CHECKMATE - Dorothy Dunnett

The final novel in the Lymond Chronicles, this is the natural culmination of everything that has gone before. Rather than return to Russia, as he had intended, Francis Crawford returns to France. Here, years earlier, he made a fool of the entire French court, posing as an Irish troubadour (QUEEN'S PLAY). Now the French have asked (forced) him to lead an army against England. But as the glib and genius soldier-scholar shows his mettle on the battlefield, his origins becomes a subject of intense interest to forces in both the French and English courts. For whoever knows the secret of Lymond's parentage possesses the power to control him -- or destroy him.

The word checkmate comes from the Persian phrase Shāh Māt - "the King is Defeated" (or ambushed, or helpless. Often it is taken to mean "the King is Dead," but that is an Arabic, not Persian, meaning) Appropriately, this novel does indeed play out upon that highest of levels - a war between royals. The cast includes young princess Elizabeth and the astrologer Nostradamus, but it's the familiar characters from the series that are most wonderful - and awful. As the final part plays out, like the fatal game of chess in PAWN IN FRANKINCENSE, you both mourn for and rail against their fates. Yet there are typically astonishing Dunnett moments - the opening cockfight; the race of Lymond and Philippa across the whole of Paris, laughing as they elude death; the reuiniting of Lymond with his mother, who is determined to save his unwilling life; and the final scene - indeed, the final page, where all the secrets are revealed, and checkmate is fulfilled.

While the two middle books are my favorites from the series (and, indeed, PAWN is my favorite book inthe world), this novel is so complete, it is more like a feast. After all that had gone before, Dunnett had really set the bar quite high, but CHECKMATE clears it. It is emotionally brutal, but so utterly satisfying that you'll want to start the series all over again. Or, at least, I do. I've read through it three times, not to mention the many times I've picked up one of the novels to remind myself of a scene, a phrase, a beat. Dunnett is an author who will invade your blood, change who you are. You will remember the world differently once you've read her works. I can offer no higher praise.

THE RINGED CASTLE - Dorothy Dunnett

The fifth novel in the Lymond Chronicles is arguably the weakest. Like CAPRICE AND RONDO, Dunnett's penultimate Niccolo novel, this whole book feels like a set-up for the final stage. In fact, this book divides neatly into two halves.

The first is in Russia, where, after the brutalizing events of PAWN, Lymond is reinventing himself yet again. This time he's the chosen man of Ivan the Terrible. Lymond sees in Russia a world fraught with possibility - the mad and ambitious ruler, the stark terrain, the manly atmosphere, the lack of sophistication - a world looking at the Renaissance from the outside, and longing to join in. Lymond sets up his company of mercenaries (which they are never called, but what they amount to), to bring Russia into the modern military age.

But in Scotland, people want him home - though few for his own good. One of those plotting to bring him back from this self-imposed exile is Phillippa, now nominally his wife. Having married her to protect her in PAWN, Lymond has begun the divorce proceedings in order to free her from what he imagines must be an intolerable encumbrance. But Phillippa's feelings on the matter are altogether different - convinced Lymond actually loves her mother, she is proceeding with the divorce because she imagines it's what he wants.

When the Tsar of Russia sends an unwilling Lymond as his ambassador to England, he is thrust back into the world he meant to leave forever - and into the presence of a woman he loves, whom he must protect from all things - but most importantly, himself.

Both halves are interesting, and have some typically indelible Dunnett scenes. But with the ship expedition she loses me, and nothing here works together in quite the way it should. Having set the bar so very high in PAWN, it's natural that there should be a brief lull before CHECKMATE. But when I reread the series, this is the book I find myself skimming.

A PAWN IN FRANKINCENSE by Dorothy Dunnett

My favorite novel in the world.

I could argue, perhaps, for SLEEPING IN FLAME. Apples and oranges. But if I were on a remote desert isle and could have only one novel, this would be it. Dear lord, what a ride!

Picking up just weeks after the end of THE DISORDERLY KNIGHTS, Lymond embarks upon a hunt for the child who may or may not be his. In fact, there are two children, both in constant danger. One is Gabriel's incestuous child born of his dead sister, the other Lymond's. But Gabriel has engineered it so that no one - not even he - is sure which is which.

The children are used as lures, drawing Lymond across Europe and North Africa as he follows the trail of clues the malevolent Gabriel has laid for him. But Lymond is not alone in this. Others have interposed themselves into this very personal duel, some from the best intentions, some for their own gain. Friends die with alarming rapidity, enemies too, and the betrayals come in like floodtides. After watching the brilliance of the battle between Lymond and Gabriel range the whole of Europe, we find them come to their final blows at the glittering Court of the Ottoman Sultan Sulemain the Magnificent. Lymond must summon all of his courage and willpower to triumph in a game of chess with his friends and foes alike taking the place of the pieces. In this ultimate battle between the two men, the core of Lymond's character is revealed in the most brutal of settings, and at last we see the man the world has made of him.

When I say that I have never experienced a literary sucker-punch the likes of Dunnett's, I am referring to this novel. Nothing else comes close.

THE DISORDERLY KNIGHTS

Here begins one of the greatest story arcs in the history of literature - I kid you not. The near friendship turned bitter enmity between our rascal hero, Francis Crawford of Lymond, and the noble, godly Knight Hospitaller Gabriel Graham Mallett is, to me, superior to any rivalry ever written - better than Holmes and Moriarty, Bond and Blofeld, Harry Potter and Voldemort, Robin Hood and Guy of Guisbourne - even King Arthur and Mordred pale in comparison to these two men.

Why? Because while we root for Lymond out of sheer familiarity, throughout this novel it is never clear who is the hero, and who the villain. For no one is a villain in their own mind.

This novel begins with a brief short story that takes place before the events of QUEEN'S PLAY. Then we leap to afterwards, as France and Scotland begin to wrangle over the fate of Lymond. Both nations have, by now, seen the value in having such a man working towards their interests, and both are keen to entice him.

But there is a third entity with eyes on Lymond - the Crusading Knights Hospitaller, and the leader of the Scottish faction within the Knights, Graham Mallett. Lymond is lured to Malta, just in time to face the attack of the Turk.

The battle lost, the Order all but destroyed, he returns to Scotland - with Mallett, who brings along his sister, the innocent and heart-breaking Joleta. Everyone tries to push Lymond into a marriage entanglement with Joleta, which would bind him to the noble Mallett, the ultimate goal of nearly all Lymond's friends. They see him as too wild, and believe he will settle under Mallett's steady hand.

This is, however, Dunnett writing, so nothing is as it seems - not Lymond, not Mallett, not even Joleta. After a string of seeming-accidents, and much debauchery by Lymond, the final confrontation occurs - and several characters meet their fate at once, in the church in Edinburgh's High Street, where pawns we never knew existed are brought into play. An amazing read, and a primer for the sequel, which is my single most beloved novel in the world.

QUEEN'S PLAY by Dorothy Dunnett

The second of the Lymond Chronicles begins with a visit from the Dowager Queen and the child Mary (future Queen of Scots) to France, and a plot to murder the child. There's a lovely head-fake as to which character in the Irish delegation is the disguised Lymond, and which is real. Lymond, his status in Scotland restored, has been sent to protect the six year-old princess, and discover the identity of the assassin. In modern spy terms, he is a deniable asset - if caught, he will not be rescued. He is a true secret agent, with a cover identity, in the Tudor era.

Dunnett gives Lymond a new love-interest which, combined with a brief prophecy, are the only elements of ths novel that really push the Lymond story forward. If the first book was introducing the character, this one lays the groundwork for the massive arc to come. But, like THE GAME OF KINGS, this is a self-contained story, complete in and of itself. That will not be true of the rest of the series.

Perhaps that's the reason why, of all the Lymond novels, I remember this one least. It feels just a trifle out of place. Perhaps it's that Lymond spends so much time "method acting" in his Irish role that it's hardly a Lymond novel at all - though it is fun to watch his mete out cruel hilarity at the expense of the country that enslaved him for two years. Something is rotten in the flower of French nobility, and he does his damndest to expose it.

Also true that there are moments from this one that leap into my memory, but they're hazy, incomplete. Whereas with every other novel in the series, there are images, scenes, bits of dialogue, that are forever seared into my brain - a few I would be grateful to shake, many that still leave me breathless. This novel suffers, but only in comparison. In terms of Dunnett, and novels in general, it is excellent. The problem is, having set the bar so very high with her later books, one tends to ignore the deftness of the earlier ones.

13th Night, by Alan Gordon - Sherry's Review

If you have not read Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night lately or Shakespeare is not your favorite author you will still love Thirteenth Night, the first of Alan Gordon's Fool’s Guild Mysteries. Gordon has extensively researched the formerly secret guild of fools. Jesters throughout the known world working, (when, possible in courts, much more lucrative) but anywhere there is an audience. The fools work for peace with the approval of the Roman Catholic Church or without. The guild loosely controlling and directing the network of spies, all of them foolish, all bent on preventing war among other atrocities.

Thirteenth Night continues the story of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, just from a different view. (Fraternal Twins, brother and sister, are shipwrecked neither knowing that the other has survived. The sister dresses as her brother and falls in love with her host. The brother is mistaken for his sister, and is accused of wooing a women and then denying it. Of course it was the brother who wooed and the sister who denied. The sister was being disguised as the brother therefore, the confusion. Since this is one of the comedies all end happily married, to royalty of course, presumably ever after.)

Sadly, ever after, according to Thirteenth Night, doesn’t last forever. We pick up the story when Viola (the sister), is suddenly widowed. Since Viola’s husband's habit has been to go off crusading, leaving her to run things, then returning and expecting her to drop everything, including all power. Thus Viola is not as broken up as might be expected at her husband's demise. Viola’s children will rule, not her, and in the meantime Viola doesn’t even get to be regent.

Enter Theophilos the Fool. Viola has met this particular fool before (albeit under another name) and so goes the story. There is some confusion as to what is historical and what is fiction. After all much of what Shakespeare wrote was based on history and through him we get some of our most famous historical fiction. Also the most inaccurate. This story is a mystery as well, adding yet another genre.

So, if you like mysteries you should like this cleverly written book whether you care about middle ages or not. If your interest in Shakespeare is that of a fanatic, read it, if only to search for inconsistencies. If Shakespeare is not your bent, read it for the richness of the history but read it. Whatever your motive, you won’t be disappointed.

Reviews by Sherry

I've asked a few people to pitch in on the reviews in this dark wood. One of them is Dr. Sherry Murphy, an old friend and mentor of mine. She reads just about everything, but for our purposes, she'll be reviewing mostly mysteries. As it so happens, her first review is of a novel I've actually read, published by my publisher and edited by my editor. That was total chance, and quite amusing.

So, enjoy another voice calling from among the trees, and I'll be up with more reviews of my own toot sweet.

DB