Reading: Scales of Gold
Feb. 17th, 2017 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
white_hartThe fourth of Dorothy Dunnett's House of Niccolo books takes the eponymous hero to Africa after the security of his business is threatened by a run on his capital instigated partly by his long-standing enemy Simon and partly by the shadowy Vatachino company. In search of the legendary gold-mines of Guinea and an overland route to the perhaps equally legendary Christian kingdom of Prester John in Ethiopia, after a difficult and dangerous journey he comes instead to Timbuktu*, ancient capital of learning and trade in a prosperous, mainly peaceful pre-colonial sub-Saharan Africa.
This was my favourite of the Niccolo books so far, and the first one I loved as much as I loved the Lymond series. Having recently read HMS Surprise, I really enjoyed the description of the voyage from Portugal to the Gambia in an age when Europeans had only recently discovered that Africa extended further south than Cape Bojador, slightly south of the latitude of the Canaries and for many years assumed to be the literal end of the world. I loved the depiction of fifteenth-century Africa as no less civilised than Europe, just different (and with surprisingly good communication links for the era), and Nicholas's perilous and uncertain journeys were utterly compelling reading. I found myself reading while walking down the street because I couldn't bear to put my Kindle down on more than one occasion.
That ending, though. This is the tenth of Dunnett's novels I've read. Thousands of pages of twisting plots and hero-whumping, and yet I still managed to walk right into that. I even found myself thinking at one point that I wondered whether Dunnett had originally only intended to write four Niccolo books and had added the last four in later. I should have known her much better than that, and while I was kind of expecting the news from Timbuktu (looking up the locations on Wikipedia can be spoilery all by itself when Dunnett obviously chose Nicholas's destinations based on where things were happening in the world), but the other thing completely blindsided me. The strength of my emotional reaction surprised me too; it may have been partly because it was late and I was tired, but it felt genuinely devastating, and when I woke up at 4:30am and remembered that was what happened the grief came flooding back. I've rarely been that strongly affected by a book.
* I may have found myself at one point pondering whether it was possible to cast the party who make it to Timbuktu with the cast of Cabin Pressure, who of course never do get to Timbuktu. The description of Nicholas does make him sound rather like John Finnemore, and he certainly affects an Arthur Shappey-esque innocence on occasion.
This was my favourite of the Niccolo books so far, and the first one I loved as much as I loved the Lymond series. Having recently read HMS Surprise, I really enjoyed the description of the voyage from Portugal to the Gambia in an age when Europeans had only recently discovered that Africa extended further south than Cape Bojador, slightly south of the latitude of the Canaries and for many years assumed to be the literal end of the world. I loved the depiction of fifteenth-century Africa as no less civilised than Europe, just different (and with surprisingly good communication links for the era), and Nicholas's perilous and uncertain journeys were utterly compelling reading. I found myself reading while walking down the street because I couldn't bear to put my Kindle down on more than one occasion.
That ending, though. This is the tenth of Dunnett's novels I've read. Thousands of pages of twisting plots and hero-whumping, and yet I still managed to walk right into that. I even found myself thinking at one point that I wondered whether Dunnett had originally only intended to write four Niccolo books and had added the last four in later. I should have known her much better than that, and while I was kind of expecting the news from Timbuktu (looking up the locations on Wikipedia can be spoilery all by itself when Dunnett obviously chose Nicholas's destinations based on where things were happening in the world), but the other thing completely blindsided me. The strength of my emotional reaction surprised me too; it may have been partly because it was late and I was tired, but it felt genuinely devastating, and when I woke up at 4:30am and remembered that was what happened the grief came flooding back. I've rarely been that strongly affected by a book.
* I may have found myself at one point pondering whether it was possible to cast the party who make it to Timbuktu with the cast of Cabin Pressure, who of course never do get to Timbuktu. The description of Nicholas does make him sound rather like John Finnemore, and he certainly affects an Arthur Shappey-esque innocence on occasion.
