(no subject)

[white_hart]

Having just finished Pawn in Frankincense I am now flailing about incoherently. So many twists and turns and doublings-back of plot! So many things that seemed to so obviously be one thing, only to turn out to be something completely different!

OK, this was not my first Dorothy Dunnett so I wasn't exactly surprised. Just a bit breathtaken at the sheer extent of it.

Also, the chess game managed to be even more nailbiting than the courtroom scene/card game in The Game of Kings, and I didn't even think that was possible. And more emotionally devastating than the deaths of Christian Stewart in The Game of Kings and Will and Wat Scott in The Disorderly Knights, and those had me staring at the page in disbelief. And, obviously, I am left with far more questions than answers. With only two more Lymond books to go (admittedly, two very substantial books) I do wonder whether it's even possible to tie everything up neatly.

In any case, although I have all the books on my Kindle already, I think I need to read something easier and much, much fluffier next. Something where the protagonists aren't enmeshed in betrayal and torture and forced to make heartbreaking, impossible choices. Possibly Wodehouse, though I'm not sure that's quite it; something along those lines, anyway.

I did actually find a copy of the next book in the Oxfam bookshop yesterday lunchtime, but given the utter atrociousness of its cover I'm very glad I already have them all on Kindle...

Comments

[aella_irene]

Dunnett apparently had a series of really awful covers. There is also a group of inexplicable mullets, and one where the hero is approx 40 years older than his actual age.

[white_hart]

I think that Lymond in this one looks a lot older than 26 (hurrah for actually finding out how old he is!). And it just makes it look like some kind of bonkbuster which is so very much not what it is.

[perennialanna]

Francis' age is one of the things you then have to map backwards - because in Game of Kings he's so very very much younger than one first supposes (or at least as I first supposed). So setting fire to the castle with his mother inside is really an outbreak of extended adolescence - and all the things that were done to him before the series starts were done to a child. A very self-possessed and intelligent child, but a child. And I have only just realised that in many ways Philippa's arc is a mirroring of that (this is why Dunnett fans tend to be devoted re-readers. One reading is never enough).

[white_hart]

Yes, I don't think I'd have guessed at him being barely twenty, if not still in his teens; I wouldn't have thought he was more than thirty but not that young.

There are so many things in the books which simply don't make sense on first reading, because you need information that doesn't come until later. All of Game of Kings, just for starters. I'm looking forward to getting to the end and being able to re-read and see the patterns that are still hidden now.