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?

As Bart Simpson pointed out, the good looking rebel who plays by his own rules is a character women often fall for, and Lymond is a classic example. As are, for example, Han Solo, Capt Mal Reynolds of Firefly, most of Georgette Heyer’s heroes , Robin Hood etc etc. It’s a tribute to DD’s skill as a writer that she lifts Lymond above the stereotype.

Dr Syn! I loved those as a child. There was a tv series with , I think, Patrick MacGoohan.

Wimsey is one of DD's influencers and she said her husband was another.

If you're going to allow Heyer's heroes, then also Mr Darcy. The way he goes secretively to sort out Lydia and Wickham, and the opinion of his servants at Pemberley put him into that mould.
I wonder if Graves and Butler in attributing Homer of the Odyssey as a woman is a not so subtle put down. The Odyssey is not to be considered as equal to the Iliad or that boring book the Aeneid.
How lovely for Dunnett to have a husband she could see as her hero.

I'm a big Lymond fan, or at least Lymond books fan - the character himself is not one of my favourites. I've been reading them since I was in my teens. My favourite character is usually Richard, but on my last re-reading he began to get on my nerves for a while during the last two books - "you ought to see mum" veered almost into EastEnders territory where "she's faaaaaaamly" seems to trump anything else. What would we say to Lymond if he came on here saying how VVVU his DM was B?

I've never read Niccolo. When they were still coming out I was scared to, in case she died before they were all finished. Now I can't get hold of them. My local library service doesn't have them, although it did have Lymond (a newish edition without the awful covers).

I have just got the first Niccolo book on audible @moonshinepoursthroughmywindow as I started and didn't finish it years ago and thought audiobook my be better. The whole series is available. Can you get audiobooks through your library?

I'm now half way through The Ringed Castle. But I've found myself doing something I have not liked readers of othr books doing, criticising a trivial error by an author. Rose types in Cadfael for example. DD obviously has visited places and described them from her observations. Like Istanbul in PiF. Where she describes the plane trees. But when I was there, the guide was careful to explain that they were London Planes, and we expressed surprise that they were there. But separate from the geography, that is a hybrid which did not appear till the 17th century. So Philippa could not have seen them. I wish I hadn't known that! Because once the one thing that I know is wrong, I start to doubt the rest. Fortunately, I know nothing about Russia at the period!

The niggle that I have never quite managed to shake off, is how Lymond is so accomplished, so notorious, so well known to so many (history with Margaret Lennox etc) when he was only 21 and had been in exile/rowing in galleys since the age of 16. Even if he was 25, it would have been more believable. The contrast with Niccolo, who we first meet as a gawky youth is even greater as we watch his growth.

One thing I'm finding interesting and which as author she could not include is the light the Ringed Castle shines on the present Tsar's interests. The Crimea, for example, has a long history as well as being an opening to the Black Sea. The Baltic states are right to be worried.

Same, and also the “one sea voyage with a person is enough to learn their language to the point where you can pass as a native speaker” - but I find it’s best to let that pass as a “slightly magical acceptability”

eta meant to quote @crumpet here!

Treaclewell - I'm afraid Dunnett's right and your guide was wrong - in a way. A lot of the plane trees in Istanbul now are London planes but the Balkans were famous for Platanus orientalis which is different and what Dunnet means. The oldest oriental plane in Istanbul is thought to be 1300 years old.

I'm glad about that. I wondered about orientalis, which seemed more likely. I wonder why they decided to plant the London variety. I'm relieved.

I don't know why they decided to plant the London ones in the streets - they definitely still have the orientalis in the parks. I don't know whether it's to do with the London ones coping better with the pollution or something.

My pet hate is the fact Lymond quotes poetry that's not actually even been written at the time he quotes it. Some of it's early C17th yet Lymond manages to quote it like a good 'un. She gets far more scrupulous in the Niccolo books but she wanted the poetry for the romance of it, I suppose (and so he can be a clever clogs).

I am now recognising in bit parts the ancestors of, on one side my nephews, on the other my nieces, by very fringe descendants of real people. One of whom is now being beastly in a political way. Fascinating.

Yes he's definitely a clever clogs @mimbleandlittlemy ! There are people with remarkable and inexplicable abilities to pick up languages/play musical instruments/do maths but I always think of Lymond as some unearthly higher level being which is why I find him so fascinating!

Mytholmroyd, I love Lymond but would rather be with Adam Blacklock or Jerrott. Or Danny Hislop for the laughs.

Yes! He's hardly a relaxing funny guy is he!

I've now read the lot and am puzzled by how little I remember. For instance, that awful chess game, and the beatings. Nothing. Most things I read, I have a memory of, can recall by holding the book, don't need to reread. I think I may have to see if the same thing has happened to Asimov and Foundation. My brain is now riffling through Persuasion and P&P, What Katy did Next. Stop it!...
Now rereading Checkmate with all the background fresh.

And now I have reread Checkmate, and blow me, bits of it had quite vanished. But I now know what happened to the money, half a sentence. And as to whether Philippa knew what LB was going to do, in their earlier interview she had stressed that only money was on offer, but there must have been lurking a suspicion, from his behaviour at that time.
And I knew there was another anachronism, but had forgotten what it was, a quite important event, wnich is a pity. DD liked describing Lymond swimming, and indeed a man doing the crawl is quite entrancing, elegant, shows him off well. (Not if he's racing, but at leisure.) But he couldn't have displayed his arms like that, if the history of swimming is to be believed. My father, a competitive swimmer, started off doing the trudgeon, in which the recovery, like breaststroke, is in the water. Then he was introduced to what was initially called the Australian crawl, it must have been in the late 20s.
Unless someone can enlighten me about the style being around earlier. I have over the years tried to ascertain what people did in the past. I can't believe the Romans taught the legions dog paddle.
I shall persist in envisioning Francis doing the crawl.

Bother, can't edit. Primitive peoples may have done a crawl, but Wikipedia doesn't show the cited images. Contact with America may have introduced it, but it wasn't gentlemanly - splashed too much. There are books on swimming from the 16th century, but pictures not available.

Trudgen, a famous gentleman, 19th century.

I love Lymond but would rather be with Adam Blacklock or Jerrott. Or Danny Hislop for the laughs.

How about Tom Erskine?

Poor Tom Erskine.

Having read the "Enigma of Francis Crawford" - academic pricing, but it was a gift, I am now rereading again, and bits have vanished again. I have found a real error though! He flicks a silver coin on the fire and it melts. I've checked. Wood fire up to 1000F, silver melting point 1900 something, so unless it was silver plated pewter not possible. Probably a metaphor. I think there is something similar elsewhere, possibly in the alchemy in Game of Kings
But my goodness, if she put her husband into Lymond, what she did to him! Whipped on the galleys, shot in the chest by a hackbut, near death, Burned in the incident with the elephants at the bridge. Broken leg and collarbone in Blois, near death, and I haven't finished Queens Play yet! I know there is worse coming with Mallet. He's nothing but scar tissue. Not to mention the psychological scars.
As for his age, we sent people to war before they were 20. Patrick Leigh Fermor was not much older and had already been around Europe by the time he was on Crete kidnapping generals. But my friend's dad was piloting bombers at 19, as were his fellows, and he was a lucky one. And I was thinking last week about the lads who swam to the beaches at night to defuse the mines on the timber obstacles, and whose bodies were seen as the main body of the forces fought their way up the beaches. My dad would have been with them, but he was on a course when the volunteering form went round, or I wouldn't have been here. He wasn't that young, but I think we forget how nations slaughter their boys, and what they can be capable of. Lymond isn't quite as exceptional as he seems from now.

It was quite usual to go to university in your mid teens. And boys could be serving at sea in the Royal Navy in their early teens. Nelson was only twelve when he first went to sea.

And it's not that long ago that the majority of people left school at 14 or 15 and entered the workplace.

And now I have reread Checkmate, and blow me, bits of it had quite vanished. But I now know what happened to the money, half a sentence.

What did happen to the money? I've never registered that and I'm not home to go through Checkmate to find out! I have obviously skimmed past it.