Book Review: Point of Hearts by Melissa Scott

Continuing the story of Philip and Nico, and their secondary world next door fantasy city of Astreaint.

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

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

Reference: Scott, Melissa, Point of Hearts [Queen of Swords Press, 2025].

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Book Review: Point of Hopes by Lisa A. Barnett and Melissa Scott

The first in a series of city state fantasy novels set in a fascinating and diverse world, re-released after two decades.

Back in 2018, I coined the phrase “City-State Fantasy” in a review at Reactor in discussing Sam Hawke’s City of Lies. It’s a type of fantasy of medium states, set exclusively or almost exclusively in and around a city-state, which itself is a common location in fantasy. However, when the characters and the plot of a secondary world fantasy novel are inextricable from their city setting, and that city is itself a character, then you have city-state fantasy.

Point of Hopes, the first in a series of novels in the 1990’s by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett, fits well in that tradition. In particular it follows a line that goes from the city of Tremontaine (as written by Ellen Kushner in her Riverside novels and stories, through Point of Hopes, and on to works like Silasta, the aforementioned City of Lies, or the many Maradaine novels of Marshall Ryan Maresca, or the Kithamar novels of Daniel Abraham). I had read Point of Hopes (but not its sequels) in the mid 1990s, and so this first volume was a re-read for me.

Point of Hopes is set in a world where the city of Astreaint is not an individual political entity, it is the capital of a kingdom. However. all of the action takes place within its borders (aside from one culminating excursion). Astreaint’s technology is in our terms in mid to late 16th century in terms of firearms--flintlock firearms are just starting to replace wheellock firearms. Other technology we see seems to be in keeping with the period except for one thing that is definitely ahead of the curve, and that is clocks.

Astreaint, you see, and the entire world from what we can tell, is obsessed with keeping time, and the precise knowing of the hour is important. Why? Well, because in this world, magic most definitely exists, and more importantly, astrology here is both a magic and a science, and the stars most definitely affect one’s proclivities and strengths. It is made clear that the stars and one’s astrology are not *destiny* but they are a strong factor that cannot and should not be discounted in considering things like one’s occupation or career. So, knowing when you were born, as accurately as possible, is something that is rather important to the people in the world of Astreaint.

Oh, and there is one interesting bit, not used as much as it might be in this novel. And that is the world of Astreaint has two suns. There is a regular sun and a “winter sun” and it is clear that the orbital dynamics of the solar system are rather interesting (assuming this is a Copernican model of the universe, not at all certain of that!). I found myself imagining the lighting challenges of photography and graphic arts in capturing images in this world.

There are other forms of magic which are studied and practiced in Astreaint, too, particularly necromancy. The form of necromancy we get in the Point of Hopes universe is speaking with the spirits of the dead, that is to say, ghosts. The necromancer we meet in the story, a secondary character, becomes important less because of his skill in this area, and more in his more general skill as a sorcerer in general.

Our two main characters, our point of view characters who are on a slow burn romance (that will not bear fruit until later books) are an interesting mismatched pair. Nicolas Rathe is our street smart, from the streets pointsman (police man) who knows all the criminals and knows his beat rather well. He walks the mean streets of Astreaint, and, in contrast to many of his counterparts and fellow members on the force, is honest and doesn’t take bribes. On the other hand, he does have a friendship with a Wilson Fisk like character, Caiazzo. Caiazzo definitely is a crime lord but also has a lot of legitimate businesses.

Philip Eslingen is a soldier who has just finished a stint in a mercenary company for a rival nation, looking to bide his time and find some side work in Astreaint until, possibly, campaigning season starts again and he can pick up the trade of war once more. He’s good at fighting and relatively honest, and a pretty solid shot with his guns. He is a foreigner, however, and is used to show the prejudice the residents of Astreaint can have against Leaguers like him (the two nations fought a war recently, and even if there is trade between them).

These two meet as the city propels itself toward its annual fair, a celebration that this year is tainted and under threat, and forces Rathe and Eslingen into an uneasy but slow burning partnership and friendship.

The actual main plot, once we get the city and its nature and the nature of this world under its feet, is a mystery: many children are disappearing, more than be accounted for in the usual set of young people running away from their guild positions, or running to join mercenary companies, or trading caravans, or the like. How and why the children are disappearing does in fact, as you might expect, ties in directly to the astrology of the setting, but who and what and why I will leave for you to discover.

I will point out that the book is a slow burn in far more than just the romance. The plotting of the book is distinctly sedate if not slow. This gives us a lot of time to soak in and get to know Eslingen and Rathe and the characters around them rather well, as well as the world that they inhabit, before we get the plot in full motion. This may be a slight weakness to readers with modern sensibilities who want more crackle and pop and forward momentum from the get go. We get to meet a lot of characters, set up a lot of situations and take time in getting things together. The sheer legwork a pointsman has to do in finding that there IS a problem and that it is worse than anyone suspects does consume a fair amount of the book. It does give us through Rathe an opportunity to meet a variety of characters and see a variety of areas of the city, not just in his district (point), the titular Point of Hopes. It goes to, perhaps to a fault, to my thesis about city state fantasy making the city a character in and of itself. Astreaint definitely is definitely described in detail as the novel progresses. But it may take too long for modern readers.

Aside from that, however, I think the book has aged rather well. I did recall the incident that is depicted on the old cover of the book quite well (and rather disappointed, however, to learn that they were distinctly far more minor characters in the overall scheme of things than I had realized.). The casual accepted queerness of the novel’s setting is something I had not recalled in the earlier reading, but here, it is clear that Astreaint is close to what we would call queernorm, with one of the main characters possibly bisexual. No one makes any hay or deal out of it. Also, the role and positions of women in the world of Astreaint are strong and equal to men. The monarch is a queen, we come across many important members of the community as being women, including members and leaders of the Points themselves.

In fact, Point of Hopes makes it clear you can take an early Renaissance setting, not quite a analog of our own world, and improve on it by making it queer friendly, and balanced in terms of the roles and social power and position of women and men in society. This is a lesson that Point of Hopes got right three decades ago. And gets it right today, now that it is widely available again.

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Highlights:

• Strong sense of place and location
• Queer and diverse world
• A successful relaunch of a fantasy classic 

Reference: Barnett, Lisa and Scott, Melissa, Point of Hopes, [Queen of Swords Press re-release, 2024]

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Review: Master of Samar by Melissa Scott

Melissa Scott’s Master of Samar brings us a rich story of a secondary world Venice.

You can’t go home again. Or maybe you can, but you have changed, your home has changed, and your hometown has changed. This is what Gil Irichels feels as, as the last person in the once great House Samar of the city of Bejanth, he is summoned back to his ancestral home. But with a lover that many will not accept, and a profession others would also disdain, Irichels soons finds that his homecoming is even more fraught. Especially when a threat to his House, the titular Samar, turns out to be a threat to the city of canals itself.

This is the matter of Melissa Scott’s Master of Samar.

First and foremost, as you might expect from a Scott novel, are the characters. Our main character Irichels is an outsider to the city he comes back to, on two grounds. First, he is a cursebreaker, a magical profession that has a mixed reputation in Bejanth for reasons that Scott slowly dribbles out through the book. And second, he is queer. His relationship with his beloved, his heart, Envar, is one that in Scott’s world is frowned upon and the pair feel real and tangible prejudice for it. Joining Irichels and Envar are a variety of secondary characters, ranging from Arak, a bodyguard bound to Irichels and fiercely loyal, to Innes Manimere, the formidable head of her House, a House with, it turns out, a history with Irichels’ own.

The other strong element to this novel is the worldbuilding. This takes the form of two elements that, as the plot emerges and unfolds. First up is the city and setting itself. Samar is pretty explicitly and directly modeled on Renaissance Venice. This is a city where canals are more prevalent than streets. A city where every house has a “water door” exit to the canal system, useful for escaping when the authorities have come knocking, or just receiving deliveries of sundries. A city that is a precarious oligarchy of fighting and feuding noble families. A city that is an entrepot, one of the cities that “if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere”. As of the time of the writing of this review, I have still never been to La Serenissima in person as yet but my appreciation for the city and its variants in print and film, painting and photography have given me a foundation for what to expect and how Venice should feel.

Bejanth evokes that in spades. We do hit the beats you’d expect. Canals including fights and chases in the canals. Mucking around with secret doors. Political intrigue among the great houses for power and authority. Intimate small scenes in Bejanth Houses, dread secrets below the water line, and of course the halls of aristocratic power. A focus on art and beauty and wealth and it’s display, from having it to faking it until you make it, and the need to keep up appearances even in a decaying House.

It’s not a full on expy of Venice, though. There are elements of the city that aren’t really represented here. We never get a good sense of how Venice interacts with the rest of the mainland or its overseas possessions, colonies, vassals, friends, and enemies. There is stuff here about piracy but Bejanth never feels like the entrepot that historical Venices and many fictional Venices jazz on. Sure, Venice is the city on the Lagoon, a city of intrigue and adventure, but it is a city that is always connected to the rest of its world. It can’t help but be very interested in what is happening elsewhere. Venice is on islands, but Venice is no island. Bejanth, by comparison, diverges from the Venice model by being far more self contained and self interested, which I think is a missed opportunity with these missing elements.

The other half of the worldbuilding on display here, that makes up for the city that is missing from the aforementioned “missing elements” is the magic system. The magic of this verse is at the bottom a legal one, based on contracts with extradimensional entities for power, demons in name and indeed. You might enter into such a contract for power, or use such a contract in order to fight, say, a curse that has been laid upon you or other calamity. Just like legal contracts in the real world, the legal ramifications and ramshackle agreements can get rather dicey and messy.

Add into this people who can cut a swath through some of this, the cursebreakers and you can already see and have your wheels turning, I bet, how plot can arise from a city of trade and commerce on the sea, with demons and curses, and a cursebreaker coming back to his ancestral home. Scott makes good use of all of this in her plotting and backstory for Irichels, and Irichels’ backstory and the history of his House tie into Bejanth and the plot in a quite polished fashion. Scott is an excellent craftswoman at setting the stakes, the characters, making us care and bringing us through the plot in a page turning fashion.

Going back to the beginning of this review and Irichels and his beloved Envar, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of queernorm worlds. Queernorm worlds are secondary worlds (or future worlds from ours) where queerness is a completely and utterly accepted fact. There seem to be gradations to even that in books I’ve read. There are books where non heterosexual people are just accepted as who they are and who they love (or in the case of aro/ace characters, who they don’t). There are also books where it seems that everyone is queer and attraction isn’t a function of gender at all and you find characters attracted to both sexes.

As I read Master of Samar, one of the questions I kept asking myself was: could this have been a queernorm world? Would the novel have been better or worse if the author had gone in that direction. The problem of Irichels’ posterity is a real one, since if the last scion of House Samar is eliminated, the House falls, and the consequences (which as seen above and as the plot emerges is much more than just a personal problem). The previously mentioned prejudice that Irichels and Envar get for their relationship goes hand in hand with the tenderness found in their relationship and there is a real “us against the world” approach to their relationship. And it's clear that Irichels will do his duty even if his heart is elsewhere. A last heir of a House in possession of a decaying fortune must indeed be in want of a wife.

And there is something to be said for not only writing the worlds we want to see, but writing a world as it is to hold up a mirror to it. By not making the Samarverse queernorm, it gives Scott a chance to write a world that she can use to reflect and refract our own world, where queer rights, representation and acceptance are under threat and siege.

So, I am not entirely sure if the world of Bejanth could be queernorm or not. But I do note for myself as reader, reviewer and critic, ten years ago, I’d have considered this issue in fantasy worlds at all and would have accepted Bejanth as is. Maybe you can’t go home again after all, because in the end, you change.

Melissa Scott’s The Master of Samar, in the end, is an immersive and character driven city state fantasy whose strong use of contract magic, old secrets and the lies we tell each other and ourselves shapes the past, present and future of the characters and the city-state that they are bound to. It is an immersive and enthralling read.

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The Math

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Reference: Scott, Melissa, Master of Samar, [Candlemark and Gleam 2023]

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin

Review: Death by Silver by Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold

Death by Silver is a classic murder mystery that brings gay romance and a fascinating magic system to Edwardian England.

Cover by Matthew Bright

In 2013, Amy Griswold and Melissa Scott self-published Death by Silver, going on to win a Lambda Award the following year. Now in time for the tenth anniversary, the book is being republished by Queen of Swords Press.

In this historical fantasy, magic can be learned by anyone with the right education. Ned Mathey is a metaphysician who trained at Oxford and who is finding money a bit tight after establishing his business as a practitioner. When he is approached by the father of his childhood bully to check the family's silver for a curse, he is reluctant to take the job. However, the money is decent and it is a straightforward job... up until his client turns up dead days later. To help clear his name, he seeks help from Julian Lynes, boyhood friend and lover, now a private detective.

Death by Silver deftly weaves fantasy, romance and mystery together into a seamless whole. The natural comparisons here are with KJ Charles's series A Charm of Magpies and with Jordan Hawk's Whybourne and Griffin. However, it is worth noting that the romance is different in a few key elements. Death by Silver opens with an existing relationship between the protagonists. Having met at school and become lovers, Ned and Julian drifted apart when they went to university, though never entirely lost touch. Having recently reconnected, their relationship is best characterised as friends with benefits. Each wants something more, but are uncertain of the other and unwilling to make the first move. This relies on a reluctance to communicate which may annoy some readers, even if the reasons for this reluctance are somewhat understandable on both sides.

Another difference from the comp titles is the treatment of sex. While it unequivocally takes place, the action fades to black rather than features explicitly on the page, which may suit readers of historical fantasy and mystery rather more than dedicated readers of romance and erotica.

However, even though the story features no explicit sex, it is by no means without landmines. I would give content warnings for bullying, as well as physical and sexual abuse. Most of this occurs in flashback scenes detailing Ned and Julian's time at boarding school together.

The main characters are a study in contrasts, tending to fall into the sunshine/storm-cloud trope but with a little more nuance than usual. Ned is almost universally beloved, a sportsman who also has a talent for magic. While he may not be exactly cheery all the time, he nevertheless has a relatively sanguine outlook on life.

Julian, on the other hand, tends to be the sharper of the two. He has an ongoing war with his landlady and a tendency to use magic in the place of drugs, to energise or calm himself down. He has more of an affinity for literature and art, though he detests the opera, and is from a lower class background than Ned.

Unsurprisingly for a mystery, there is a strong theme of justice throughout the book. This is one of the more subtle areas of difference between the main characters. Julian, of course, is the more extreme of the two. Even as a boy, he had a well developed sense of injustice and is inclined to speak out, paired with a willingness to take matters into his own hands where society turns a blind eye. Ned tended to go along with the conventionally accepted, even if it isn't really fair. He tempered Julian's more extreme impulses. As they grow and mature, these attitudes shift closer together.

As is often the case in m/m romance, the female characters are rather less detailed than their male counterparts and tended to serve as plot functions. However, I recognise that it is hard to flesh out every character and still have a plausibly long suspect list for a murder mystery. One of the best realised female characters was Ned's secretary, Miss Frost, who was a charming during her somewhat rare appearances. Keen to study magic, she is hampered by society's attitudes regarding what is appropriate for women. Nevertheless, she is able to offer some important insights that further the investigation.

Which brings me to the magic system. This was for me one of the most fascinating elements of the book. Death by Silver is the first in the Lynes and Mathey series, a punny name that, in addition to referring to the title characters, is also an allusion to the magic system. Magic or planetary squares form the basis for this system, and are an element that has been part of occult practice for hundreds of years. Much like sudoku, planetary squares are a grid of numbers where each line and column adds up to the same number—generally one significant to the planet associated with the particular grid. This is then paired with alphabets so that sigils can be generated by tracing a path between the numbers that correspond to the letters of any given word. Hence lines and math.

The story at times lacks a bit of clarity around how a given spell is cast, perhaps relying on knowledge of the historical process to fill in the gaps or simply allowing space for readers to use their imaginations. However, where it excels is in the worldbuilding tied to the magic. Planetary squares lend themselves well to the kind of institutionalised learning that's featured in Death by Silver; they become just another thing to be learned alongside multiplication tables and Latin vocabulary. This is reinforced by adding a kind of grammar system to the construction of spells—get the word order wrong and you could have quite the mess on your hands.

There's also an interesting intersection with the time period. While I'm a little hazy on the exact year, the technology and fashion suggest the Edwardian Era. Certainly, we're post Industrial Revolution, with its ability to mass produce items. This includes magic kits; trace the sigils as they are laid out for you and you too can trap a burglar or banish your acne. Or, more likely, you could lose your money and end up needing to call in a trained metaphysician to clean up the result. Such details show the consideration that has been given to the worldbuilding and provide a wonderful richness to the setting.

The plot is a classic mystery format. I found the ultimate villain perhaps a touch predictable, but not overly so.

All in all, I found it a delight to read and can easily see how it earned a Lammy. The sequel is due to be released in December and I am already looking forward to it.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 for excellent magic world building, +1 for deft balancing of fantasy, romance and mystery elements

Penalties: -1 for flat female characters, -1 for the lack of communication between characters

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

POSTED BY: Elizabeth Fitzgerald, a writer, binge reader, tabletop gamer & tea addict. @elizabeth_fitz@ wandering.shop

References

Death by Silver. Griswold, Amy, and Scott, Melissa (Queen of Swords Press, 2023)

The Magpie Lord. Charles, K.J. (KJC Books, 2013)

Widdershins. Hawk, Jordan L. (Widdershins Press LLC, 2012)

Microreview [book]: Water Horse by Melissa Scott

A fully immersive epic fantasy with deep notes of character, worldbuilding and magic making for a wonderful and engaging story.

In a world of myth and magic, of prophecy, religious war, and twisty politics, Esclin Aubrinos, Arros of the Hundred Hills has a problem. The Riders, followers of a monotheism, The Burning One, very different than the diverse traditions predominant in the hills, riverlands and forest, have come in numbers across the narrow sea. This time, instead of raiding, they are in great numbers and seem set to not just pillage, but to stay and conquer. With such a diverse group of independently minded communities, keeping his friends and allies together to face the Riders is a challenge--and it may not even be enough to stand against their power.

This is the matter of Melissa Scott’s epic fantasy, Water Horse.

Water Horse is epic, mythic, and expansive fantasy in a mold that explicitly invokes for me, things like the First and Second Age of Tolkien, Jacqueline Carey’s The Sundering, or Kate Elliott’s Crown of Stars series. This is a novel that stands in the space where there are deep and abiding personal relationships, realpolitik, and strongly passionate and drawn characters. It stands apart from the traditions of low magic fantasy like in Westeros and instead uses deeply rooted magics and powers and a world full of magic, heroism, clashes of arms, deep connections and abiding senses of place to provide a tapestry for the story.

So what is it all about? We are presented with the challenge of the Riders, who have upped their game and decided the Hundred Hills and the nearby lands are not just for raiding, but would make fine lands for conquest. This provides a next-level challenge to the wily Esclin and his allies, who are used to the normal back and forth of Rider problems, its so long standing and the cultural ties are bleeding over so much that believers in the Burning Eye are among his subjects at this point. 

The whole Burning Eye and the monotheism of the Riders is just one element, one strand of magic in this novel. The novel has deep and intensive worldbuilding on so many levels, from language, to names, to customs, and of course magic. There is the Riders, but there is also the magic of the Mistress of Fire, and of the Wood, and other magical abilities which come to the fore. This is a complex and mythically rich magical world. The very title of the book, Water Horse, refers to a kelpie like creature, a symbol of Esclin's House, and the titular being does become important to the narrative on a number of levels. Scott has managed the trick of setting a great and rich stage of people and their customs and doings that follows the iceberg rule of fantasy and leverages it.

But it is relationships and people at the center of why this conflict is coming and what can and should be done, on both sides. This is not a novel of impartial, unseen forces driving communities and nations to conflict, it is people, personalities and their deeds The Riders are not invading casually, they have been given sign and portent to their new commander, their Lord Paramount, and defying a God’s sign and will is never a good idea. Too, Esclin, in trying to manage the people in his coalition has to be mindful of his relationship with them, and their beliefs, and even a prophecy. The conflict is never pieces on a Risk board in Scott’s novel, what people do and how they do it always feeds back to the characters and their relationships.

As mentioned above, relationships, both platonic and sexual, really drive the narrative. This is a novel where queer relationships are the norm, and the relationship between Esclin, the arros, and the smith Kelleiden is one of the center personal stories of the novel. w. Besides the relationship above, the bonds of relationships are an engine that is equal to plot considerations for making the story go. It is relationships, be it social and personal ones, or political ones, that prove to be levers for character actions, reactions and plot. It’s a nicely complicating factor for the lines of the overall plot and conflict as well. Sure, we are presented with the locals of the Hundred Hills and the Westwood, and the realms of the Riverholme defending against the adherents of the Burning One, the Riders. Sure, it seems like in the end it's a simple binary, Esclin versus the Lord Paramount, local faiths and beliefs versus the invaders. A casual reading might give that impression, but reading further and deeper brings things further.

Scott knows well to leaven the binary and complicate it. There are already adherents of the Burning One within the realms overseen by the Arros, and coming to terms with their worship and their power starts with the personal rather than the global, and those relationships make the “Burning One adherents bad, locals good” binary a non-factor. This is not to say that the characters themselves on both sides don’t feel this pull and tension. In the course of events, Viven Harper is captured by the Lord Paramount’s forces, and we not only learn about the limits of the power of a Harper, but also the binding of their oaths, to their harps and other entities, but how she has to manage her beliefs while in the midst of the army of adherents of the Burning One, who have their own ideas on what the Harper should and should not be able to do, and where her beliefs should be turned.

In terms of that, there is a wonderful set piece where the captured Harper, Viven, is made part of a solstice ritual that the Burning One adherents are performing. The Lord Paramount seeks to mold the Harper and use her power as part of the ritual; she naturally is resistant to lend any of her power in this cause, and yet,as a prisoner, is under severe threat if she is not seen contributing to the cause (something that later extends to the Rider’s army campaigns). But there is beauty and poetry and power that we the reader, and Viven herself sees within the solstice rite that her mortal enemies also have not only power, but beauty and culture as well.  

This is not to say though that the Riders and the Burning Ones are not clearly the antagonists here. We don’t get any real sympathetic point of views from them, although there are sympathetic characters that interact with our heroes. And that is something I want to emphasize here about the novel. While we get to see the Burning One’s Riders for what they are in their complexity, they clearly are the aggressive invaders, the antagonists to Esclin and his allies resisting their attempt at invasion and hegemony. This is decidedly not a grimdark novel (not that I can imagine well what a Melissa Scott Grimdark novel would be). This is a novel of heroes, hard choices, ugly choices, but also heroism, people stepping up (and characters of all ages, too, from children to the eldertly) and wanting to stand up against a threat to themselves, their loved ones, their communities. This is a world not only of the aforementioned magic, and deep character, and rich worldbuilding, but it is also a world where people can be big damn heroes, people of all stripes. That is a positivist message for this day and age. While Scott puts her characters through hell (and that sword of damocles of a prophecy that Esclin suffers under and Viven’s captivity being just two examples), the novel provides a framework and exemplar of a story where heroism, valor, strength of character and rising to the occasion are not trampled and mocked, but can save a city, a people, a land. 

Melissa’s Scott’s Water Horse is a rich and deep epic fantasy full of the deep worldbuilding, immersive writing, intriguing magic, and strong characters that I come to expect and crave in her writing. Just as importantly, the novel provides a framework and exemplar of a story where heroism, valor, strength of character and rising to the occasion are not trampled and mocked and denigrated as in some grimly dark regions of the Grand Duchy of Fantasy. Instead, in The Water Horse, they are virtues that can save a person, a city, a people, and a land. That's a message, and thus a book stunningly well suited to our times.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10

Bonuses : +1 for deep and memorable characters in an inclusive, queer friendly, engaging world

+1 for a positivist heroic viewpoint for its fantasy

Penalties: -1 A couple of metaplot beats don’t quite resolve entirely satisfactory.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10  Very high quality/standout in its category

 POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Reference: Scott, Melissa. Water Horse  [Candlemark and Gleam, 2021]

Charles' Summer Reading List 2016

Okay people, time for some hard truths. I have been plops at reading anything but short fiction this year. Seriously, it's been a little tough to find the time. But I am fresh-ish from my return from WisCon and am SO ENERGIZED to get to reading some of these books. Seriously. And yes, I know, there are two books of short stories on this list but just because I read short fiction almost constantly doesn't mean I don't want to read more of it. 

1. Infomocracy by Malka Older [Tor, 2016]

If I had to pick up this novel on the strength of the author's Tor dot com story, "Tear Tracks," that would be enough of an incentive to read. But the description of the book, that of a political techno-SF about the power and corruption of information, looks compelling as hell. Especially with the current US politics at play, this novel looks a timely and excellent read. So here's hoping!

2. The Root by Na'amen Gobert Tilahun [Night Shade Books, 2016]

I first heard Na'amen Gobert Tilahun speak at the 2015 WisCon and the energy and passion and wit he brought to every panel he was on was just amazing. So when I saw that he had a novel coming out I jumped on that. Hard. Mixing magic, government conspiracies, and celebrity, the story looks fast and fun and exactly the sort of thing I want to see more of.

3. Minions of the Moon by Richard Bowes [Lethe Press, 2013]

I have been charmed by Richard Bowes' short fiction since I first stumbled across it and to find a whole connected collection is amazing. From what I've noticed the author tends to write in bundles of shared-universe story series (mosaic novels?), and it's a form that fascinates me. It certainly helps that it's put out by Lethe, a publisher dedicated to putting out a lot of amazing content. Really this just seems a match made in heaven for me as a reader.

4. Trouble and Her Friends by Melissa Scott [Tor, 1994]

So this book keeps getting mentioned and apparently I must read it. So I will. It might be obvious from this list that my background in reading is mainly fantasy and I'm trying to branch more into science fiction. Of the strictly speculative fiction, this one is also the oldest on the list. I want to read more SFF from the 70s as well, but in some ways I'm bouncing all over at the moment, trying to find my own tradition, my own canon. So I'm interested to see how this book informs my past and future reading.

5. The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar [Small Beer Press, 2016]

I read A Stranger In Olondria earlier this year and all I can say is yes. Yes of course I want to read this, especially on the heels of seeing and meeting the author at WisCon (!!!). The first book was all about place, travel, and culture, and if the jacket is anything to go by this second book is about history. I'm very excited to see what the author does with that and how the setting will continue to be revealed and complicated.

6. The Time and the Place and other stories by Naguib Mahfouz [Anchor Books, 1992]

This is the only not-really-speculative book on the list and I'm hoping it still has some speculative elements. This was something of a blind pull at the bookstore and it looked interesting and not huge (which can sometimes be important). Really I want to read more books from outside the USA and this one seemed like a likely candidate. Short fiction and especially short fiction in translation can be amazing and I'm quite excited for this one.



[p.s. I'm still participating in the K. Tempest Bradford reading challenge this year (with style, I might add) and all of these books handily qualify for that, so yeah, another reason to check them out.]  

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POSTED BY: Charles, avid reader, reviewer, and sometimes writer of speculative fiction. Contributor to Nerds of a Feather since 2014.