QSFers Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett have a new MM fantasy/mystery book out, a novel of Astreiant: Point of Dreams.
The play’s the thing to catch the attention of Astreiant…especially when it includes murder, mystery and magic.
It’s ghost-tide in the city and the dead walk the streets, haunting those who meant something to them in life. The theaters of Point of Dreams have a hit season on their hands and Adjunct Point Nicolas Rathe and former mercenary Philip Eslingen have a murder on theirs. Not to mention a heady mix of intrigue, politics and magic, where even the flowers are more than they seem. Added to all of that, the crimelord that Philip worked for has dismissed him from his service and he’s had to move in with Nico. Can Nico and Philip stop the killer before they strike again? And will their relationship survive it if they do?
Lambda Literary Award Winner for Speculative Fiction.
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Excerpt
PHILIP ESLINGEN SETTLED himself more comfortably on the padded stool, watching as the woman seated opposite made the final adjustments to her orrery. It was a standing orrery, tiny bronze planets moving on bronze orbits against a silver-washed zodiac, and in spite of himself he shivered at the memory of another similar machine. But that one had been gold, the peculiarly vivid gold of aurichalcum, not solid, reputable bronze, and in any case, it was long gone, consumed by the power it had contained. This was just another astrologer’s tool, though no one would be foolish enough to call Sibilla Meening just another astrologer. She had a name in Point of Dreams, was revered by those actors rich enough to consult her, and feared by the ones who were poor enough to believe that she advised sharers on casting. Caiazzo’s household knew of her, too, and spoke well of her, even Denizard, which was what had finally induced him to part with five seillings—half a week’s wages—when he was about to lose his place and should be saving every demming. At second glance, he was less sure he’d been wise—the consulting room was a little too lavish, too much like a stage set of an astrologer’s room, lined with books and leather cylinders that could only hold scrolls, preferably rotting and mysterious, and Meening herself was portentous in the most formal of university robes, the enormous sleeves held back with gold pins in the shape of a scallop shell, a pearl poised carefully in each fan. Not the symbol Eslingen would have expected—the Starsmith was the usual patron of astrologers, not Oriane—but probably reassuring for the players and musicians and occasional slumming nobles who were her patrons.
“So, Lieutenant Eslingen,” Meening said, and Eslingen jerked himself back to the present.
“Magist.” He had no idea if she was actually a magist as well as an astrologer, but from the look of the room, it would do him no harm to assume the higher rank.
Meening smiled, and shook her head. “I’m only an astrologer, Lieutenant.”
“‘Only’?” Eslingen repeated. “I’ve never heard that word applied to you, madame.”
Meening blinked once, and then, unexpectedly, grinned. “Gavi warned me about you.”
Eslingen blinked in his turn, and allowed himself a rueful smile. “Of course you know Gavi.”
“And, forgive me,” Meening said, “but there’s not an astrologer in the city who doesn’t remember the names of the men who rescued the children not six months past. There’s no need to flatter me like some stumbling bit player who wants a lower fee.”
“My apologies.”
Meening nodded. “Now, are you familiar with astrological terms?”
“I read the broadsheets,” Eslingen said. Beneath the paint and the elaborate gown, he saw, too late, that she was sharply amused. “I’ve even read some of yours.”
Deliberately, he added nothing more, and Meening dipped her head, acknowledging the hit. “Then you’re aware of the current circumstances.”
“It’s ghost-tide,” Eslingen said, and suppressed a shudder that he was sure she recognized. No soldier liked to think of his ghosts coming back to haunt him, no matter how benign.
“That certainly. The sun is in the Mother, and the moon is in opposition. That is the ghost-tide.” She paused. “Anything more?”
Eslingen spread his hands. “Madame, I’ve come to you for guidance.”
Author Bio
Melissa Scott is from Little Rock, Arkansas, and studied history at Harvard College and Brandeis University, where she earned her PhD in the Comparative History program. She is the author of more than thirty original science fiction and fantasy novels, most with queer themes and characters, as well as authorized tie-ins for Star Trek: DS9, Star Trek: Voyager, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and Star Wars Rebels. She won Lambda Literary Awards for Trouble and Her Friends, Shadow Man, Point of Dreams (written with her late partner, Lisa A. Barnett), and Death By Silver, with Amy Griswold. She also won Spectrum Awards for Shadow Man, Fairs’ Point, Death By Silver, and for the short story “The Rocky Side of the Sky” (Periphery, Lethe Press) as well as the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. She was also shortlisted for the Otherwise (Tiptree) Award. Her latest short story, “Sirens,” appeared in the collection Retellings of the Inland Seas, and her text-based game for Choice of Games, A Player’s Heart, came out in 2020. Her most recent solo novels, The Master of Samar and Fallen, were published in 2023.
| Author Website | https://www.melissascottwrites.com/ |
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Lisa A. Barnett was born and raised in Dorchester, Massachusetts, attended Girls’ Latin School, and received her BA from the University of Massachusetts/Boston. She began working in theatre publishing while she was still in college, beginning at Baker’s Plays in Boston, and then moving to Heinemann, where she developed her own line of theatre books. In that role, she edited plays, monologue collections, and books of practical theatre, as well as a second line of books on theatre in education, which included a string of award-winning titles. As a writer, she worked primarily in collaboration with her partner, Melissa Scott, and together they produced three novels: The Armor of Light, set in an alternate Elizabethan England, Point of Hopes, and Point of Dreams, the last a Lambda Literary Award Winner. They also produced a short story, “The Carmen Miranda Gambit,” which was published in the 1990 collection Carmen Miranda’s Ghost is Haunting Space Station Three. Outside of the collaboration, she had a pair of monologues published in the collection Monologues from the Road, and subsequently saw them produced as part of an evening of “theatre from the road.” She was exceedingly fond of both dogs and horses, and was an active member of the Piscataqua Obedience Club as well as being heavily involved in several equine rescue organizations. She was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer in 2003, and died of a metastatic brain tumor in 2006.