Niccolo Rising, Spring of the Ram, Race of Scorpions, Scales of Gold by Dorothy Dunnett

[lightreads]

First four books of the Niccolo series (there are eight in total). This is the story of Claes AKA Nicholas AKA Niccolo van der Poele and his meteoric, often painful rise from a dyer’s apprentice to one of the premier businessmen in sixteenth-century Europe. Nicholas is brilliant, hilarious, and possessed of the sort of intellect and drive that are simultaneously intoxicating and very dangerous. He is a dyer, a toymaker, a natural mathematician, a fighter, a shameless cheat, a man of complex and often alarming motivations. He forms the backbone of these books, along with his friends and lovers and enemies, and the stories sprawl out around him to take in Bruges and Turkey and Cyprus and Africa, politics and business and high social drama, hilarity and romance and terrible tragedy.

The books are simply brilliant, in the way of writing that grabs you by the throat and the brainstem equally. Dunnett’s command of history is engrossing, her prose tense and precise, her characters crackling. Her writing is impressive because it looks easy – there’s something so perfectly balanced and poised about these books, as if every word is in the right place, and there to do some work. And they certainly do work – I laughed, I gasped, I squealed, I sniffled, I groaned. I also paid extraordinary amounts of attention, because not a conversation goes by that doesn’t have at least two layers tucked slyly beneath, horrifying or funny or just illuminating. These books are quite honestly the most intellectually invigorating things I’ve read in years.

I have quibbles (hi, I’m Light, and I quibble with books). Dunnett seems to really enjoy a helping of dramatic irony, both in portraying characters who spend a great deal of time wondering and thrashing about disasters the reader already knows about, and in ducking into the heads of people who spectacularly fail to comprehend Nicholas and the tides that move around him. It’s frankly annoying, though I should also clarify this is predictably my least favorite literary device.

I was also a bit . . . overwhelmed, by the end of Scales of Gold. Dunnett has a way of punching you in the kidneys in the last four pages, and perhaps it’s that these books are the only fiction I’ve been reading for nearly two months, but by the end the twist of family and revenge and counter-revenge had been amped up to a pitch I found a bit ear-splitting. Baroque is perhaps the word I’m looking for. I couldn’t put these books down, but now I desperately need to read anything else for a long time before I go on. Which is also the sign of incredibly . . . operant literature, come to think of it.

Quite the best things I’ve read in years, no exaggeration or caveats.

Comments

[cyphomandra.livejournal.com]

I burnt out on the Niccolo series halfway through the Unicorn Hunt and needed about ten weeks to recover, which would have been fine if I hadn't kept the library's copy of the book until my strength returned, thus incurring some rather impressive overdue fines. I think I felt I couldn't admit defeat.

I did love Scales of Gold (especially Umar, sadly), but overall I'm far more fond of the Lymond series than the Niccolo, although I do love the vast amounts of world and people that you get in both series. And the writing is amazing. Although, as you say, challenging. I keep eyeing up the companions, but sometimes I think what I really want is a kind of annotated version of Dunnett, where after you read three pages of wilfully oblique conversation someone explains exactly what it all means, in the sort of helpful tone that suggests you probably already got most of this, but maybe you were having an off day.

[lightreads.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't know when I'll be able to pick up Unicorn Hunt. I mean, I'm in no rush -- they're not going anywhere -- but it's frustrating to both want to keep going and to be utterly incapable of reading any more right now. I haven't even touched Lymond yet, and I'm really hoping the large amounts of anticipation don't end up making it a let-down when I finally get there.