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.

(The following post talks about The Avengers on its way to the actual point, but does not give spoilers.)

Interestingly, one of the moments that has stayed with me the most strongly from The Avengers is the speech Loki flings at Black Widow.

He has other Villain Speeches in the movie, of course. But this one stands out for its sheer, unbridled malevolence. He doesn't say those things out of megalomania or fraternal resentment or any other such understandable motivation; he says them because, quite simply, he wants to hurt her.

I've said before that I tend to write antagonists more often than villains. That is, I write characters who think they're doing the right (or at least the necessary) thing, who happen to be wrong about that. There are exceptions, of course; Nadrett doesn't give a damn what's right, only what he can get away with. But I have a harder time writing that sort of thing.

Which means -- of course -- that I want to study how it's done. So this is a Recommend Stuff to Me kind of post: what books/movies/TV shows/etc have those moments of pure malevolence, where the character is just trying to hurt somebody? Off the top of my head, there's Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles ("Stop sidling, my swan. I am going to hurt you, but I am not going to kill you, just yet. You are going to provide me with a deal of merriment still."), some of Angelus' moments in Buffy, and pretty much everything the main villains do in Tokyo Babylon and X, but I'm having trouble thinking of more. (Actually, that's a lie. I can think of plenty of sadistic villains. It's just that most of them are sadistic in a shallow, uninteresting way, and I want ones that really manage to get the knife between the ribs.)

Where have you seen this done well?


Edited to add: Please to be avoiding spoilers as much as possible. This discussion will necessarily involve a degree of revelation, but if you can use phrases like "the main villain" instead of the name (where the villain is not obvious from the start), etc, that would be much appreciated.

Okay, so my previous attempt at book-blogging Queen's Play failed miserably, helped along by the insanity that was 2008. But I've had the book on my desk for a few weeks now in an attempt to get started again, and a friend just tried to sic eclectician (aka "Stone Cold," from his Assassin days) on me as motivation, so in the interests of not being murdered by a combat librarian, I'm officially announcing a new attempt.

For those of you with no idea what I'm talking about, here's the original announcement, complete with link to my recommendation for the Lymond Chronicles. So far I've made it through the first book of the series; Queen's Play is the second volume. (It's also my least favorite, which is part of the reason for the stall. I have trouble remembering I liked it much better the second time I read it. If this were The Disorderly Knights, though, I would have blogged the whole thing a year ago, in record time.)

Anyway, if you or a friend of yours has read the whole series, drop me a line, and I'll add you to the filter for the posts. Do NOT ask to be added if you haven't read through the end of Checkmate; there are spoilers like whoa, both in my posts and in the comments, and I don't want to ruin it for anybody. But otherwise, the more the merrier.

Have you ever read any of the Movies in Fifteen Minutes?

( I give you: The Game of Kings in Fifteen Minutes. )

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Once upon a time (a time known as "last summer", I embarked upon a project to re-read the Lymond Chronicles and blog my way through, performing a craft-oriented close reading as I went. I made it a goodly way through The Game of Kings before I discovered that I couldn't write one sixteenth-century novel while reading another, and then after that there was the wedding and all, and what with one thing and another it ground to a halt.

Now it's starting up again.

For those of you who have borne with me all this time, I'm most grateful; thank you for your patience. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, follow that link and you'll see. For those newcomers to this journal who have read all the books, or those who have in the meantime finished the books, comment here if you want in on the action, and I'll add you to the special Lymond filter, so you can see what's gone before and join in the discussion as we go on forward.

If you've read the entirety (yes, I mean the entirety) of Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles, then this post is for you.

I have a project in mind for this summer, or however long it actually takes me: I would like to re-read the Lymond Chronicles.

But, you say, doesn't that usually sink you into a slough of despond where you think your own writing sucks? And don't you have a novel to write this summer?

Yes, generally, and yes, I do. But while Dunnett may make me feel bad about my writing, I don't think she actually makes my writing bad (except, y'know, by comparison), so as long as I sit my ass down in the chair anyway, I should be okay. And -- more to the point -- that's kind of why I'm doing this. You see, I don't just intend to re-read them. I intend to do a close re-reading of a craft-focused sort, looking for the kinds of things I've talked to some of you about, like how she manipulates point of view, or describes certain things but not others, or makes that one duel the awesomest duel ever seen on the page. (In other words, I'm trying to get over my inferiority complex by anatomizing it.) And I'll answer a whole lot of niggling questions I need to re-read for, like which characters call him by his given name and when they start (or stop) doing so, how old he is when certain events happen, and just when we start seeing signs of [spoiler] or first get told [spoiler] but don't realize what it means.

I could do this without other people, but it wouldn't be half so fun. So the purpose of this post is to say, I will be blogging my progress through the books, bringing out interesting tidbits or answers to niggling questions, and inviting discussion in the comments. But this will involve spoilers like whoa, so I'll be doing so behind a specially-constructed filter. If you've read all the books, and are interested in joining the party, please comment here and I'll add you. If you have read some of the books, I'm sorry, but you really don't want to be a part of this yet; one of the things I intend to track as I read is the growth of a plot from book six that I know starts in book one, and I don't want to ruin that for you. But I'm more than happy to add people later, if they happen to finish the series and want to see what we've been up to.

Or, to put all this in other terms, I want to partially re-create the fun of the interactive "Let's watch khet_tcheba read the books for the first time" circus of myself and kurayami_hime, via Khet's locked posts on the subject. It will lack the tasty, tasty irony of seeing her make comments about ongoing plots when we, but not she, knew where they were going, but it should be fun regardless.


Edited to add: special brownie points for anybody who comes up with a good icon for me to use on such posts.