The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett
Written after having read the first half
The Ringed Castle, by Dorothy Dunnett, is a rather more glitteringly cold and distant book than the other books in the Lymond Chronicles. Less passionate than the hysteria of The Game of Kings or Pawn in Frankinscence, the book nevertheless has some notable moments of drama: the sleigh ride chase with Slata Baba, the flogging of Adam Blacklock, the fishscapade between Lymond and Vishnevetsky. In general, however, the action and the understanding we might glean from the text about the main character's motivation and thoughts is numbed by the cold of the book as if it were a Russian winter itself.
Dunnett has written 6 books about the adventures of Francis Crawford of Lymond, a Scottish nobleman ostracized and desired by most of the crownheads of Europe. This is the fifth book, set in Russia at the court of Ivan the Terrible, and it gives us the least insight into Lymond's thoughts.
Crawford does numerous damnable things during the course of the book: killing a Tartar girl, flogging a friend, and numerous other things. What's astounding is the reader's inability to justify these actions on the part of a hero in the face of the latter's rather remarkable ability to obscure his own motivations even when explaining himself to friends.
In one scene, Crawford asks Ludovic d'Harcourt to bury the remains of a Tartar girl that he's killed. He claims that she was a murderess, a non-virgin, and in the employ of a Cossack prince who may wish to test Crawford's strength or assassinate him (and therefore it is justifiable that he kill her -- I wonder if she had been a virgin murderess if it were less justifiable). He speaks in a dismissive and repulsive manner and it is unclear if he really thinks of women this way or if he's testing d'Harcourt's reaction to his actions. After multiple readings, the reader cannot be sure for, as is discovered later, d'Harcourt is not to be trusted and Lymond, even at this early point, may be aware of this fact.
Another scene, the flogging of Adam Blacklock, is highly damnable especially in the eyes of our putative representative and observer, Diccon Chancellor. Adam, it appears, has been secretly teaching 3 Russian ikon painters how to oil paint, which is seditious and irreligious by the standards of the Tsar Ivan. The Tsar will have Adam flogged, but the Voevoda Bolshoia (Lymond) demands to do it himself and proceeds to flog Adam severely. There is some implication that Lymond does it himself to prevent Adam from being flogged to death, but this is immediately contradicted by a description of the Tsar watching him closely to see if he does just that. We may derive from this that Lymond thus cannot spare Adam. Another possibility is that Adam put them all in danger and thus Lymond's flogging is just. In addition, Lymond himself knows exactly how flogging feels so there's some brutal justification in him meting out a punishment that he once suffered.
The unreliability of Lymond even when he speaks about his own actions is severe. The one measure the reader can take of the veracity of what he says is who he is saying it to. For example, when he speaks with Chancellor he seems to speak the truth. But with d'Harcourt, Vishnevetsky, the Tsar, Güzel and even Hoslip, he seems to use double-talk, evasions and even outright lies.
Thus, the fact is that this book, cold and distant, distances us from our hero and our ability to respect him in anything but his skills. He could be a great villain or a persecuted and damned hero -- we cannot know.
If there is a failing in Dunnett's book, it's not her lack of skill with language or her brilliance in pacing, but her choice to remove us from Lymond's emotions and thus to eradicate any chance of us identifying with him.
The Ringed Castle, by Dorothy Dunnett, is a rather more glitteringly cold and distant book than the other books in the Lymond Chronicles. Less passionate than the hysteria of The Game of Kings or Pawn in Frankinscence, the book nevertheless has some notable moments of drama: the sleigh ride chase with Slata Baba, the flogging of Adam Blacklock, the fishscapade between Lymond and Vishnevetsky. In general, however, the action and the understanding we might glean from the text about the main character's motivation and thoughts is numbed by the cold of the book as if it were a Russian winter itself.
Dunnett has written 6 books about the adventures of Francis Crawford of Lymond, a Scottish nobleman ostracized and desired by most of the crownheads of Europe. This is the fifth book, set in Russia at the court of Ivan the Terrible, and it gives us the least insight into Lymond's thoughts.
Crawford does numerous damnable things during the course of the book: killing a Tartar girl, flogging a friend, and numerous other things. What's astounding is the reader's inability to justify these actions on the part of a hero in the face of the latter's rather remarkable ability to obscure his own motivations even when explaining himself to friends.
In one scene, Crawford asks Ludovic d'Harcourt to bury the remains of a Tartar girl that he's killed. He claims that she was a murderess, a non-virgin, and in the employ of a Cossack prince who may wish to test Crawford's strength or assassinate him (and therefore it is justifiable that he kill her -- I wonder if she had been a virgin murderess if it were less justifiable). He speaks in a dismissive and repulsive manner and it is unclear if he really thinks of women this way or if he's testing d'Harcourt's reaction to his actions. After multiple readings, the reader cannot be sure for, as is discovered later, d'Harcourt is not to be trusted and Lymond, even at this early point, may be aware of this fact.
Another scene, the flogging of Adam Blacklock, is highly damnable especially in the eyes of our putative representative and observer, Diccon Chancellor. Adam, it appears, has been secretly teaching 3 Russian ikon painters how to oil paint, which is seditious and irreligious by the standards of the Tsar Ivan. The Tsar will have Adam flogged, but the Voevoda Bolshoia (Lymond) demands to do it himself and proceeds to flog Adam severely. There is some implication that Lymond does it himself to prevent Adam from being flogged to death, but this is immediately contradicted by a description of the Tsar watching him closely to see if he does just that. We may derive from this that Lymond thus cannot spare Adam. Another possibility is that Adam put them all in danger and thus Lymond's flogging is just. In addition, Lymond himself knows exactly how flogging feels so there's some brutal justification in him meting out a punishment that he once suffered.
The unreliability of Lymond even when he speaks about his own actions is severe. The one measure the reader can take of the veracity of what he says is who he is saying it to. For example, when he speaks with Chancellor he seems to speak the truth. But with d'Harcourt, Vishnevetsky, the Tsar, Güzel and even Hoslip, he seems to use double-talk, evasions and even outright lies.
Thus, the fact is that this book, cold and distant, distances us from our hero and our ability to respect him in anything but his skills. He could be a great villain or a persecuted and damned hero -- we cannot know.
If there is a failing in Dunnett's book, it's not her lack of skill with language or her brilliance in pacing, but her choice to remove us from Lymond's emotions and thus to eradicate any chance of us identifying with him.