Melissa Scott & Lisa A. Barnett
This is, apparently, the third book in the series; of more surprise to me was the fact that I’ve apparently read the first, though I have no memory of doing so. I suspect it didn’t clear my tolerance for the fiction rule of thumb. This time, at least, I was interested enough to stick through the vocabulary, and wound up quite enjoying the book.
To sum up the general vibe of the book: queer fantasy police procedural. It’s very much a different world — the setting is vaguely Renaissance-flavored, but between the very present magic system, the different evolutionary path that language took, and the two suns, it’s pretty clearly not doing the alternate-history thing.
The murder mystery part was a bit slow to get started, but took off pretty well after that. There was a scene early on that read at the time as a fairly clearly Chekhov’s Gun, which paid off quite well, but in retrospect was also some excellent foreshadowing; I enjoy when a book pulls off something like that.
I also enjoyed… something I’m going to tuck into a footnote, as it contains spoilers.1
Overall, a fun read; check it out.2
- Seriously, spoilers about the murder weapon; skip this footnote if you want to go into the book without that foreknowledge.
The use of magical flower arrangements as the murder weapon started off as an interesting concept, but became darkly comedic in light of this being a Magic Is A Known Thing fantasy-world. The general fact of them being able to go over to the university to consult with the Department of Magical Flowers makes it feel plausible within this world. The way that conversation went, though, was the funny part. Arriving at the (very real) Department of Magical Flowers to ask about magical flower arrangements. “No, there’s no such thing as magical flower arrangements. No, there’s simply no way that putting multiple magical flowers together could cause any sort of interaction or compound effect.” “Fine, fine, can you at least provide some input on the first murder? The one where it was a single magical flower?” “fake news” ↩ - This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩