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white_hart) wrote2016-03-21 10:35 am
white_hart) wrote2016-03-21 10:35 am
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Reading: Checkmate
I was saving Dorothy Dunnett's Checkmate to read on holiday, but then I started it on Thursday night and finished it yesterday and I don't even go away until this afternoon.
I loved it as much as I have loved the others in the series. It had the same mix of playfulness and heartbreak and, after the last two novels which focused mainly on smaller groups, seemed to reassemble almost all the fantastic cast of supporting characters as it drew the complicated web of plot together for the grand finale.
Plot-wise, I was expecting a happy ending but was still almost fooled by the second "this is actually a tragedy" feint (part of my brain was saying "maybe it's Marthe" but more in hope than expectation). And I hadn't seen the resolution of the parentage question coming (so "your father's two sons will never meet again" was just the Dame de Doubtance trying to wind Lymond up? And actually his father had three sons). I had been keeping an eye on dates and expected the Lennox threat to be removed by Elizabeth's accession.
But however twisty the plot is, I haven't been reading Dunnett for the plots; it's all about the characters, and Checkmate in particular is mostly a character-focused novel (The Ringed Castle was too; I think the ones before that had more plot but the last two were really more about how all the previous plot had affected the characters, and how Lymond and Philippa get from their marriage in Stamboul to actually becoming man and wife. The Sevigny section managed, for me, to pack all the emotional punch of the chess game in Pawn in Frankincense, though I do wonder why neither of them thought that Philippa would, given time, eventually get over her trauma enough for their relationship to have a physical dimension. Maybe because Lymond himself never actually gets over his trauma until he and Philippa are reunited at the end.
Obviously, there was a lot of stuff where I wanted to bang people's* heads together and tell them to just for goodness' sake talk to each other and stop trying to save everyone else's feelings because it really wasn't working. I think that counts as part of the enjoyment, with Dunnett. And I felt terribly sorry for Jerrott, who may be a total idiot in a lot of ways and have spent most of Pawn needing to be whacked round the head with a clue-by-four, but who really didn't deserve to spend six years working out his love for Francis by being married to Marthe, only to end up going back to the Order broken-hearted for the second time while everyone else gets some kind of happy ending. Though perhaps the implication is that he and Danny Hislop end up happy-ever-after together.
At some point I think I will have to go back and re-read the entire series to see how much more sense things make in hindsight. And I also have all the Niccolo books to read...
* I say people's. I mostly mean Lymond's and Philippa's**. I get that Philippa has to become more like Lymond before their marriage can actually stand a chance of working, but I can't help wishing a bit that that had only involved ridiculous midnight chases across cities and noble and incredibly destructive sacrifices***, and not secret plotting that would have all been so much easier if only other people were allowed to help.
**But also Richard's, and Austin Grey's, and probably Sybilla's if she wasn't seventy.
***I just read another online review which said "I'm sorry the series had to descend into melodrama" to which my response is basically "What first five books were you reading, then?".
I loved it as much as I have loved the others in the series. It had the same mix of playfulness and heartbreak and, after the last two novels which focused mainly on smaller groups, seemed to reassemble almost all the fantastic cast of supporting characters as it drew the complicated web of plot together for the grand finale.
Plot-wise, I was expecting a happy ending but was still almost fooled by the second "this is actually a tragedy" feint (part of my brain was saying "maybe it's Marthe" but more in hope than expectation). And I hadn't seen the resolution of the parentage question coming (so "your father's two sons will never meet again" was just the Dame de Doubtance trying to wind Lymond up? And actually his father had three sons). I had been keeping an eye on dates and expected the Lennox threat to be removed by Elizabeth's accession.
But however twisty the plot is, I haven't been reading Dunnett for the plots; it's all about the characters, and Checkmate in particular is mostly a character-focused novel (The Ringed Castle was too; I think the ones before that had more plot but the last two were really more about how all the previous plot had affected the characters, and how Lymond and Philippa get from their marriage in Stamboul to actually becoming man and wife. The Sevigny section managed, for me, to pack all the emotional punch of the chess game in Pawn in Frankincense, though I do wonder why neither of them thought that Philippa would, given time, eventually get over her trauma enough for their relationship to have a physical dimension. Maybe because Lymond himself never actually gets over his trauma until he and Philippa are reunited at the end.
Obviously, there was a lot of stuff where I wanted to bang people's* heads together and tell them to just for goodness' sake talk to each other and stop trying to save everyone else's feelings because it really wasn't working. I think that counts as part of the enjoyment, with Dunnett. And I felt terribly sorry for Jerrott, who may be a total idiot in a lot of ways and have spent most of Pawn needing to be whacked round the head with a clue-by-four, but who really didn't deserve to spend six years working out his love for Francis by being married to Marthe, only to end up going back to the Order broken-hearted for the second time while everyone else gets some kind of happy ending. Though perhaps the implication is that he and Danny Hislop end up happy-ever-after together.
At some point I think I will have to go back and re-read the entire series to see how much more sense things make in hindsight. And I also have all the Niccolo books to read...
* I say people's. I mostly mean Lymond's and Philippa's**. I get that Philippa has to become more like Lymond before their marriage can actually stand a chance of working, but I can't help wishing a bit that that had only involved ridiculous midnight chases across cities and noble and incredibly destructive sacrifices***, and not secret plotting that would have all been so much easier if only other people were allowed to help.
**But also Richard's, and Austin Grey's, and probably Sybilla's if she wasn't seventy.
***I just read another online review which said "I'm sorry the series had to descend into melodrama" to which my response is basically "What first five books were you reading, then?".
no subject
I want to smack Sybilla's head into things on the grounds that yes, Gavin was an abusive shithead, but on the other hand, he had just discovered that his legitimate marriage was entirely illegitimate because the woman turned out to be his stepmother, and he couldn't reveal this without making his son a bastard, oh, and his probably emotionally abusive father was back from the dead and wanted to bang his wife. Sybilla could have made less incestuous choices.
no subject