The Game of Kings (Dorothy Dunnett)
I found this when clearing off shelves in the office. rebecca_m had picked it up years ago and never finished it. Not exactly a compelling recommendation to move something to the front of the reading list, but I was inspired by the glowing reviews of it as a classic on the order of O'Brien.
Some narratives are written so well they become cliche very quickly. Someone who had read a steady diet of mediocre epic fantasy would be taken aback to read Tolkein and discover what everyone was debasing. Any plotline where a notorious traitor is eventually revealed to be an unjustly accused loyalist working simultaneously through murky methods to protect his nation and clear his name now seems to me to be a debasement of Dunnett's impressively written protagonist, Francis Crawford of Lymond.
The setting is Scotland in the middle of the 16th century, with young Mary about to be pledged to France in exchange for troops to repulse the English after the humiliation at Pinkie. The fact that Lymond is essentially a self-appointed field operative allows Dunnett to give him significant responsibility for many of the events which unfold without diverging from the historical record, even placing his eventual trial in closed Assizes for internally consistent reasons.
The Game of Kings is very dense, in two different ways. In both plot and language it presumes a familiarity with 16th century Scottish history that most Americans will lack. I was only vaguely familiar with the battle of Pinkie Clough, despite being known as Black Saturday in Scotland. The plot starts in media res, and despite events flowing very densely, and Lymond pulls off many daring raids, crimes, misdirections, kidnappings, duels, and more, it's not until 100-150 pages in that it's even particularly clear what he might be trying to accomplish with all of this. Even when it's fairly clear Lymond is misdirecting things or allowing others to form deliberate misperceptions of him, we're never given a plotter's eye view to simplify things. By the time it's all laid out in the final trial it's probably redundant, but the plot has a depth of structure that bring most political fantasy to shame.
At the same time, Lymond speaks with densely allusive and poetic language, which is a bit problematic if your knowledge of the referential space of an educated gentleman of mid-16th Century Scotland is as limited as mine. I've read one comparison with Lord Peter Wimsey, and it's somewhat apt. But Wimsey only goes completely allusive when he's overexcited, and referential frame is much closer to contemporary. Lymond speaks this way almost exclusively for the first 150 pages, and predominantly for most of the rest of the book.
I found both of these densities intensely enjoyable, but I can imagine that for the wrong person or in the wrong mood they'd be a pure source of frustration. I'll almost certainly seek out the further adventures of Francis Crawford of Lymond, but only when I want to chew hard before I swallow my entertainment.
Some narratives are written so well they become cliche very quickly. Someone who had read a steady diet of mediocre epic fantasy would be taken aback to read Tolkein and discover what everyone was debasing. Any plotline where a notorious traitor is eventually revealed to be an unjustly accused loyalist working simultaneously through murky methods to protect his nation and clear his name now seems to me to be a debasement of Dunnett's impressively written protagonist, Francis Crawford of Lymond.
The setting is Scotland in the middle of the 16th century, with young Mary about to be pledged to France in exchange for troops to repulse the English after the humiliation at Pinkie. The fact that Lymond is essentially a self-appointed field operative allows Dunnett to give him significant responsibility for many of the events which unfold without diverging from the historical record, even placing his eventual trial in closed Assizes for internally consistent reasons.
The Game of Kings is very dense, in two different ways. In both plot and language it presumes a familiarity with 16th century Scottish history that most Americans will lack. I was only vaguely familiar with the battle of Pinkie Clough, despite being known as Black Saturday in Scotland. The plot starts in media res, and despite events flowing very densely, and Lymond pulls off many daring raids, crimes, misdirections, kidnappings, duels, and more, it's not until 100-150 pages in that it's even particularly clear what he might be trying to accomplish with all of this. Even when it's fairly clear Lymond is misdirecting things or allowing others to form deliberate misperceptions of him, we're never given a plotter's eye view to simplify things. By the time it's all laid out in the final trial it's probably redundant, but the plot has a depth of structure that bring most political fantasy to shame.
At the same time, Lymond speaks with densely allusive and poetic language, which is a bit problematic if your knowledge of the referential space of an educated gentleman of mid-16th Century Scotland is as limited as mine. I've read one comparison with Lord Peter Wimsey, and it's somewhat apt. But Wimsey only goes completely allusive when he's overexcited, and referential frame is much closer to contemporary. Lymond speaks this way almost exclusively for the first 150 pages, and predominantly for most of the rest of the book.
I found both of these densities intensely enjoyable, but I can imagine that for the wrong person or in the wrong mood they'd be a pure source of frustration. I'll almost certainly seek out the further adventures of Francis Crawford of Lymond, but only when I want to chew hard before I swallow my entertainment.