asher/Lydia Asher/Simon Ysidro
Additional Tags: Coda, Love, Responsibility, Soul Bond, Murderers, Vampires, Polyamory, Psychic Violence
After the second book, Lydia and James get a chance to talk. - Unfortunate Son (22557 words) by Truth
Fandom: James Asher Vampire Series - Barbara Hambly
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: James Asher/Lydia Asher/Simon Ysidro
Additional Tags: Vampires, Influenza, Prisoner of War, Fake Character Death, Transatlantic Voyages, Lots of Random Death, It is 1918 After All, Emotional Relationships, Aunt Louise is the Worst, Lionel Grippen isn't Much Better, Kidnapping, Assisted Suicide
After the last book, they come home.
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ooh, I should read those, I like Hambly.
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And I'm gathering from the reviews and description that she's mostly done with the main series then.
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It's interesting reading a writer over enough years to actually see them in real-time improve as a writer.
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There was a long time-gap between the first Asher book and the second, and then another long gap before the third, and then lately she's been alternating them with January. But I might not have ever even realized there were more than two if it hadn't kept turning up in Yuletide, since there were only two for so long.
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