Point of Dreams [Paperback]

For those of you who've read Point of Hopes and are hoping for more romance between Philip and Nico you won't be totally disappointed. Unfortunately, the authors made the odd choice of setting Point of Dreams 6 months after the case of the missing children has been solved and Nico and Philip are already involved physically and are moving quickly toward 'leman' status. There is no sex of any kind in this novel so if you are looking to be titilated and nothing else, look elsewhere. You won't even be allowed to witness a passionate kiss between the lovers. The reader is treated to a few charming and cozy domestic scenes in which Philip's nurturing nature emerges. Perhaps the authors wanted them to be at the more comfortable stage for this story in which case I wish they had saved it for another book so we could have been the voyeurs of the early stages of their romance. You know, the ROMANTIC parts! In the first book we are left hanging with vague feelings of attraction the men feel toward each other but barely acknowledge to themselves beyond vague feelings. The artistic decision to bypass the magical early moments of mutual attraction is questionable.

The mystery wasn't too hard to figure out and it took me awhile to figure out the significance of the flowers and the Alphabet book. I imagine the flowers, which were raised from expensive and delicate corms were based on the violent,intrigue-filled history of tulips in Western culture, albeit with a different twist. In this novel, the flowers are believed to have magic properties when used in conjuction with the book in question. It is Rathe's job to discover if there is any validity to the magic or if it is just a hoax. I would have liked to have seen more of Chresta Aconin, the playwrite responsible for the furor over the Alphabet and the corms. He is obviously based on poet/playwrite Christopher Marlowe, or at least Scott's characterization of him in Armour of Light.

That said, I enjoyed the book for the characters and the setting. I do look forward to another "Point" novel as there is the makings of a very engaging series here.

The plot of Dreams is fairly weak. It's hard to write SF/mystery that obeys all the rules of traditional mysteries, and though Barnett and Scott succeeded in Hopes, they fail here - the mystery is remarkably easy to solve and is transparently clear by the book's midpoint.

Also, the setting, which was easily the best part of Hopes, is in Dreams just a backdrop for a (relatively) normal theater production. Hopes established a fascinating world. Dreams inhabits a tiny portion of it.

The real problem, though, is the further development of the main characters. At the start of Dreams, Rathe and Eslingen are living together, having gone from unexpressed mutual interest to an ongoing, committed relationship between books. Scott and Barnett, in choosing not to show the early stages of the romance, are making an unusual, daring, and ultimately unsuccessful choice. They can't, or won't, write the relationship convincingly without the early bits. (I love Melissa Scott's writing, and I honestly believe she *could* do this right, but that only makes this book's failure worse.)

In Dreams, it's hard to believe that Rathe and Eslingen actually love each other. In the brief interludes they spend together, they show very little affection, let alone romantic love. The strongest emotion they seem to feel is mutual jealousy; that's not exactly proof of true love. And it doesn't help that the one passionate sequence in the book is between Rathe and an ex-lover. The intensity of that bit just underscores the absence of any such feeling between our heroes.

Despite the problems, though, the book is still a good one. Fantasy/mysteries are rare, as I said, and the book would be worth reading for that alone. Add in the marvelous setting and the light, fun writing, and Point of Dreams becomes more than worth the purchase price. I just hope that the third book in the series reveals more kinship with Hopes than with Dreams.