In recent months, Queen of Swords Press has reissued the 1990’s fantasy Points series, set in a queer alternate Europe city of Astreaint. Astreaint is placed in the world next door, with two suns, real magic, and a world where astrology actually does work. For more details on the world, you can always read my review of the reissue of Point of Hopes.
Point of Hearts is a new novel, written by Scott alone (Barnett sadly passed away in 2006), set in the city and featuring once again Nico and Philip as our primary characters and our points of view. The story builds and continues their social positions. Philip is working for the City Guard (which happened back in Fairs Point) and Nico is an Adjunct Point (which happened back in Point of Dreams). They’ve stably lived together for some time and cooperate on cases where the City Guard and the Points (the local watch of a particular section of the city) must cooperate and work together.
In Point of Hearts, in fact, they do. Nico and Philip are confronted by a series of strange events in the titular Hearts district of the city. An aristocrat, guilty of a crime against the queen, using a clever and arcane legal maneuver to put herself under house arrest in a comfortable townhouse, rather than facing more severe punishment. Strange carts rumbling through the streets of the district at night. A noted playwright is being accused of radical political ideas and targeting his plays to mock certain rich and powerful people. And there is a big aristocratic wedding with aristocratic and royal political implications involved. How do they all fit together? And why are Nico and Philip in the cross-hairs? This is the matter of the novel.
The novel makes the assumption, perhaps warranted, that you as a reader are not going to start the series here, and the writing bears that out. Scott makes only the lightest of references to previous books’ adventures, and assumes that you know that Philip and Nico have a stable, loving queer relationship (with plenty of indication that this world is queernorm, something the first novel, Point of Hopes only hinted at but further novels made much more clear and unmistakable). The novel doesn’t explain their hard won positions and only vaguely makes reference to their back stories (the fact that Philip is a foreigner is much less important here than it was in the first novel). Astreaint has a lot of gender equity, much more than even a lot of secondary world fantasy written today. Women are commonly and without reservation seen in positions of power and authority, including the Points.
A lot of the other worldbuilding is also taken for granted. You wouldn’t know, if you had not read previous novels, that astrology is a solid magical science here with results that work (earlier novels made it clear that what counts in this world is not one’s gender, but one’s stars in determining dispositions and potentials). Magic itself doesn’t play as dominant a role in this book as in previous novels, either. This is a novel that is much more of a twisty mundane police investigation and mystery than a secondary world fantasy story with magic. The city feels more mundane, much less magical than previous novels in the series. Also, the novel doesn’t worldbuild a lot with the political and social setup, trusting the reader that they know the layout and the language and rhythms of the city. If you don’t know your Point of Hearts from your Point of Dreams, or know what “calling a point” means, this is, in the end, not the novel for you. This novel is not the place to begin.
But with that said, what this provides for readers of the series, old and new, is a new story set in a beloved fantasy city with two beloved queer characters, who live, love and work together, facing their newest challenge. The novel does a really good job in not taking shortcuts. We’ve never seen “healing magic” in the world of Astreaint and so when Nico gets rather badly injured during a riot (and is also on the run at the same time from the authorities), there is a long period where the momentum of the story has to shift from trying to solve the mystery to the basics of getting Nico treatment and keeping him relatively healthy (and one step ahead of those pursuing them). The novel brings to life that in a pre-modern society without healing magic and magical potions of healing, getting severely injured is no laughing matter, and it takes time and effort to recover from. I do like this approach at grounding the reader and the characters in the seriousness of armed conflict. From a meta-story point of view, I do think that there is a bit of narrative drag and loss of momentum that results from this turn of events.
In the end, though, we boil ourselves back down to the basic question: who is (that I perceive to be) the intended reader and is that reader going to be satisfied with the book. Once again, this is book is for a fan of the Points series. Perhaps they read Points of Hopes in the 90’s and are delighted there is now a new novel in the series. Perhaps they recently picked up Point of Hopes and the subsequent reissues and are looking for more. Either of those readers, then, are going to be well satisfied with this newest installment, especially if they are here for the Nico-Philip relationship (readers more interested in magic, or astrology or other aspects of the series are going to be less content, although they will find this well written).
Is the Points series still relevant? Still vibrant? Still necessary? I think this book proves that the answer to all of those questions is, unimpeachably, yes....but for existing readers of the series.
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The Math
The Math
Highlights:
- The first new Points book in far too long,and very welcome for the series continuation.
- For fans of the series who can’t get enough of Nico/Philip
- A queernorm secondary world early renaissance era fantasy world with gender equity.
- Good thematic cover that fits with the previous reissues of the series
POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.
