The return of THE GAME OF KINGS

[swan_tower]

It’s no secret that I love Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles: a historical fiction series set in mid-sixteenth century Europe, starting off with English and Scottish politics, but eventually ranging farther afield to locations like France, the Ottoman Empire, and Russia. I blogged my way through a re-read of the first book, The Game of Kings, some years ago, inviting people who had read the whole series to join in on the analysis and enjoyment; I’ve written two articles for Tor.com on her work, one a brief squee about a duel in that book, and one about what epic fantasy writers can learn from Dunnett. In Writing Fight Scenes I use the aforementioned duel as a case study in excellent craft. Dunnett, I often tell people, is the one writer who just makes me feel abjectly inferior about my own work: she’s just that good.

The problem is, finding her books has been easier said than done. The editions I have were published in the late ’90s, and they were getting increasingly difficult to acquire.

But sometimes it seems like you can’t throw a rock in publishing without hitting somebody who imprinted on this series hard. So recently I got an email from Anna Kaufman at Vintage Books, who is in charge of re-issuing the entire series in new editions, asking if I’d be interested in a copy of the first book, in exchange for helping spread the word that, hey, they’re coming out again with shiny new covers etc.

WOULD I EVER.

So if you’ve ever heard these books recommended, or you read them years ago and don’t have copies but would like some, or you’ve owned them for long enough that pages are starting to fall out, I’m delighted to say that the entire series is out as of today. Six books of amazingly good historical fiction, with some of the most unforgettable characters and events and prose I’ve ever encountered. Dunnett’s writing is not always easy to get into — it takes a little while to get the hang of reading her work, since she has a habit of doing things like describing stuff around the key element in the scene and trusting that the penny will drop for the reader in due course — but it’s amazingly rewarding once you do. And I aspire to someday write both intrigue and interpersonal conflict as well as she does.

Comments

[starlady]

Yayyy! Hopefully the TV show is still in development too.

"Dunnett’s writing is not always easy to get into"

I felt like I was being punched in the face by Scottish history for the first 2/3 of the first book. Once I stopped trying to figure out what was going on and just let myself experience it, things went much more smoothly.

[swan_tower]

. . . I think I missed there was a TV show planned. I . . . hope it's good, if it happens? So much of the series is in the actual prose, adapting it well would be a real challenge.

And yes, you have to let go of the finer points of the history. Otherwise you will spend the whole time going "but what the fuck are the Douglasses even DOING?"

[pameladean]

Such great news! Max Gladstone announced it on Twitter with the apt remark, "LYMOND IS BACK!"

I have very fat, very tiny-print, yellow-spined 1970's paperbacks with chessboard backgrounds and extremely strange romance-novel figures superimposed on them. I'm not sure I can bring myself to get rid of them if I get new ones, but maybe they can live in a box.

I understand that people have trouble getting into the books, but I was entranced at once and felt that the author had given us good warning of all sorts of things with the pig scene. Not that I had the remotest idea of what was even happening until I got to the end, mind you.

P.

[carbonel]

I used to have a complete set of those yellow-spined ones, but my copy of The Game of Kings is now missing. I suspect I lent it to someone and forgot about it. The copy of Pawn in Frankincense is severely water-damaged, which is entirely my own fault.

I also have a complete and pristine (albeit slightly yellowed) set of the British editions from Arrow. I walked into Uncle Hugo's one day, and there they were in the middle of a bunch of used science fiction books.

Reader, I bought them.

I know Scott Imes would buy used copies of Shogun as SF for resale on the grounds that it was a first contact novel. I'm not sure if the Lymond books were taken in as fantasy because of prophecy being real, or just that it would appeal to people with the right sensibilities. In any case, I believe the books had not been waiting there long before I snatched them up.

ETA: And what I actually meant to say was how glad I was that other people can now have that experience.

[swan_tower]

Historical fiction has a big overlap with fantasy in terms of appeal, I think. The astrology stuff threw me for a bit of a loop on the first read -- it winds up being completely rationally explicable in hindsight, but it's also entirely plausible for sixteenth-century characters to take it at face value.

[swan_tower]

I should have thought of that line. >_< Curse you and your clever wit, Max!

In hindsight, I can see where she alerts you about the pig. But if you're reading quickly and not paying attention to the implications of certain lines, it can easily slip past you.

[pameladean]

Indeed, he's a difficult person to get in front of.

I missed dozens of things later in the books because I got overconfident. I was just lucky with the pig because I was still wondering what on earth I was reading. It was convenient, however, and prevented me from throwing the book across the room, as a remarkable number of people I know did. The pig made me decide she wasn't trying to cheat (though she may come close later on from time to time). I have a high tolerance for confusion, in any case.

P.

[egret]

Best news of the day!