Tag: Melissa Scott

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Review

“Fair’s Point”

Melissa Scott

Decided to go right from Point of Dreams to the next in the series, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It hit the same kind of fun magical-setting mystery plotline as the previous, but spent more time developing the relationship between the main characters in a way that I enjoyed. It also helps that we got to see the incompetent fool from the last book be more incompetent and make more of a fool of himself; there’s a certain joy to schadenfreude.

One thing I’ve enjoyed in these books that I didn’t mention last time: there’s a subtle touch to the setting, whereby the default person is assumed to be female. Paraphrasing, as I didn’t copy down the exact quote, but there’s a scene where they’re discussing who’s been pulling off the mysterious heists, and the line is “‘. . . the woman who’s doing this.’ He paused. ‘Or man, I suppose.’”

And if you don’t think that’s a nice distinction to make, consider that I typed it backwards, despite very actively knowing what the point of it was; defaults matter.

A fun read; probably start earlier in the series, but if you’ve been following along, maybe you already have! Anyhow, here’s your link.1

  1. 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. ↩
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Review

“Point of Dreams”

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

  1. 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” ↩
  2. 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. ↩
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Review

“A Death at the Dionysus Club”

Melissa Scott & Amy Griswold

It’s been long enough since I read the first book in this series that I remembered basically nothing about the magic system, but I picked it up again well enough over the course of the book.1 Probably would’ve helped to recall how the protagonists’ relationship got started, as well, but I think this one did reasonably well at exploring it that I felt caught up again by the end.

It is, once again, a Holmes-ian story, but in this case I think it has less to do with characters falling into the archetypes and more to do with just being a Victorian-era murder mystery featuring people working with but not for Scotland Yard. I did want to shake the protagonists a bit, because they continually ignored the incredibly obvious suspect—to the point that the should’ve-been-a-suspect, himself, called them out on it.

Overall, though, I found it to be a remarkably fun romp. A good little hint of horror in places, because “the killer is using magic” adds a nice “you can’t see them coming” aspect at times. Worth the read; check it out.2

  1. Long enough ago that I was still doing subtitles on these posts! ↩
  2. 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. ↩
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Review

“Night Sky Mine”

Melissa Scott

I really enjoyed this one! I think it counts as cyberpunk, but the digital world stuff was a really neat take on evolutionary programming. I’m actually over here wondering how much this was an inspiration for Code Lyoko, the visuals I was imagining felt very similar.

The setting is basically that, at some point, software engineers went “screw it, we’ll just evolve software to do what we want instead of trying to write it ourselves.”1 Skip forward a mystery amount of time, and they’ve accidentally created entire ecosystems – pieces of software acting like flora and fauna in a networked environment, preying on one another and, occasionally, going all cancerous and crashing the entire substrate running it all.2

The book takes place a long time after that; there’s entire careers in software breeding now, as well as people who go hunting in the wild parts of the net, looking for useful programs.

My only negative I’ve got is that the pacing feels off; the ebook came in at something like 440 pages, and the denouement hit on, like, page 430. It felt rushed, and like there was closure missing for the characters and the story itself. I suppose that means I need to go see if there’s a sequel.

I also spent the entire book reading the title with the word ‘mine’ meaning ’belonging to me,’ despite the fact that the asteroid-mining megacorporation in the background is named Night Sky Mine Co., but that’s more on me than the book.

Anyhow, I quite enjoyed the read – check it out!3

  1. If this feels familiar, you are correct, that’s what all the modern AI stuff is. ↩
  2. This goes poorly for people relying on other software running on that substrate – for example, navigation and life support systems for faster-than-light starships. ↩
  3. This is an Amazon 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 prefer Bookshop affiliate links to Amazon when possible, but in this case, the book wasn’t available there, so it’ll have to do. ↩
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Review

“Death by Silver,” or, “the landlady has a point, the plant DID try to bite the help”

Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold
I’ll start off by saying that this is definitely within the Sherlock Holmes archetype of stories,1 but it’s got enough differing it from the rest to be interesting.
The first big difference is in the setting: it’s the same Victorianesque time period as the average Sherlock Holmes book, but this is a world with magic of a sort – or, as the locals refer to it, metaphysics. It’s a bit of a complex system, based upon written language and a fairly complex grammar, utilizing a variety of different written squares. I don’t have a great grasp of how it all works, which is okay, because the way it’s written it has a good mix of detail and lack thereof. It’s a good balance, and the way its integrated into the rest of the world is quite nice.
That leads into the second difference: while there’s a clear Sherlock figure, I got the feeling that he’s the secondary of the two narrative main characters.2 While the Sherlock is still the normal Sherlock, albeit using magic instead of opium, the Watson is a metaphysician for hire, rather than a doctor. The story begins with him, in fact: a customer comes to him to remove a curse from the family silver. Finding a lack of a curse, he does a cleansing… and is rather surprised a few days later when he’s hired again to sort out the murder of his previous client, his skull having been bashed in with some of the recently-cleansed silver. It’s at this point that he brings in the Sherlock, as that’s more his area of expertise.
The relationship between the two of them is the third major difference.3 They went to school together, had a bit of a schoolboy dalliance, broke it off in college, and then resumed it in their adulthood. It’s a weird interaction – one of those rom-com style things, where both parties involved want the same thing, but are both convinced the other doesn’t want it. It makes the switching viewpoints mechanic pretty hilarious, to be honest; I spent a lot of time gleefully muttering “you idiot” at the both of them.
It’s the taboo quality of that relationship that I enjoyed the most, I think: the book doesn’t go in for the gloss-over-it style that some take, wherein the Victorian “don’t ask, don’t tell” style4 is stretched to cover openly gay men. Instead, it’s a matter of only being shown or spoken of behind closed doors. Secretive clubs that one must be vouched for by an existing member to get into. Careful remarks that can be said to have been misheard if the wrong response is given. It makes the whole thing realistic – take away the magical aspect of the book, and I could absolutely believe it was someone’s autobiography, hidden away and recently rediscovered and published by a descendant.
All in all, it made for an interesting read, and I’m quite happy to recommend it to you.

  1. I should have a tag for ‘Holmesian books’ by now, I read enough of them. ↩
  2. Two protagonists, working together; the viewpoint switches off between the two of them throughout. Nonetheless, the Sherlock has the helm slightly less than the Watson. ↩
  3. Well, insofar as it’s explicitly stated; there’s a lot of queer theory talk about the canonical Holmes/Watson relationship. ↩
  4. See “a bared ankle is improper, but I’ll meet you at the brothel for some opium later.” ↩