LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
The Lymond books, for me, are unmatched in many ways. Research, period feel, intensely vivid characters, wit, high drama, scintillating dialogue. The first book, The Game of Kings, is notoriously a challenge to get into. Fair warning. Dunnett uses an elliptical style and obscure quotes and references to a purpose. Her protagonist is simply smarter than everyone he deals with — and she puts the reader in that puzzle-him-out position, too. It is very effective, once one settles in.
Selected by our Spring 2021 Guest Editor, Guy Gavriel Kay
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The Game Of Kings Synopsis
'I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands'
It is 1547 and, after five years imprisonment and exile far from his homeland, Francis Crawford of Lymond - scholar, soldier, rebel, nobleman, outlaw - has at last come back to Edinburgh.
But for many in an already divided Scotland, where conspiracies swarm around the infant Queen Mary like clouds of midges, he is not welcome.
Lymond is wanted for treason and murder, and he is accompanied by a band of killers and ruffians who will only bring further violence and strife.
Is he back to foment rebellion?
Does he seek revenge on those who banished him?
Or has he returned to clear his name?
No one but the enigmatic Lymond himself knows the truth - and no one will discover it until he is ready . . .
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Press Reviews
Dorothy Dunnett Press Reviews
Praise for Dorothy Dunnett - -
A storyteller who could teach Scheherazade a thing or two about pace, suspense and imaginative invention - New York Times
Marvellous, breathtaking - The Times
A masterpiece of historical fiction - Washington Post
One of the greatest tale-spinners since Dumas - Cleveland Plain Dealer
Lashings of excitement, colour and subtlety - The Times
Vivid, engaging, densely plotted - are almost certainly destined to be counted among the classics of popular fiction - New York Times
Author
About Dorothy Dunnett
Frequently described as the finest historical fiction writer of her time, Dorothy Dunnett earned worldwide acclaim for her blend of scholarship and imagination. She is best known for her two superb series of historical fiction - The Lymond Chronicles and The House of Niccolo - set in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and ranging across Europe and the Mediterranean, and for King Hereafter, the eleventh-century story of Earl Thorfinn of Orkney whom Dorothy believed was also King Macbeth. In 1992, Dorothy Dunnett was awarded the OBE for her services to literature, and in 2014 Dunnett's most enduring hero, Francis Crawford of Lymond, was voted Scotland's favourite literary character - beating the likes of Sherlock Holmes, Harry Potter and Ivanhoe. Dunnett died 9 November 2001, having sold half a million copies internationally.
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