skygiants | Entries tagged with dorothy dunnett

We did Macbeth in our zoom theater group recently, which triggered in me an irresistible urge to reread King Hereafter, Dorothy Dunnett's 850-page novel about Actual Historical Macbeth, here reinterpreted as a brilliant but misunderstood polymath because that is the sort of person about whom Dorothy Dunnett likes to write novels.

Other signature Dorothy Dunnett elements, familiar to any reader of Lymond or Niccolo, that appear in King Hereafter:

- the protagonist is surrounded by well-meaning but less brilliant allies who are constantly stressed out because he's not behaving according to their idea of ethics, but of course he is always behaving in a reasonably ethical fashion, they just can't see it because they don't understand the Long Game
- the protagonist is relentlessly pursued by a homicidal twink who demands either his undivided romantic attention or his life (in this case the homicidal twink is Rognvald Brusason)
- the protagonist meets one woman who proves herself almost an equal on the field of intellect (always almost, nobody is ever quite an equal to a Dunnett protagonist) and falls deeply in love with her; however he will attempt to conceal this as long as possible in order to avoid dragging her down with him when he meets the Bad Fate he's convinced of, despite the fact that circumstances have already forced them to get married
- the reader will be treated to a variety of richly researched and beautifully described historical set pieces, all of which serve in one way or another to allow the protagonist to demonstrate his status as a brilliant polymath

The thing that is different about King Hereafter however is that DD is also making a historical argument through this book rather than just telling a story about a brilliant but misunderstood polymath. The argument is that Macbeth was the same person as Thorfinn the Mighty, a major figure of the Orkney sagas, based more or less on the fact that she's never seen them in the same saga at the same time. So the actual ratio of this book is, like, 35% signature DD plot elements :: 65% lovingly detailed discussion of eleventh-century Viking and medieval politics to explain why and how Thorfinn and Macbeth could absolutely have been the same person, who absolutely could have been the first person to unite Scotland if it were not for a series of unfortunate events that caused a downfall absolutely not of his own doing.

In my memory, King Hereafter was less over-the-top than the Lymond or Niccolo books, and as a result slightly better. Rereading, I am not actually sure that is true; I think that when I last read it (at the age of 15 or so) I was very impressed with the density of historical research, and assumed that meant the book was good.

Rereading twenty years later, I agree with my past self that King Hereafter is both more impressive and less self-indulgent than Lymond or Niccolo, but I don't know that that actually makes it better. ( Spoilers, mostly structural )

I also remembered Thorfinn as more broadly likeable and less infuriating than Lymond or Niccolo. I think that is broadly true, actually, with one big exception, ( spoiler and trigger warning ). But Thorfinn is not angelically hot -- he is a much less conventional ugly-hot, which means instead of lingering descriptions of his cornflower-blue eyes we get consistently told how much he looks like a troll, which I for one find more palatable -- and he spends much less of his time pointlessly antagonizing people and the main ethical complaint that his friends have about him is either "he's not doing enough Viking things and we don't understand why he's trying to actually maintain a kingdom" (his Viking friends) or "we appreciate the kingdom-building but we're really concerned about the atheism" (his non-Viking friends). And both of these traits are easy things to find sympathetic! However, if his friends were madder at him, or had better and more personal reason to be mad at him, it would also add momentum that the book doesn't really have in the back half, so I'm forced to conclude that the infuriating nature of the standard DD protagonist is a necessary fuel to the plot engine; without it the book doesn't quite go.

All that said, a.) I do really like Thorfinn's completely inexplicable Charles Wallace-ish stepson with whom he has a great relationship despite the fact that the kid keeps cheerfully spouting prophecy about how his reign is doomed b.) there was a really fantastic fic in Yuletide 2019 that captures the whole spirit of the best parts of the book.

Okay, so

newredshoes asked me for my top five fake Shakespearean titles!

I . . . still don't actually really know what that means. SORRY ESTHER! I think probably this was meant to be Improv Shakespeare titles, but the unfortunate thing is that I can't actually remember five of the titles from the shows. So I am going to interpret this as: top five Shakespeare fanworks!

( As usual, cut for length )

Your turn, guys! There are five million pieces of awesome Shakespeare fanfiction out there, published and unpublished. TELL ME THE BEST.

genarti asked me for my top five favorite book covers! She gave me full reign to be ironic in my love, which is a privilege I will try not to abuse. At least 50% of these will also be rooted in fond nostalgia rather than any artistic merit, so . . . you are warned? I also stretch the definition of 'top five' a little, you are also warned.

( Lots of images under the cut, obviously! )

What about you guys? Favorite covers? Notoriously terrible covers that you have braved to find the gold within? Or, alternately, covers that should justly have been a warning to you?

First things first: this should go without saying and I don't think I really need to repeat it for any of you, but please don't link or repost anything that's under lock. You can feel free to link/repost things that are public, such as book reviews (and most things are public! I'm not a very secretive person) but please don't do so in any way that would connect them with my last name. Some people in the world don't need to know how much of my life I've spent photoshopping terrible fake romance novel covers.

Back to regularly scheduled booklogging: with Caprice and Rondo and Gemini, I've officially finished my reread of Dunnett's House of Niccolo books.

So here's the thing about Dorothy Dunnett - and bear in mind, I say all this with love, because I will never not love Dunnett's books; it's an addiction. But the thing is that Dunnett's specialty is intelligent, extremely angsty sagas that center on a complex, brilliant, enigmatic character. And somehow, she manages to pull it off so that the incredibly-researched historical detail is 99% accurate, many major historical events go down and important personages appear and play major roles, and yet almost the entire world still revolves around her main character. I can count on the fingers of one hand the time that people in the Niccolo books talk about something other than Nicholas. Nicholas talks about things that aren't himself, which is how the plot moves forward. Everyone else is Nicholas-obsessed: even apparently completely disconnected persons go out of their way to discover what he's thinking, what he's feeling, what is the secret manpain of his past, is he actually a good person or not. The same is true for the Lymond books. Various characters could go off and have their own lives, and stay in touch with Nicholas or Lymond the ordinary way, with postcards at Christmas. And sometimes they do! But even then, the moment Nicholas or Lymond reappears in their lives, they are perfectly willing to rearrange all their plans to re-center them on the Dunnett protagonist, and it seems perfectly natural because everyone in the world is obsessed with aforementioned protagonist anyway. And that's not even talking about how fixated the villains are. ( Quick Niccolo and Lymond spoilers. )

This is probably why Danny Hislop is my favorite Dunnett character - he at least cheerfully admits that the reason he follows Lymond around is sheer voyeuristic fascination and lulz. Danny's interactions with the Crawfords tend to be along the lines of "You people and your drama and incest and angst, it's better than a soap opera! I love it!" Which is, as far as I'm concerned, exactly the correct reaction, and I find this much more identifiable than the rest of the world's overwhelming concern for the state of Nicholas and Lymond's souls.

This is also, I think, the reason I so love Nicholas' love interest. ( Passionate spoilery defense of a controversial lady below! )

I am now three-quarters of the way through my epic reread of Dorothy Dunnett's Niccolo books!

Capsule summary of The Unicorn Hunt:

Niccolo's newborn baby son is:
a.) either his kid . . . or his WORST ENEMY's kid.
b.) either born terribly ill and unlikely to survive . . . or totally healthy.
c.) on Cyprus. Or in Venice. Or in Bruges. Or being shipped around the Renaissance world like a box of gift chocolates.
d.) or DEAD.
e.) or not!

Capsule summary of To Lie With Lions:

NICCOLO AND [SPOILER MRS. NICCOLO]: We are embarking on an all-out war in an attempt to destroy each other economically, politically and emotionally. One of us will win!
FRIENDS OF THE NICCOLOS: . . . and then?
NICCOLO AND [SPOILER MRS. NICCOLO]: We will settle down to happy family life! :D
FRIENDS OF THE NICCOLOS: I can see some flaws in this plan.

I am becoming more in awe, by the way, of Dorothy Dunnett's skill at performing astounding amounts of historical research for the purpose of finding the most symbolically angsty place for a confrontation. For example: learning all about the use of blood in Renaissance salt purification, just so she can have Niccolo engineer a murderous confrontation with his possibly!father in a deserted salt house, in a blizzard, over an enormous pit of boiling hot bull's blood. And that is not even the climax of the book! Some other truly exceptional set pieces over these past two books include:

- the drainage systems of Cairo during the rise of the Nile, in which Niccolo is tied up and left to drown
- the top of Mt. Sinai, where Niccolo and his wife consider the possibility of joint suicide (which: if you are going to offer this option, the top of Mt. Sinai is a hell of a place to do it)
- Venice at carnival-time, which I would not even mention because everyone does Venice at carnival-time, except this one also includes cross-dressing, kidnapping, and a chase across several gondolas
- a castle completely composed of trapdoors, secret springs, and funhouse mirrors for the purposes of practical jokes, in which an epic reunion takes place
- the three-foot-wide, thirty-foot-tall great wall of Edinburgh, where the protagonist and several members of the Scottish royalty play a game of football
- Iceland, where a volcano explodes

My personal favorite for sheer dramatic creativity may be the time that a three-year-old is almost murdered in a TREACHEROUS GAME OF RENAISSANCE GOLF. (A scheming eleven-year-old lures him off into the woods, then, instead of hitting the ball into the hole, attempts to swing it into the kid's head. Impressive if only for the sheer aim one would need to pull this off!)

However, nothing will ever top the EPIC DRAMA of Lymond's Tragic Game of Human Chess.

I'd sort of been dreading getting through Scales of Gold, the fourth book in the Niccolo series, because I knew it was the Africa one and . . . to put it bluntly, I love Dunnett but I like to think I am clear-eyed about her flaws and I really did not trust her to do Africa. On the other hand, I had also been looking forward to it because it introduces the awesome that is The Heroine! The Boulder was conflicted. :O

I was sort of right on both of these, although Africa was not quite as bad as I feared. I mean, she's clearly making an effort to emphasize that Africa is absolutely not a monolithic Continent of Savage Darkness, that in fact many places in Africa have a long history of culture and learning, and that it really, really does not need White Dudes to Come Save It, and I respect these efforts from her! And I also respect her willingness to show a realistic range of fifteenth-century attitudes about slavery, on all sides. At the same time, though, she often can't quite manage to break out of the Exoticized Adventure Fiction tropes, which makes for a few very othered characters and pretty cringeworthy scenes. I'm similarly conflicted about ( cut for rambling and spoilers about Loppe/Lopez/Umar - uh, that is one person with multiple names, not a very complicated pairing )

(As a sidenote, I also found it hilarious how getting to Ethiopia was IMPOSSIBLE, IMPOSSIBLE, THE FEAT THAT CAN NEVER BE ACCOMPLISHED, because I kept thinking back to the Elizabeth Wein books, where people sail cheerfully from England to Ethiopia every other page.)

On the other hand: this book totally ups the ante on female characters. COLD REVENGE-DRIVEN SUPERINTELLIGENT HEROINE who invites herself along on an epic doomed voyage for the sole purpose of bitching at her enemy the whole way. I LOVE HER. (And Bel! Cheerfully shrewd old Scottish ladies for the win. And they actually managed to pass the Bechdel test, which is pretty astounding, considering how few people in the books ever talk about anything but Nicholas. And Bel is all, "she is so awesome, I would take her home with me and be BFF with her even if she hated the whole world! . . . well, actually she does hate the whole world. OH WELL, STILL BFF.") ( Cut for OTP spoilers! )

I should note: I am not usually that interested in romances where it is just clear that one party is ridiculously bad for the other one, who is relatively sane, because I often just want to tell the sane one to get the hell out of there. (It does not help that the crazy damaged one is usually the guy, who can get away with anything, and the girl has to be nice and sweet and innocent. Double standard!) But I do have a secret weakness for pairings where BOTH parties are completely Machiavellian and manipulating and insane. Hey, better that they end up together than with anyone else, right?

So, guys: indulge my secret weakness! Tell me about your favorite TOTALLY INSANE AND UNHEALTHY OTP. (KYOUYA/AZULA!)

I've been (slowly) continuing my reread of Dorothy Dunnett's Niccolo books. In The Spring of the Ram, Nicholas & company (& mercenary troop) bounce off to Trebizond to help defend Emperor David against the oncoming Saracems; in Race of Scorpions, our hero bounces between two siblings who each want him to work for them to help them gain control of the island of Cyprus. Spring of the Ram, while twisty and fascinating and action-packed like all Dunnet, gets frustrating much of the time because it's essentially one massive debate over whether Nicholas's team is going to work together/with Nicholas or not, and he gets shunned for a while, and then he gets un-shunned, and after a while one gets tired of it. Race of Scorpions, on the other hand, is a lot of fun because of how sulky Nicholas is at first, and how much and how often he screws up and how twistily he has to contort to get out of it ("no, seriously, I was only pretending to be on the other side the last three times!") - and the last third, with the siege, is seriously intense.

Other impressions:
- I vaguely remember crushing hardcore on Tobie when I read the series the first time, and I seem to be in danger of doing this again. D: Sulky fictional bald doctors are not usually my type! But even though it is frustrating how it seems like he is deliberately misinterpreting sometimes, I really like how forthright he is about when he does and doesn't trust Nicholas, and how cranky he is, and how he is the kind of person who will hunt Nicholas down across the world JUST TO HAVE THE JOY of quitting the company in person. I also love how he always seems to be the one who gets stuck dressing up as the Loathly Lady when they are doing random Arthurian pageants. (Okay, this only happens once, but it is HILARIOUS.)

- Another thing that is hilarious: the running theme throughout both books of Byzantine emperors batting their eyelids at Nicholas while Nicholas is like "I, I do like you! But not in that way!" Also it is nice that at least one of those Byzantine emperors is not vilified for it, and is in fact pretty much acknowledged as a hot catch.

- I wish and will keep wishing that Dunnett does more with the Charetty daughters. (Also, re: Catherine in Spring of the Ram: I HATE THAT PLOT SO MUCH.)

- I really, really wish Nicholas' African majordomo Loppe was not so often silent, and that we were shown, more than told, his intelligence and importance; I notice him more now than I did on my last read, but it's not enough. (But I do love that he is the group linguist.)

- I like Katelina, and the Katelina scenes in this book especially were very powerful - and I do like all the powerful women behind the scenes. That said, a lot of them are very behind the scenes, and I am SO LOOKING FORWARD to the awesome angry bitter revenge-driven female protagonist of the series. Hopefully her arrival will make up for the amount of cringing I anticipate doing over the African setting in the next book!

Okay, so Dorothy Dunnett and me, we have a History.

We met in a library when I was fifteen, and - as you do, when you are fifteen - I fell into a great and probably unhealthy passion, specifically with the Lymond Chronicles. Thoroughly researched labyrinthine Renaissance politics! Sparkling banter and elaborate twisty prose! Ridiculously brilliant and tortured super-geniuses whose bucketloads of angst were so truly epic that they could only be alluded to through literary quotations, often in other languages! Tragic games of human chess! This was basically like porn to my teenaged self.

. . . and okay, I will sheepishly admit, is still quite a bit like porn to me now, although these days I am significantly more able to take a step back and laugh at some of the more melodramatic bits. But my pure and true fifteen-year-old Dunnett-love is far too great to ever put it behind me, and every so often I need to go back and get my fix.

Last time around was midway through college, with a reread of the Lymond books; this time, I decided it was time to give the Niccolo books another shot, which I never quite imprinted on the way I did the Lymond books. They're a bit more difficult, I think, and a lot less straightforward action porn-y - instead of dramatic political scheming, the Niccolo books also involve a lot of economic and trade scheming, which I find harder to follow. On the other hand, Lymond as a character creates great inner discord in me, because my adult self is like "oh good LORD, superhuman superwitty super angsty golden god, HAVE A NORMAL CONVERSATION EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE" while my inner fifteen-year-old is happily doodling "Lymond x Philippa and Danny x Becca 4EVER! <33333!" all over her mental notebook, and then there are bitchfights in my soul and it is all very awkward. But I did not crush on Niccolo as a kid, and - as I have discovered from a reread of Niccolo Rising - we get inside Niccolo's head a lot more than we do Lymond's, and see him screwing up a lot more, which makes him a lot less frustrating to me. And Dorothy Dunnett's gorgeous prose and her dry, sly humor, and occasional madcap ostrich chases through Bruges, are still kind of like porn to me. As it happens. So.

- what, you want a plot summary? Okay, here it is: at first, our protagonist looks a lot like a manic bastard child of Carrot Ironfoundersson and the Tenth Doctor, dropped into fifteenth-century Bruges to cause havoc. Then you start to figure out that actually, Niccolo is the bastard child of Carrot Ironfoundersson and Kyouya Ohtori.

Does that terrify you? IT SHOULD.

Basically Niccolo Rising is a book about Renaissance economic pwnage and the growth of a merchant empire, which of necessity also involves mercenaries, the Medici, and assassinations, and, because it is Dorothy Dunnett, also involves near-incestuous family relations, various degrees of severe emotional damage, and a lot of legitimately hilarious hijinks and caustic mockery of people's silly hats. Also it is educational! I suspect I have learned more about Renaissance politics from Dorothy Dunnett than I ever did from a textbook. I am for the most part very much looking forward to a leisurely reread through the rest of the series, and I am excited for the eventual introduction of the bitter revenge-driven heroine and the hatesex! o/ (Although I am faintly dreading the one set in Africa. :\)