Wednesday reading: The Ringed Castle
Jan. 20th, 2016 08:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
white_hartAfter a brief interlude to read Guards! Guards! and The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage* I was unable to resist starting on The Ringed Castle. I managed to race through all 600-plus pages in just over a week (despite pauses to cross-reference with Wikipedia and Google Earth) and finished it last night after having serious difficulty restraining myself from carrying on reading it when I was supposed to be working.
This was the one where I really wanted to thump Lymond for being such a total arse to everyone who cared about him, although I suppose he was probably suffering from PTSD after the events of Pawn in Frankincense. But really, Francis Crawford, would it kill you to be nice occasionally? I'm amazed that everyone carried on caring about him even so, but I suppose the whole point is that he is just that special.
Philippa, on the other hand, has managed to become even more amazing than she was in Pawn. I like Philippa a lot. I also like the men of St Mary's.
(I can't quite work out who the woman with the Dyanasty hair on the cover of the paperback copy I bought is supposed to be. She's not right for Philippa or for Güzel. Though the man isn't right for Lymond either; in my head Lymond basically looks like Westley in The Princess Bride.)
On the subject of Güzel, having read one particular scene the night before a day when I had something fish-based for lunch I found myself seized with a powerful urge to say to anyone who came to my office that afternoon "I apologise for the faint smell of fish", but in the end I just opened the window instead. It wasn't as cold last week as it is now.
I have also learnt an enormous amount about mid-sixteenth-century trade and politics. I was saying tojadesfire the other day that I read a Penelope Lively recently which my mother had recommended, and while it was well-written and fairly entertaining it left me feeling that I'd wasted my time over it, because it didn't tell me a single thing I didn't know already; I know that bankers are unreliable bastards, and elderly academics are difficult and petulant, and that people have affairs and sometimes still manage to save their relationships, and that books tell you a lot about the world, though this one didn't. Whereas each Lymond book teaches me enormous chunks of history that I didn't learn at school (I might have done if I'd done the Early Modern A-Level course, but because I did Tudors and Stuarts for GCSE I opted for Great Dictatorships of the 20th Century instead. I now suspect that this was a mistake, as the A-Level course would probably have included things that happened outwith Britain and which I had therefore not encountered), to say nothing of all I learn about bravery, honour, loyalty, love and how a brilliant but sensitive person might react to hugely traumatic events.
I was very close to just going straight into Checkmate, but thought better of it. And, while I desperately want to find out what happens (will Lymond finally overcome his trauma enough to be happy? Who is his real father? What did the Dame de Doubtance know that she only hinted at, and whose side was she really on anyway?) I am a bit sad at the prospect of not having any more Lymond to read. I do have the Niccolo books as well, but that won't be quite the same as reencountering the characters I find I've come to love so much. I'm fairly sure I won't be able to hold myself back for long, though.
*not actually all that thrilling, tbh, and disappointingly slight for such a thick book. I liked the initial cartoon about Ada Lovelace's life, but I felt that the "adventures" were mostly a bit silly.
This was the one where I really wanted to thump Lymond for being such a total arse to everyone who cared about him, although I suppose he was probably suffering from PTSD after the events of Pawn in Frankincense. But really, Francis Crawford, would it kill you to be nice occasionally? I'm amazed that everyone carried on caring about him even so, but I suppose the whole point is that he is just that special.
Philippa, on the other hand, has managed to become even more amazing than she was in Pawn. I like Philippa a lot. I also like the men of St Mary's.
(I can't quite work out who the woman with the Dyanasty hair on the cover of the paperback copy I bought is supposed to be. She's not right for Philippa or for Güzel. Though the man isn't right for Lymond either; in my head Lymond basically looks like Westley in The Princess Bride.)
On the subject of Güzel, having read one particular scene the night before a day when I had something fish-based for lunch I found myself seized with a powerful urge to say to anyone who came to my office that afternoon "I apologise for the faint smell of fish", but in the end I just opened the window instead. It wasn't as cold last week as it is now.
I have also learnt an enormous amount about mid-sixteenth-century trade and politics. I was saying to
jadesfire the other day that I read a Penelope Lively recently which my mother had recommended, and while it was well-written and fairly entertaining it left me feeling that I'd wasted my time over it, because it didn't tell me a single thing I didn't know already; I know that bankers are unreliable bastards, and elderly academics are difficult and petulant, and that people have affairs and sometimes still manage to save their relationships, and that books tell you a lot about the world, though this one didn't. Whereas each Lymond book teaches me enormous chunks of history that I didn't learn at school (I might have done if I'd done the Early Modern A-Level course, but because I did Tudors and Stuarts for GCSE I opted for Great Dictatorships of the 20th Century instead. I now suspect that this was a mistake, as the A-Level course would probably have included things that happened outwith Britain and which I had therefore not encountered), to say nothing of all I learn about bravery, honour, loyalty, love and how a brilliant but sensitive person might react to hugely traumatic events.I was very close to just going straight into Checkmate, but thought better of it. And, while I desperately want to find out what happens (will Lymond finally overcome his trauma enough to be happy? Who is his real father? What did the Dame de Doubtance know that she only hinted at, and whose side was she really on anyway?) I am a bit sad at the prospect of not having any more Lymond to read. I do have the Niccolo books as well, but that won't be quite the same as reencountering the characters I find I've come to love so much. I'm fairly sure I won't be able to hold myself back for long, though.
*not actually all that thrilling, tbh, and disappointingly slight for such a thick book. I liked the initial cartoon about Ada Lovelace's life, but I felt that the "adventures" were mostly a bit silly.
