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Aug. 15th, 2016 09:36 pmA couple people had recced Melissa Scott and Lisa Barnett's Point of Hopes to me before I finally picked it up -- it's a mystery novel set in a Netherlands-inspired approximately Renaissance fantasy world built around a heavily astrological culture and featuring many, many queer people, including:
Protagonist #1: Nicholas Rathe, the World's Most Honest Renaissance Policeman, who is slooooooowly investigating the disappearance of an increasing number of apprentice children in town
Protagonist #2: Philip Eslingen, an extremely dashing out-of-luck mercenary who loses his job in a missing-children-related riot and is then semi-recruited to semi-help with Rathe's investigation
This is one of those mystery fantasy novels where the worldbuilding is fantastic and interesting and thorough, and the mystery is kind of .... there as an excuse to hang the worldbuilding on, mostly; there's some Obviously Sinister culprits, and our hero spends three-quarters of the book sort of vaguely side-eying them before being like "aha, yes! these potentially sinister individuals definitely ARE sinister!" several chapters before the end. It is not a particularly satisfying mystery.
I think the relationship between Nicholas and Philip is supposed to carry the emotional weight of the series, but there's not a lot of it in this book; by the time it ends, they're .... friendly acquaintances? I'm not sure at this point whether I'm going to read the sequels -- like I said, I thought the worldbuilding was great and super interesting, but I'm not yet feeling a plot/emotional heft. People who've read the rest, thoughts?
Protagonist #1: Nicholas Rathe, the World's Most Honest Renaissance Policeman, who is slooooooowly investigating the disappearance of an increasing number of apprentice children in town
Protagonist #2: Philip Eslingen, an extremely dashing out-of-luck mercenary who loses his job in a missing-children-related riot and is then semi-recruited to semi-help with Rathe's investigation
This is one of those mystery fantasy novels where the worldbuilding is fantastic and interesting and thorough, and the mystery is kind of .... there as an excuse to hang the worldbuilding on, mostly; there's some Obviously Sinister culprits, and our hero spends three-quarters of the book sort of vaguely side-eying them before being like "aha, yes! these potentially sinister individuals definitely ARE sinister!" several chapters before the end. It is not a particularly satisfying mystery.
I think the relationship between Nicholas and Philip is supposed to carry the emotional weight of the series, but there's not a lot of it in this book; by the time it ends, they're .... friendly acquaintances? I'm not sure at this point whether I'm going to read the sequels -- like I said, I thought the worldbuilding was great and super interesting, but I'm not yet feeling a plot/emotional heft. People who've read the rest, thoughts?
