Point of Dreams

Point of Dreams, Melissa Scott and Lisa Barnett, Tor Books, 2001

Here is another in a series of novels set in the late Renaissance city-state of Astreiant, a place where astrologers and necromancers are the authority and where magic works.

The city has gone nuts with enthusiasm over a lurid play full of melodrama called The Drowned Island. A soldier named Philip Eslingen gets drafted as "swordfight coordinator" over a bunch of nobles in the play not accustomed to being told what to do. Things get really interesting when a real dead body is found on stage. Adjunct Point Nicholas Rathe, the local law enforcer and a friend of Eslingen, is called in to investigate. According to the necromancer, the deceased, another local noble, died of drowning at the spot where his body was found, without any water at all nearby. Several more deaths involved with the play, or its participants, make things worse. Rathe asks Eslingen to keep an eye on the nobles and otherwise nose around to see what he can find.

Rathe has to also investigate the appearance in the city of copies of a book called the Alphabet. It is reputed to tell how to arrange flowers in certain configurations to create a sort of magic force field, affecting anyone within range. All copies of the book have to be investigated, for there is no way to know if a certain copy actually works. Rathe begins to think that maybe one or more of the murders, especially the "drowning" victim, may have been aided by the proper configuration of flowers.

Just to make things a little more tense for everyone, is the fact that for a couple of days each month, ghosts of the dead become visible. They don't talk, but they certainly influence everyone.

This is not a very easy or quick read, but, by the end, the reader will find that it is a very intelligent and well done read. The authors do a fine job throughout, with the characters, the society building and the mystery. It is a very satisfying piece of writing.