Melissa Scott continues her Astreiant series with Point ofSighs. The Astreiant series is a detective series
set in a fantasy world that is pre-industrial.
The social structure is matriarchal (as an aside, it’s fun to read a
book where the default pronoun used by all the characters is she/her and “all
women” is a stand in for “all people”) with a rigorous class structure. Our
main characters are Philip Eslingen, who’s currently a member of the newly
established city guard, and his leman (or lover) Nicolaus Rathe, an Adjunct
Point, essentially a policeman. The
story starts with a man accused of murdering a ship’s captain. Rathe sets out
to find who really did the killing and stumbles across a larger crime that
eventually involves the return of a goddess from myth and a sacrificial cult.
The book can be read as a standalone, though the characters will be far richer if you go for the entire series. The series has long been a favorite of mine. I recommend it to those who like a good detective story, enjoy fantasy world building, and have a taste for different worlds.
