Fairs' Point: A Novel of Astreiant

By Melissa Scott

During Dog Moon, the chief entertainment in the great city of Astreiant, for nobles and commons alike, is the basket-terrier races at New Fair. This year, with spectacularly bad timing, the massive and suspicious bankruptcy of a young nobleman has convulsed the city, leading to suicides, widespread loss of employment, and inconvenient new laws around the universal practice of betting on the races. As well, a rash of mysterious burglaries seems to suggest a magistical conspiracy.

Pointsman Nicolas Rathe is naturally in the midst of all these disturbances—as is his lover, foreign former mercenary Philip Eslingen. When Eslingen receives a basket-terrier puppy in the redistribution of the bankrupt’s household goods, he makes the best of it by having the pup trained for the races, an action that draws him and Rathe deeper into the coils of a mystery somehow involving New Fair’s dog races, bookies and bettors, the bankruptcy and its causes and fallout, burglaries, and a new uncanny form of murder.

Fourth in the Astreiant series, Fairs’ Point once again demonstrates Melissa Scott’s mastery of fantasy world building, detective-story plotting, and the provision of sheer delight.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lethe Press
• Release date: May 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310872259

Melissa Scott

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 novel, Water Horse, was published in June 2021. Her next solo novel, The Master of Samar, will be out in 2023.

Reviews for Fairs' Point

[quondame · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Many Astreiant's citizens have extended credit to the failed claimant to an estate and when his possessions are redistributed Phillip Ellsingen gets one of his dogs just in time to have it entered in the yearly dog races. Meanwhile there are disappearances and thefts plaguing the merchants and bookies at the races, and though it's outside his Points jurisdiction Rathe gets deeply involved. Steady action and good characters and interactions.