Dorothy Dunnett - why has it taken me so long?

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Now and again someone has recommended DD to me, and I've always given up on them, finding them too dense. But, for some reason, the Niccolo series has 'clicked' for me. I'm half-way through the 5th one.
I just can't believe how good they are, and amazing female characters are found in them.
I'm already worried about finishing the last one. Are the Lymond books as good?

Oh dear, having started this thread, I've failed at the last hurdle. I just couldn't be bothered to read the last Lymond. Like the Niccolo books, the love bit is just too extended.
And I'm finding Lymond less and less interesting.
Maybe I'll give it another go next year.

Not read Checkmate? I have to go and lie down for a bit. It's a total wonder of a book.

It has to be read! You have to find out what is really going on!

I've now restarted checkmate and, 2nd time round, things make more sense. I'm normally a fast reader, and I think that dd doesn't suit fast readers.
But, from the 1st reading, and SPOILER ALERT

did Phillippa think she was going to be raped? And don't other posters find that level of sacrifice distasteful?

Dunnett requires slow reading for me.

Phillippa was joining him in his gutter. It was the only way to hold him to the marriage and keep him from going back to Russia to be killed.

Weep for me - I left Lymond in GoK captued, and went to hospital where they injected my good eye, scampered back, to find I can't read it. Being paper I can't blow it up. The mag glass is woozy. I shakk have rp wait till it wears off. And I wasnt now abar happens next.

Listen to it on audible!

I hope your eye heals up quickly Treaclewell!

That sounds horrible Treaclewell, I hope you feel better soon.

Eye's recovered and I have read on. I don't find listening a good way of enjoying books, though it may come to it. Can listen to plays, currently Wimsey, Strong Poison, but the battery ran out.
Must go to tip, tipping canisters of NO2 dumped by someone on the roadside which must remove from temptation to teens, before Sunak puts me in jail for possessing them. May be empty, though. Food grade, apparently, can't imagine what food uses it. Can imagine what use Lymond might make of the stuff!

Finished Game of Kings, ordered Queens Play. Interesting to compare the search for documents with Checkmate, but Will didn't have to go to such lengths to get them. And was the Advocate of the time really called Harry Lauder?

I must admit I was disappointed when I looked back that there didn’t appear to be a mention of Kilmirren in TLC. It felt like quite a presence, so I was hoping there had been mention of it having been passed down

Treaclewell - he was certainly called Henry Lauder and shortening it to Harry very likely, and a good joke too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Lauder,_Lord_St_Germains

Thanks for that. I think history as taught in my youth should have included more of the three nations, and Cornwall. I am disgustingly ignorant of Wales, Ireland and Scotland, and only after camping on the Lizard found out about Michael an Gof and a lawyer from Truro who led a protesting group up to Blackheath via Guildford where they won a battle only to be slaughtered at Blackheath. Knew about Trelawney because of the song. I know this is a tangent. But I'm just thinking we need a people's history, both of the people and the peoples. I've got a Welsh history, and an Irish. Must do something about Scotland. Pity Lymond is the upper class. Not the sort of Wat Tyler and Jack Cade.
Queens' Play has just arrived. Hooray!

I think Dunnett rather undersold Henry Lauder. My goodness, what a career.

I like his property Netherthrid!

That’s a really good point but I supposed it would have counted as a spoiler. Maybe its name changed.

The Disorderly Knights have arrived. Just going to start. Liked the plotting of Queen's Play in which one could predict how useful Hughie would be in the finish!

Have finished Disorderly Knights (must read the history to see if they were that bad). But the final scene in Edinburgh has struck me as being a bit operatic, and G&S at that. (Yeomen of the Guard, not the more comic ones.) Buccleuch just happens to be on the street, Lymond just happens to find him and Gabriel just happens upon him, and then they end up in St Giles with a full chorus of law officials and witnesses, after curfew. I hope there's no serious spoilers there. But it's so convenient. It only missed Mary of Guise coming in like Katisha as a dramatic contralto.
Anyway, I've the next two books ordered - both because it's a BOG10%O offer! I won't get any housework done.
What is odd is that I know I read them before, I remember talking about them with a friend, but none of it seems familiar so far. I am expecting familiarity with the seraglio passages, but the earlier stuff is totally unfamiliar. Odd. I did predict Gabriel's scar, but that was implicit narrative structure, not memory.

Actually, the Dame in the Tower "The screw may twist and the rack may turn, and men may bleed and men may burn..." sounds more like de Guise.

The books are operatic though. In a less skilled writer they could have been very very dreadful.

I just finished a reread of the Ringed Castle. I'd forgotten just how harrowing parts of it are.

Random tangent here as I await Pawn in Frankincense. Where else have I met a central character like Lymond? With elements of trickster, skills, basic decency (if under cover). Sir Percy Blakeney, Lord Peter Wimsey, Robin Hood, James Bond (uses women, though and trickery provided by Q), Dr Syn (nasty as a pirate, marries someone much too young), Odysseus, Sherlock Holmes (not likable). I thought I had another one but he's wandered off.
Can anyone suggest others?

Woke with the information of a real one. Patrick Leigh Fermor, initially as portrayed by Dirk Bogarde, but his bio in Wikepedia shows that Lymonds can actually exist.

I have always thought that Lord Peter Wimsey is the most similar fictional character to Lymond- daring, speaks many languages, very musical etc etc. However DLS fell in love with her creation so forgot to give him any weaknesses. Whereas Lymond has loads which ultimately make him more attractive.

I think I saw Wimsey cited on a page by DD, as a character she may have been influenced by, but he does have PTSD from WWI, and occasionally has spells of needing support, and somewhere, but it may have been another author, he was all for beating his son for some trivial breach.
I note how many of the attractive ones are the product of women's pens. It almost makes me think the Victorian chap (Butler?) who thought the Odyssey was written by a woman, because the rigging of the ship was wrong, was right.

Robert graves wrote a book where the odyssey is written by Nausicca. Homers daughter I think