Books 2014 - Point of Hopes, Point of Knives, Point of Dreams by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett

I know, I've posted about these so many times, but I have just re-read them, and they fit my Once Upon A Time Challenge nicely, so here we go again!
The Points books tell the story of Nicolas Rathe, Adjunct Point (policeman) and Philip Eslingen, ex-soldier. They meet in Point of Hopes, when Eslingen has just been paid off from Coindarel's Dragons, and is looking for a place in the city of Astreiant, and when Rathe is investigating the worrying and mysterious disappearance of far too many children. Of course they end up working together much of the time, and find they get along well.

Astreiant itself is part fantasy, part science fiction. There are two suns in the sky, so it's not quite this world, and it's a world where she is the default pronoun, where the broadsheet astrologers are avidly followed because that is the main science, and where forms of magic - scientifically studied magic, no less than electricity is our magic - truly work. It feels rather like Renaissance England (or at least some European country), but... there are two suns. *g* And as I might have mentioned before, it's wonderful. I'd move there tomorrow, if I could, and not only to see Rathe and Eslingen in action. Scott and Barnett created a really wonderful world, simply because it feels so real - it's other, and yet at the same time it's a city just over there, it's so familiar. And there, I think, is the talent of really good authors - creating not just a fantastical world, but people that we relate to, that we understand, that we'd lean against a fence and chat to, one bright evening, with the winter sun just appearing in the night sky... *g*

( Otherwise, these are stories about... )

Day Forty Four - light nights and books in bed

I do like looking out the window and thinking it must be about 8pm, only to find that it's actually past 10pm... *g* These were taken at around 10.20pm. Summertime. *vbg* How gorgeous would it be without all that cloud? Actually towards the west (the first picture, north-west-ish) it was clearing up, and just as I came in I saw Riga appear in the sky, and Arcturus... which I recognised, of course, with the help of Google Sky, which you've got to admit is a rather fab and happy-making app... *g*

And it also makes me happy that this is my plan for the next hour or so, having worked reasonably well all day......I get to read in bed for as long as I want before I fall asleep!