Thirty years of Astreiant

This week, Queen of Swords press released the sixth book in Melissa Scott’s Astreiant/Points series, Point of Hearts (co-authored, for the first two books, with her late partner Lisa A Barnett). The have also reissued all five previous books in very nice editions. An appropriate time to have these books back in the public eye, with 2025 being the thirtieth anniversary of the first book, Point of Hopes, which was first published by Tor back in 1995. 

These are some of my favourite books of all time, and Astreiant and its inhabitants make up one of the great cities that does not exist. I want to talk briefly about why that’s the case. The conceit of the series is reasonably easy easy to describe in one sentence: a mystery series set in a well-drawn faux-Dutch(ish) renaissance metropolis where astrological magic is real. But this doesn’t give more than the vaguest true sense of what the books are about or why they hit so hard for me.

A brief digression into music (with a point, I promise). The legendary pop producer and songwriter Max Martin has famously described at least some of Lorde’s work on her first two records as “incorrect songwriting” (this may have been applied specifically to Royals, Green Light, or both). And there is something to this, right? From the Martin-esque approach of pop hooks and song structure, both Royals and Green Light look very odd and break a number of rules under that formula. But it’s incorrect songwriting with intent and, great artistic effect. Out of step with the mainstream approach to pop, but ultimately entirely successful on its own terms.

Astreiant, similarly, can be read as incorrect fantasy writing. There’s something quite out of step with, well, every point of comparison you might reach for, about these books.

This is a queernorm, matriarchal world, but it has an approach to queerness that’s quite different from authors who debuted in the 2010s and 20s; the series’ foundation is firmly in the 90s. This isn’t a negative, it’s just different. Gender roles are inverted rather than queered – assumptions made in the real world about men are applied to women and vice versa; the synonym for person is “woman” rather than “man”. Semiformal same-sex relationships are recognized in a separate institution (lemanry), rather than integrated into the various marriage alliances of the setting. None of this is bad, at all, but it’s different than what you’d get in a 2020s big pub sapphic romantasy with squiggly arrow marketing. It’s out of time, out of step with the market to, in my view, its benefit.

A related piece of incorrect writing is our two main characters – sincere and dowdy proto-cop Nico and pretty boy ex-solider Phillip – quickly become an established couple, but there is exactly zero romantasy or BL energy here. Those two subgenres are where the vast majority of queer male representation lives in contemporary SFF, but Philip and Nico don’t even get together on page! Between books 1 and 2 they’ve started hooking up, and between books 2 and 3 this crystallises into a relationship, again not on page. For the rest of the series they’re two working adults with jobs, responsibilities, and commitments... who live together and are clearly in a loving, supportive relationship. This relationship is, I think, one of the very best depictions of an grown ass gay relationship I’ve seen in SFF. As Kai Ashante Wilson observed:

Another oddity in this series is something Wilson notes as a criticism in the same article: for a series where each volume centres on a mystery, the mystery plots themselves are themselves not the focus and somewhat slow-moving. The foreground is instead taken up detailed, slow work on setting and character. If you’re here for a taut thriller or a classic mystery puzzle box you’re going to be disappointed. And I do get that criticism, but I also think it misses why you’d read and enjoy these books: that work on Astreiant and its people and cultures. The mystery plots are just what provides the (admittedly sometimes sedate) forward momentum. 

So could we throw this in the category of cozy fantasy or cozy mystery, where this sort of character focus with the mystery or action plotline being a very much deprecated B-plot is the norm? I don’t really think that works either. Yes, it is about fundamentally decent people doing their duty to their loved ones and in their jobs, and pulse pounding action isn’t typically the focus. But on the other hand there’s a grit and weariness in places, and a bit too much of a particular sort of politics, to comfortably exist in that space. And it certainly isn’t in the same register as the 2020s iteration of cozy fantasy that’s exploded around and following Legends and Lattes. Astreiant certainly isn’t a city where your neighbour will, to pick a completely random example, be a friendly retired crime boss who will solve your nice little coffee shop’s problems. It is a city of craft guilds and thieves, of nobles and necromancers, of astrological broadsheets and unsanctioned trade. A living, breathing place.

All of this is to say if you’re casting about for points of comparison with Astreiant, you’re probably not going to find a 1:1, nor are you going place it easily in any modern subgenre. At the same time, neither does it slot in entirely comfortable beside the city-based fantasy of the 80s and 90s, written closer to the genesis of the series, though I think there are more similarities there. The closest companions I can think of are also long-running series that started decades ago and have continued to the present: Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos books and Ellen Kushner’s Riverside, though neither really has the same vibe as Astreiant. From a slightly different angle – it’s a shared world collection of shorts – but the Liavek anthologies from the late 80s might also be a meaningful point of comparison in terms of a wonderfully realised fantasy city.

But the Brust and Kushner books are never quite as interested in the nuts and bolts of city life (mundane fantasy elements?) as Astreiant, Brust and Liavek far less queer, and Liavek lacks the consistent rock of a central character we see the world through. Thirty years on Scott and Barnett’s creation remains a singular one. Out of time more than old-fashioned, sitting between genres, and gloriously out of touch with the fantasy zeitgeist while at the same time managing to contain pretty much every building block of it. Incorrect fantasy writing.

Pick up Point of Hearts if you’re a long-time visitor, and if you’re new to Astreiant, start with Point of Hopes; you’re in for a treat.