Point of Dreams
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Description
The city of Astreiant has gone crazy with enthusiasm for a new play, The Drowned Island, a lurid farrago of melodrama and innuendo. Pointsman Nicolas Rathe is not amused, however, at a real dead body on stage and must investigate. A string of murders follow, perhaps related to the politically important masque that is to play on that same stage. Rathe must once again recruit the help of his soldier lover, Philip Eslingen, whose knowledge of actors and the stage, and of the depths of human perversity and violence, blends well with Rathe's own hard-won experience with human greed and magical mayhem.
Their task is complicated by the season, for it is the time of year when the spirits of the dead haunt the city and influence everyone, and also by the change in their relationship when the loss of Philip's job forces him to move in with Nicolas. Mystery, political intrigue, floral magic, astrology, and romance--both theatrical and personal-- combine to make this a compelling read.
In the alternate Renaissance world of
Point of Dreams, the dead return with the ghost-tide to haunt the living, and when a ghost fails to appear, it may mean the person was murdered. Though a dead judge's ghost is missing, the regents of the city of Astreiant forbid Pointsman Nicolas Rathe to investigate. And that's not the detective's only problem. His suddenly homeless partner is moving in with him. The city is in a frenzy over a popular play, "The Drowned Island," and the dangerous spell book it has popularized. His assigned case, an actor's murder, appears unsolvable--the actor drowned in a theater in which there is no water. And another body has just been found in the theater.
Point of Dreams is an accomplished and entertaining fantasy mystery, written with the same rigor as the best nonmagical mysteries. Since Point of Dreams is the sequel to The Armor of Light and Point of Hopes, its early pages may be tough going for some readers unfamiliar with the previous novels, but all readers will find themselves captivated by the novel and unwilling to put it down before they reach the end.
Melissa Scott received the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer and has twice won the Lambda Literary Award for best science fiction novel. --Cynthia Ward
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